"Meet Foobot, the home air quality monitor which tells you what’s in the air you breathe, and control your other smart devices."
If you like connected gizmos and other nice looking items that can help you live a better life, this one is for you.
I met my Foobot thanks to a photo competition I won in 2016 organized by the World Green Building Council. As a global organization, WorldGBC is promoting health and well-being of building occupants via (amongst others) the continuous improvement of building infrastructures and the use of technologies that can help guaranty our indoor environments. As we tend to spend up to 90% of our time indoors, nothing is more important than maintaining proper indoor air quality (IAQ) and ensuring that corrective actions can be taken in case something goes wrong.
So what can a Foobot do for you? After setting it up to a specific room (a kitchen will experience different air and pollution flows compared to an open space office for example) and connecting the device to your phone via an app, just let it check the air quality around you.
The app will give you an indicator that combines information on volatile compbounds (VOC), carbon dioxide, particulate matters, humidity and temperature, as per global standards recommended by the World Health Organization. If all goes fine (index<50) you get a blue screen; if something goes wrong (index>50), you get a push notification on your phone and the screen gets orange/red. Based on the dashboard you can see instantly what needs to be improved, as well as a time chart to identify when the problem started.
A quick example here: in my open-space office in Dubai we often suffered from allergies and colds, and we suspected the ventilation systems to be poorly maintained by the owners. I therefore installed my Foobot there and let it do its work. If we were careful not to leave windows open (in a desert-based environment, it can bring dust, sand and particulate matters in), our IAQ would remain fairly stable and fine. Once in a while however the sensor would turn red, for no specific reason (for instance at night, when no one would be in); sudden issues in the ventilation, or construction work during the weekend, would take the blame.
Foobot aims at knowing who you are: if a pattern changes during its monitoring it will ask you a specific question (have you opened a window? are you cooking?) to better understand the change in values, and therefore normalize your values.
Both the app and the website also provide education material directed to individuals and professionals, and the device itself can be connected to other "smart" sensors and tools.
Official website to learn more: https://foobot.io/
Pics from left to right: mine; foobot.io; mine. IAQ monitoring pics: mine. This post is not sponsored and is only based on my personal experience and wish to share with the readers.