Airthings for Business

Airthings for Business provides a set of solutions to monitor Indoor Air quality in buildings ranging from schools to commercial buildings. We are developing the hardware products as well as the software solution fully in-house.

The View Plus for Business

The View Plus for Business is an Indoor air quality monitor that provide instant information about the CO2, Temperature and Humidity levels;

Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) is most commonly mentioned when talking about global climate, but in this context it’s the CO₂ that we breathe out that is worrisome. As CO₂ becomes concentrated indoors, levels rise, causing headaches, restlessness, drowsiness. At schools or the office, studies show that high levels of CO₂ causes poor decision making, difficulty performing tasks and more. We recommend keeping CO₂ levels below 1000 ppm.

Temperature is highly related to comfort but also impacts our ability to learn and focus. It also impacts our mood and the ideal indoor temperature is often referred to as 22 degrees celsius.

Humidity, the amount of water vapour present in the air needs to be maintained between 30-60%. Too much humidity can cause mold and too little (dry air, in other words) can help the spread of infectious diseases.

Additional information

• The device measures data continuously and every 5 min it wirelessly passes on the information to a hub where it's forwarded to the cloud solution and made available in an online dashboard.
• The CO₂, Temperature and Humidity live data is shown on the E-Ink display and historical data can be accessed through the online dashboard.
• The View Plus is powered with 6 x AA Lithium batteries.
• The CO₂ sensor requires 7 days of calibration after a start-up or reset, before the measurements are fully reliable and requires a fresh baseline reading for at least 30 min during these 7 days (i.e. when the building is not in use). The calibration is fully automatic.

The Hub for Business

The Hub for Business is the central point of an installation and connects up to 25 devices to the cloud, through an internet connection. In large deployments, it’s not uncommon to have several Hub for Business to improve coverage and robustness. The hub is powered with an included power supply and requires an ethernet connection (cable included).

The Dashboard

The Dashboard is your portal to insight about the indoor air quality. You will need to be invited to the business account in order to use the Dashboard. Once invited, please click "Join now" in the invitation email. 

1. This will take you to a page where you create a password. Click “Create Account”
2. One the confirmation page, please entered the passcode you now received in your email 
3. After validation, you will get to the login page where you can use your email and new password
4. After login, you should be presented with the invitation;
5. After accepting, you get full access (ready to install devices in the Buildings section)

The dashboard will allow you to:

• Monitor your indoor air quality
• Analyze live and historical data
• Manage buildings and set alerts
• Generate and share insight reports

The dashboard is continuously being updated with new features and insightful modules that will improve the overall experience. These updates are automatically deployed through the cloud, and do not require any action from your end.

To install the products in the most efficient way, we recommend you install a Hub for Business first, then the View Plus for Business devices in the rooms with close proximity. The SmartLink radio signal has a typical indoor range of more than 50 meters indoors (Hub to View Plus). The signal can normally penetrate 10 drywalls (non-load bearing walls), or 3 thick walls or floors. Then move on to the next location and start over with the next hub. Please read through the installation guidelines before you start the installation.

Once the products have been installed it may take a day until the solution is up and running with up-to-date software. The complete solution is accessed through dashboard.airthings.com (invitation only).

The first thing you need to do when you access the account, is to change the language settings. The default is in english, so please navigate to  Account -> Overview -> Edit Info and change language to Francais.

Now you are ready to explore the Airthings Dashboard. The welcome screen “Dashboard” is your personal dashboard tied to your user. You can configure your dashboard by navigating to “Dashboard” in the menu on the left-hand side.

You can add new tiles or create a public dashboard in this view with the option up to the right corner.

Public Dashboard

The Public Dashboard is a personalised dashboard for a public audience, which can be shared with a unique URL and displayed on any digital screens you wish, for example a large monitor at the school entrance ? This is a great way to communicate to everyone in the building that their indoor environment is healthy and safe

1. Open your Airthings dashboard
2. Click the  (+)  button on the top right-hand corner
3. Select "Add public dashboard"
4. Give it a name and turn public sharing on
5. Click the "public" button on top of your newly created dashboard
6. Copy the link or preview your public dashboard

This view will list all your devices tied to the locations you have access to. Real time data is presented here together with battery levels and signal strength to the closest hub. Here you can also validate that the signal strength is good (recommended to have a higher signal than -80 dBm for optimal power consumption). You can also click on a device to get to the device page for historical data.

Configuration of the View Plus

If you intend to show real-time data in the display of the View Plus or modify the sampling intervals, you can configure this in device settings. Simply click on a device, and then the settings up in the right corner and it will take you there.

Public sharing is an opt-in feature that generates a unique URL for each device. In order to activate it for a device, go to the Device Page and click the Edit pencil in the top right corner and select Edit Device. In the Device Settings you can toggle public sharing, download the QR label for printing.

Display Option

You can configure the screen on the View Plus, which will take up to 30 min before it changes on the actual product. There are more options available later, as we develop new cool ways of presenting data. It will be possible to have CO₂, Temperature and Humidity on the display at the same time.

This view will allow you to upload floor plans where you can map out the sensors to get a better visual overview of the installation. Add a floor plan by;

1. Select a building
2. Press the + in the top right corner to upload a new floor plan
3. Add devices and draw coverage areas on the floor plan! (Video: https://vimeo.com/380465706)

This will help you keep the View Plus well organized.

You should also define the building information under the settings of the building.

Here you can set the opening hours of the building that will be used when generating insight reports, where only the usage time is considered. The opening hours will also be used to optimize power consumption of the View Plus devices (lower sampling interval outside operating hours).

The configurable insight reports can be used to summarize the indoor air quality across multiple sensors in a building, with a clear overview of min and max values over selected time range. The insight reports allow you to get in-depth information on the measurements within opening hours and outside opening hours, which is relevant to compare the ventilation efficiency. It’s also possible to download and share the reports.

The alerts allow you, or someone else, to be notified when a sensor measures an air parameter above or below a set threshold, or when your device has gone offline.

How to set-up an alert with email notifications

1. Go to Alerts and click Add Alert to create a new alert.
2. Give your alert a name and add the email recipients of the alert notifications.
3. Select the devices or buildings to include in the alert.
4. Select the sensor thresholds to trigger the alert.

Examples; 

• Send an alert when the CO_₂ levels in a classroom go above 1 500 ppm - really stuffy air!
• Send an alert email to maintenance if the indoor temperature goes under 10 °C - maybe the heating stopped working?
• Send an email alert when a device goes offline for more than 1 hour - this could mean that the battery died, the device has been stolen, or it has fallen and is broken?

Integrations can be used to extract data towards 3^rd party systems, with the use of REST API or Webhooks. We do not anticipate that this functionality will be used by the schools of Quebec. An introduction to this can be given upon request.

User and account settings are found here with functionality to:

• Change language
• Change units
• Change password
• Update organization information (Admin)
• List all public devices
• User Management to invite more users (Admin)

We are happy to help you with any questions or concerns you might have. Our support is currently only available in english. If you write in french, we will do our best to provide a timely response but there may be some delays due to translation.

Technical support is provided through our business dashboard chat client (dashboard.airthings.com). It is the little function down in the bottom-right corner when you are logged in.

Initial response time within 24h, with general availability within office hours: 9AM-5PM (CET). You can also send an email to business-support@airthings.com.

Established in 2008 in Norway, Airthings is a global tech company led by a team of experienced scientists, engineers, developers and visionaries, with a common goal: to educate on the prevalence of indoor air contaminants, and develop accessible technology solutions to help people stay healthy.