Clean Air, Safe Batteries: The Role of Modern Sensing in Smarter Devices

Air quality and battery safety sensors are becoming essential across a wide range of connected devices—especially as we increasingly rely on lithium-ion power and spend more time indoors. At SENSOR+TEST 2025, we caught up with Martin from Sciosense to explore how this new generation of sensors is changing the way engineers design for both safety and health.

From wearables to smart thermostats, developers are demanding compact components with accurate, real-time data outputs. Enter the ENS190 CO₂ sensor and ENS161 air quality index sensor, two standout solutions that make air quality and battery safety sensors easier to integrate than ever before. These sensors provide fully computed digital outputs via I²C or SPI, meaning no need for calibration code or floating-point math libraries on the host MCU. Just drop them in, read the registers, and you’re up and running.

What sets Sciosense apart in the crowded air monitoring space is the combination of ease of integration and deep sensor intelligence. The ENS161, for example, uses a four-hotplate metal oxide array to measure VOCs and returns a direct AQI index output—no chemistry expertise needed. These types of air quality and battery safety sensors help designers build more intuitive indoor monitoring devices for homes, offices, and IoT systems.

Another major highlight from the Sciosense booth was a gas-based battery condition monitor for lithium-ion cells. This sensor detects the early signs of thermal runaway by sensing outgassing compounds before a fire starts. With a range of digital interfaces—including LIN for automotive—this is one of the most proactive air quality and battery safety sensors we’ve seen. The ability to react to a failing cell before it becomes a danger makes it ideal for EVs, home energy storage, and even personal electronics.

Sciosense isn’t just building raw sensing components—they’re building peace of mind. Their latest demos even included a mock office setup to show how CO₂, VOCs, and temperature can change over time in a poorly ventilated space. When sensors like these become standard in smart home systems, we get data that enables us to act—open a window, turn on a fan, or prevent battery fires entirely.

So why are these sensors such a big deal? Because modern electronics aren’t just about performance anymore. They’re about user safety, energy efficiency, and long-term reliability. Air quality and battery safety sensors from companies like Sciosense are helping engineers meet those expectations without making major trade-offs in design time or board space.

As homes, factories, and vehicles become smarter, demand for these sensing capabilities will only grow. Whether you’re developing a smart thermostat or an energy storage system, integrating reliable air quality and battery safety sensors is no longer optional—it’s the new standard. And Sciosense is one of the few companies delivering that functionality in a form factor and feature set that engineers actually want to work with.