Vape detection for the places cameras can't go
Vaping happens in toilets and changing rooms for one reason: nobody can watch them. This sensor doesn't watch anyone — it reads the air, once a second, and quietly tells your staff the moment someone vapes. No camera, no microphone, no grey areas. Professionally installed and tuned by your local SSAIB-approved team.
Cameras or microphones — it only reads the air
Vape Index, sampled every single second
One PoE lead powers and connects each sensor
Power draw — pennies a year to run
Vaping moved into the one blind spot you're not allowed to fix
Surveys by Action on Smoking and Health suggest around one in five 11–17-year-olds have tried vaping — and in most schools it concentrates in exactly the spaces safeguarding law keeps camera-free: toilets, changing rooms, shower blocks. Staff are left policing smells and rumours, lesson time is lost to toilet patrols, and disposable vapes set off nothing at all on a conventional smoke detector.
The answer isn't surveillance — it's sensing. A vape detector gives those rooms a presence without giving them an eye: pupils keep total privacy, and staff finally get facts — which room, what time, how often.
- No camera and no microphone anywhere in the device — it physically cannot capture images or conversations
- Reads only environmental data: particulates, gases, temperature and humidity
- Nothing personal to store, request or leak — simplifying GDPR and safeguarding conversations with parents and governors
- Pairs naturally with cameras in the corridor OUTSIDE — a privacy-compliant record of who entered and left
- Timestamped event log gives pastoral teams evidence, not accusations
Small white disc. Industrial-grade senses.
Ubiquiti's UniFi Vape Detection & Air Quality Sensor packs a laser particle counter and a full gas-analysis array into a puck smaller than a smoke detector — professional hardware we install, tune and support every week.
Discreet 93 mm puck
Low-profile polycarbonate disc, 40.5 mm deep, 190 g — ceiling, wall or surface mounted with tamper-conscious stainless/aluminium fixings.
Single-cable install
Powered and connected by one PoE network lead (10/100 RJ45, 2.2 W). No plug sockets, no batteries to die mid-term, no extra wiring runs.
Industrial sensor array
Laser particulate counter (PM1–PM10), photoacoustic CO₂, VOC and NOx chemistry — sampled once per second, continuously.
Alerts in seconds
When the Vape Index crosses your threshold, designated staff get an instant notification on their phones — timestamped and logged.
Complete standalone system
Runs on its own dashboard with a full audit trail and no cloud subscription — nothing else is needed. If you ever add cameras or door access later, it all manages from the same place.
NDAA-compliant hardware
CE and FCC certified, NDAA compliant, and built for continuous indoor duty (10–35 °C recommended operation).
Nine readings, once every second
The full sensing envelope, straight from the manufacturer's specification — because the vape alert is only the headline. The same device is a complete air-quality monitor for the room.
| Metric | Range | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Vape Index | 0 – 100 | Dedicated vape-aerosol score — the alerting signal |
| CO₂ | 0 – 40,000 ppm | ±(50 ppm + 3–5% of reading) — classroom ventilation & focus |
| PM1 / PM2.5 | 0 – 1,000 µg/m³ | ±5 µg/m³ + 5% — fine particulates incl. vape aerosol & smoke |
| PM4 / PM10 | 0 – 1,000 µg/m³ | ±25 µg/m³ — coarser dust and airborne particles |
| VOC Index | 1 – 500 | ±5% — volatile organic compounds (solvents, aerosols, e-liquid) |
| NOx Index | 1 – 500 | Oxidising gases — combustion and pollution indicator |
| Air Quality Index | 0 – 500 | Overall AQI rolled up from the sensor array |
| Temperature | 0 – 40 °C | ±1 °C — comfort and safeguarding record |
| Humidity | 0 – 90% RH | ±8% — damp, condensation and shower-steam context |
UP-AirQuality: ⌀93 × 40.5 mm, 190 g · PoE powered (2.2 W max) · 10/100 RJ45 · wall, ceiling or surface mount · indoor use · CE / FCC / IC certified · NDAA compliant · managed in UniFi Protect.
Ventilation & focus
CO₂ is the standard measure of classroom ventilation — the same metric DfE building guidance works to. Stuffy rooms show up in the data before they show up in the afternoon's concentration levels.
Comfort you can evidence
Continuous temperature and humidity logging across the building — useful for estates teams, damp investigations and duty-of-care records alike.
One device, two budgets
It's a behaviour tool for the pastoral team and an air-quality monitor for estates. Two agenda items, one PoE cable — which tends to make the business case write itself.
Built for schools. At home anywhere cameras aren't.
Schools & colleges
The core use case: toilets, changing rooms and stairwells where vaping happens precisely because cameras aren't allowed. Staff get a discreet alert the moment the air changes — and pastoral teams get dated evidence for parents, governors and behaviour logs instead of hearsay.
Hotels & hospitality
Catch smoking and vaping in non-smoking rooms while the guest is still checked in — not at checkout when the deep-clean bill lands. The same sensor evidences the charge with a timestamped event log.
Offices & social housing
Communal areas, welfare facilities and stairwells stay monitored without a single lens — and the CO₂/air-quality data doubles as a workplace wellbeing record.
Healthcare & public sector
We already look after NHS trust sites across Essex. Wards, patient bathrooms and staff areas can be covered with zero cameras and zero recorded audio — nothing that engages patient-privacy concerns.
From survey to first alert in days, not terms
We're an SSAIB & BAFE approved Essex installer, protecting schools, businesses and NHS trust sites since 1997. We survey the building, place and tune each sensor for its room, integrate it with your existing network or CCTV, and train your staff on the alerts — then stand behind it with local maintenance cover.
- Free no-obligation site survey
- Sensor placement & threshold tuning included
- Everything supplied — a complete standalone system
- Local engineers, local maintenance plans
Everything heads, governors and FMs ask us
No. There is no camera and no microphone in the unit — it only measures the air: particulates, CO₂, VOCs, NOx, temperature and humidity. That's exactly why it can legally and comfortably live in toilets and changing rooms where cameras never could. No images or conversations exist to be requested, leaked or misused.
Vape clouds are made of fine glycerine/propylene-glycol aerosol with a distinctive particle-size and chemistry signature. The sensor's laser particle counter and gas sensors sample the air every second and roll the readings into a dedicated Vape Index from 0 to 100. When the index crosses the threshold we tune for the room, an alert fires — steam from showers or a burst of deodorant reads differently across the sensor array, which is what keeps false alarms down.
Whoever you choose — typically duty staff or the pastoral team — gets a push notification on their phone within seconds of the index spiking, naming the sensor location. Every event is timestamped and logged, so you can also review patterns: which toilets, which lesson changeovers, which days.
It mounts at ceiling height on tamper-conscious fixings, and because it's a live network device the system knows immediately if it goes offline or gets blocked — that itself raises a flag to staff. There are no batteries to quietly pull out.
One network cable per sensor, back to a PoE switch — the same cabling standard as our CCTV and door-access installs. A typical school block is sensors in each toilet core plus changing rooms, commissioned and threshold-tuned in a day, with zero decoration damage. We supply everything it needs to run — including the network switch if you don’t have one.
No — the same unit is a full air-quality monitor. CO₂ tracking flags poorly ventilated classrooms (the same measure DfE ventilation guidance uses), particulate readings pick up smoke and dust, and temperature/humidity round out a wellbeing record for the building. One device, two jobs.
It depends on how many spaces you're covering and what network is already in place, so we quote after a free survey. There's no per-sensor subscription — the system is yours, managed from your own UniFi dashboard, with optional Homeview maintenance cover.