Weight loss, Al Gore, and the Internet of Things

Air Quality Monitoring with your bathroom scale?

We were enthusiastic to learn that two Internet-connected devices, the Withings scale and the Netatmo weather station featured “air quality monitors.” However, this just turned out to be a simple CO2 monitor, and doesn’t monitor the more important dust, VOC, or other noxious gas issues that are generally considered to be of much greater concern.

CO2 monitoring in crowded bars

We’ve played with CO2 monitors in our office (using Ardunio hardware prototyping boards). It is one of the less effective air quality components to sense, because the valid range for CO2 is so wide. It’s kind of fun exhaling into a CO2 monitor and watching the CO2 counts spike (your exhaled breath has a lot of CO2), but that same reason means that animals have evolved in an environment where CO2 spikes in their inhaled air was not uncommon.

A CO2 monitor might still be very useful if you’re running a crowded bar, or throwing a party and trying to figure out how many people you can safely squeeze into a room (from an air quality standpoint, anyhow), before you need to open the window. But compared with dust, ozone, VOCs, CO and NO2 sensors slowly making their way in the consumer market, CO2 is further down on the priority list in our opinion. (Hopefully, you’re already monitoring dust with our iOS app. And, you probably are already required to have a CO or carbon monoxide detector in many states, although these don’t report the more subtle fluctuations in CO levels that you see from, say, turning on a gas appliance, or due to industrial or automobile air pollution. But soon you will: Internet-connection versions of these sensors are becoming increasingly common.)

Excellent for weight loss?

The general idea of the Withings scale is excellent for those on a weight-loss program. It transmits your body fat and weight to the cloud, and you can even have it post your daily numbers to your social networks for peer support and encouragement! (It is an example of a traditional household item that has become much more useful as an Internet-connected device and therefore joined the “Internet of Things”, one of the hottest buzzwords at this years Consumer Electronics Show.)

Unfortunately, many of the consumer reviews suggest that Withings may have some quality control or consumer support issues, which makes us hesitant to give the product our full endorsement here. (Netatmo weather station sounds like it has similar issues: great idea, problems with quality control and/or customer support.)

Science fair projects and did Al Gore invent the Internet of Things?

One thing we do like about both the Withings scale and the CO2 feature of the Netatmo station ​is that they can help educate children about man-made climate change (or at least a significant rise in CO2 levels) and potentially help combat ignorance, denial, and scientific illiteracy on this subject. Both of these products assume a CO2 baseline of 400 ppm, whereas if these products had existed a decade or two ago the baseline would have been 300 ppm or less. That’s a pretty significant change. (Al Gore’s Academy Award-winning but controversial documentary movie still provides one of the most accessible explanations of why global CO2 levels matter.) It’s probably possible to use these products for a student science fair project or similar to monitor the year-over-year change in CO2 levels.

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