A near-infrared tunable diode laser absorption spectrometer is set up to measure the air-induced broadening coefficients and the line-strength parameters of water-vapour overtone transitions within the (2, 1, 1) ← (0, 0, 0) band in the 822-832 nm wavelength region. A Hitachi HL8311 E double hetero-junction structure diode laser is used as a probe. The diode laser controller is home-built and stable within ±10 μA and ± 10 mK, respectively. The laser-head mount has a simple design and provides easy access whenever changing of the laser head is required. The diode laser emission wavelength is thermally tuned between 50 °C and 12 °C. Thermal tuning of the diode laser emission wavelength is used to reveal the mode structure of the diode laser and to probe the overtone-band transitions of water vapour within its operating wavelength range. Current tuning of the diode laser is used at a fixed laser temperature to study the transitions one at a time. A balanced detector is used to improve the S/N ratio of the spectrum. A phase sensitive detection technique is followed to obtain the first-derivative spectra of the overtone transitions. The first-derivative spectra have been recorded at different air pressures inside the sample cell while the water-vapour pressure is kept fixed. The first-derivative spectrum is numerically integrated to obtain the original line shape. The original line shape is fitted with a Voigt profile by using a nonlinear least-squares fit program to extract the air-broadening coefficient and the line-strength parameter. The data obtained in our work is compared with the results of the HITRAN database.