Honeywell PM sensors

1

I currently run a measuring station that is based on the sensor community firmware and hardware kit, with an ESP8266, SDS011, and BME011.

I am planning to use the kit in combination with a solar panel and battery as an insular system that should run autonomously and outdoors. I am a hobby tinkerer and am capable of doing some soldering and connecting sensors, but anything that comes to the code is beyond my skills.

As I live north of the Arctic circle, the temperatures drop well below the operating temperatures of the SDS011 for large parts of the year. I noticed from the firmware settings that one can also select different sensors (SPS30 and Honeywell PM), so I looked into those. Both the SDS011 and the SPS30 have a rating of -10°C for the operating temperature. I found basically 3 different types of Honeywell PM sensors, which all have a rating for the operating temperature of -20°C, as well as rating for the storage temperature of -30°C to -40°C (the SDS011 only has a storage temp. rating of -20°C).
Hence it appears to me that out of the sensors that can be selected from the firmware GUI, the Honeywell sensor would be most suitable for my use case.

As there are basically 3 different types of the Honeywell sensor: a) standard HPM, b) compact HPM, as well as c) IPM sensors, I was wondering which of those would be suitable for the current sensor community firmware, i.e. which are meant for the Honeywell PM selection box. So my questions are:

  1. Looking at the sensor community instructions and the datasheets of the HPM and IPM sensors, especially at the pin connection details, I would assume that the sensor community firmware is compatible with the HPM series, is that correct?

  2. As the IPM series is significantly cheaper (about half the price of the HPM, and closer to the SDS011) it raises my interest. However, I noticed that the Honeywell IPM has additionally a pin (pin 3) for setting an operation mode (0: I2C; 1 or float). Hence my questions is, would the Honeywell IPM sensor work with the current sensor community firmware, and if so, does the pin 3 need to be connected to the NodeMCU or can it stay disconnected (and hence presumably operate in mode 1, that is I2C)?

Thanks a lot for your help!