AQMesh was born out of the UK-based MESSAGE project which started in 2006. At this stage there were few voices calling for a different approach to air quality monitoring but since then the demand has increased for greater spatial resolution of measurements. Now the requirement is for a tool which can deliver truly flexible location, but has performance which is acceptably close to the laboratory equipment which has become industry standard. AQMesh has been designed to offer a robust and easy to use instrument platform as well as a data processing algorithm that can deliver near real-time readings in all environmental conditions anywhere, at any time.