Sensaris broadens phone application portfolio with asthma management application.

December 24, 2012

We released an application for Android phones to measure peak flow values using Bluetooth data transmission. Peak flow meters are simple devicex measuring how quickly air is expelled from one’s lungs and are used in daily life for asthma monitoring. Peak flow values of 50% - 80% of a person’s best results are a sign of a moderate asthma attack, while values below 50% are a sign of a severe attack.

As part of a management plan, having regular readings will help asthma sufferers better control their disease, manage their medication or even act hours-sometimes days-before early signs of asthma attacks appear.
Our growing application portfolio opens new doors to better understanding of correlation between air quality/personal pollution exposure and physiological effects.

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Cloud based indoor environmental quality sensing .

July 20, 2012

Using Senspods, it is now easier than ever to check indoor environmental quality.
The new Senspods were developed and trialed through a grant from the Eco Energies Innov funding program Eco Innov focusing on home energy savings.
Studies at Coventry University clearly showed that monitoring CO2, temperature, humidity and amount of light is also useful for home energy profiling and to better understand where gains can be made towards passive homes.( Coventry Passive Homes ).
The data can be visualized in real time using mobile phones or data sent to the cloud can be to compare the environmental quality of different homes.
Public building requirements: New focus on schools and day care centers in France.
In France , a new requirement for day care centers came into effect on July 1 st 2012 and requires all buildings to characterize VOCs (formaldehyde and benzene) and CO2. Carbon dioxide has no effect on health but it is an excellent indicator of the degree of air confinement and renewal rate.
A recent study in the Midi Pyrenees regions shows that out of 310 schools, 21 % have insufficient ventilation.Midi Pyrennees Schools
This in line with a previous study which looked at 160 schools in 13 regions in France which found that 16 % of schools (25 % in elementary schools) did not meet the French Committee for public health values. Indoor Air quality study
If you want to find out about your own living spaces, your office, gym or if you’d like to know how schools can improve the well being of the students, we probably have a solution for you.

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Sensaris releases its Sens2Cloud API for Internet of Things applications.

June 22, 2012

To answer the request from developers wanting to integrate Senspod data into their own applications, we are releasing our first version of the Sens2Cloud API. The principles that guided us were ease of use, flexibility to adapt to new types of sensors, and flexible controls.
Dominique Guinard (with Ion and Mayer) highlighted the advantages of using REST for wireless sensor networks in this publication:

He concludes “Participants identi ed that RESTful Web services represent the most straightforward and simple way of achieving a global network of smart things because RESTful Web services seamlessly integrate with the Web.”

Now that the framework is released, the next Senspods will all follow the same data format, but since we’ve got already 15 Senspods, you have a busy summer ahead of you.
In this manual, you will find how to deal with:
Authentication
Query format
Returned values

Senspod’s functions
Get the Senspod’s frame data units
Extract the last X Senspod’s frames
Obtain Senspod’s frames between two dates

Have fun.

Sens2Cloud manual
Sens2Cloud manual

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PR: Sensaris Launches its Global “SMARTPHONES FOR AIR QUALITY” Program

June 11, 2012

Integrated solution initially targets fine particles and indoor air quality monitoring. Appcessories are designed to be compatible with both iPhone and Android platforms.

There is growing interest for air quality monitoring as the recent controversy in London or the need for Chinese cities to publish fine particles levels recently revealed. Citizens and communities are increasingly aware of the correlation between personal exposure to environmental pollution and health.
After pilot projects and deployments in 15 cities on 4 continents, Sensaris is now launching the first global network for air quality monitoring based on cloud technologies and smartphones.
Environmental data such as noise, CO2, CO, fine particles, humidity, temperature, along with positioning information is sent wirelessly to iPhones (starting this summer) or Android mobile devices. Users can choose to store data on the phone, send it to a server for real time mapping or store it locally on the Senspod’s memory card for later or periodic automated transfer. The patent pending solution will now enable citizens to monitor indoor and outdoor air quality and compare or share results via social networking applications. For smart city services, pocket sized Senspods have been used by pedestrians, mounted on vehicles (bicycles, cars) or placed on urban furniture. The scalable architecture combined with the ease of use the mobile application and web based interface ensure easy deployment.
Michael Setton, CEO indicated: “In many cases there are more sensors in a car than air quality monitoring stations in a city. After getting a boost from the Bluetooth Innovation world Cup in January, we are very excited to deploy Senspods in several new cities this summer. Our devices and software will provide citizens and communities with new means of improving air quality, and the use of social networking tools will foster exchange of ideas and solutions on a global scale. This is an important step in increasing people’s engagement to bring local solutions to this growing issue. In subway stations our sensors can be combined with LED lights to provide energy savings and environmental information to citizens. For more than 9000 metro stations worldwide, public transportation users could soon get real time indoor air quality values on their mobile phones.”

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Mobile Health Around the Globe: Zao mHealth Device Field-Tested in India and Nepal

May 14, 2012

The Health Work Collective published an article about ZAO, the all-in-one mHealth device released by Sensaris.

This interesting article explains how ZAO has been designed and tested in though conditions in Nepal and what could be its first applicartion with EHealth Points Services India, which provides families in rural villages with clean drinking water, medicines, diagnostic tools and telemedicine.

Health Work Collective is an editorially independent, moderated community for thought leaders in international healthcare. They aggregate content and provide resources about all aspects of modern medicine, providing a community where healthcare professionals can debate the latest issues and advances in their field.

Read more here.

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Sensaris moves sensor data to watch type platforms.

May 4, 2012

After the success of Senspods used for the “Montre verte” and the” Copenhagen wheel” projects, we wanted to build services based on information shown in real time on wearable platforms.
We started with the Sony Ericsson Live View and Android based phones.The result is shown below:

Senspods’ data can be provided as RSS feeds, therefore very simple RSS readers can display information on wearable devices, so developers can let their imagination run wild for new applications based on sensor data.
Since we can now also stream Senspod data to iPhone, our next development will be to use the amazing Pebble Watch !!

Stay tuned and contact us if you are interested to become one of the early adopters.

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Fine particle measurement system compatible with mobile phones (PM)

April 23, 2012

To facilitate measurement both outdoors and indoors indoors (where we spend the majority of our time), Sensaris is releasing its Senspod EcoPM so users can now check ultrafine particle levels directly on their mobile phones.

Growing worldwide concern about PM

A growing number of city government are asked to act on improving environmental quality. For example, at the beginning of March 2012, the Hong Kong government began releasing hourly readings of ultrafine particles, as it bowed to public pressure for greater transparency about air quality.

In 2013, the monitoring of PM2.5 and Ozone will be extended to 113 cities in China.

If you’re interested in having international comparison for PM 2.5 and PM 10 in cities, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has conducted a very interesting study with a lot of data available.

Impact on health

Particles in ambient air have been associated with adverse health effects, including respiratory and cardiovascular effects. (See “Tackling the global clean air challenge report” by WHO)
Find additional information about air quality impact on health

Such Ultrafine particles can be “imported” from the outdoors but they can also be generated by combustion (cooking, heating, smoking…..) or by reactions between ozone and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs).
You can find more information about ultrafine particles here

A mobile sensor with a phone application

The ability to use low cost mobile phones to record the fine particle levels provides a new tool to understand adverse possible causes of high particle counts as well as monitor trends, evaluate the effectiveness of control strategies and the degree of improvement brought by new solutions.

The GPS module also enables the unit to be carried by pedestrians or mounted on vehicles in order to map out cities and help city governments to provide citizens with the means to compare areas and evaluate progress.

Go to our Products page to learn more about EcoPM.

EcoPM Sheet

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ZAO: wireless pulse oximeter, blood pressure monitor, thermometer, glucometer for iPhone and Android

April 20, 2012

Sensaris releases ZAO, an all-in-one biomedical device for m-health applications.

ZAO is a all-in-one biomedical device for mHealth, disaster relief, wireless hospitals or innovative homecare uses. It communicates with mobile phones, tablets or access points and leverages cloud technologies for unprecedented applications. In a single package the following functions are provided:

  • - Pulse oximeter
  • - Blood pressure monitor
  • - Thermometer
  • - Glucometer interface
  • - With a WiFi module


To use ZAO, a doctor, a nurse or even a patient selects the function to be used and then starts measurements . Thanks to mobile and web based applications, ZAO displays the data either just locally or sends it securely to a distant server.

WHY AN ALL-IN-ONE DEVICE?

Working with doctors and nurses over the last 10 years, Sensaris realized that providing wireless devices was not enough. They needed a single wireless unit to perform essential and vital basic measurements: oxygen saturation, heart rate, body temperature, blood pressure, blood glucose. Something that like a stethoscope they can always carry, a device which fits in a pocket. Small size, ease of use and ruggedness are crucial for telemedicine applications.

Patients also told us that instead of having to learn to operate a variety of devices they wanted a simple to use, reliable unit compatible with their phones, internet gateways or TVs.

So with the help of mHealth specialists and ER doctors we took the various stages of ZAO through tough field testing and we are now proud to introduce the result of this team effort.

WHY MOBILE DEVICES AND INTERNET CONNECTIVITY?

We could have added a screen on ZAO to simply give results directly on it. But we chose not to because we strongly believe that a lot of applications can be developed around wireless technologies and networks. It is all about seamless experience and users using different interfaces through the day: phones, tablets, PCs, TVs. ZAO delivers vital information in real time at the point of care no matter when or where.
Two way communication over IP also provides field users with instant access to expertise. Moving data rather than patients is always more efficient.

WHY WIFI TECHNOLOGY?

The patent pending ZAO is the first device with 5 key healthcare functions compatible with both Android and iOS based devices (even satellite phones for remote area telemedicine).

Connectivity to plug computers enable easy deployment and connectivity to hospital Ethernet or WLAN networks.
Entreprise level security and data encryption.

Compatible with mobile broadband access for disaster emergency response.

Interoperability with existing health systems through IEEE 11073 data transcoding.

Patent pending

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Sensaris at Quantified Self on May 22nd in Paris

April 11, 2012

Quantified Self is a worldwide community of self-trackers, interested in everything that could provide personal data.
QS Paris organizes a meetup in Paris on May, 22th where Sensaris will present ECOsense as a personal air quality monitor. The idea is to explain how anyone could use an ECOsense to monitor the environment, how it may be possible to integrate data provided by the sensors to crowdsourcing platforms.

API, collaborative projects, mobile applications, citizen actions are all key words to explain what could be done in collaboration with such a community.

If you’re interested in QS community of if you want to attend the presentation, everything is available here:

Quantified Self
Quantified Self in Paris

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Finding out about your city’s carbon footprint.

March 11, 2012

Picarro (http://www.picarro.com) produces highly sensitive and accurate gas sensing instruments which rely on a technology called cavity ring down spectroscopy. The company published a fascinating methodology to determine actual CO2 emissions from a city.This was performed during the Davos summit.You can see the results of such visualisation here:
CO2 emissions over Davos

Actual methodology is detailed in this publication from Picarro:
CityCarbon_Science_and_Data

This graph compares the emissions for cities of various scales and built around different economies: Davos, Seoul and Tokyo.

Even though sensors used for participatory sensing such as Senspods are not laboratory instruments, once properly calibrated and used by citizens to cover city wide areas, there is no reason why mobile sensors could not be used to quickly build a global environmental network.

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