![]() Like other companies that have built a novel chip, Piera has decided to package the ASIC into a product. In the meantime, he said potential customers have tested the company’s sensors and seen enormous potential in the ability to differentiate between pollutants. SOMETHING IN THE AIR GAME VERIFICATIONI asked for third-party verification of those claims, and Ratford said the company is working with researchers to validate its algorithms. CEO Vin Ratford told me the sensor can tell the difference between cigarette smoke and vaping, for example, and even if someone is cooking chicken or salmon, all based on how the particles behave in the air. In addition to measuring particulate matter of varying sizes, Piera can analyze how particulates generated by certain types of air pollution behave. Most sensors take the PM2.5 measurement because that’s what the EPA uses for counting air pollution. So where a traditional low-cost sensor from a company such as Sensirion might count just PM2.5 particles and only estimate particulate matter at sizes both smaller and larger than that, the Peira chip can count particles that are PM0.1 PM2.5, PM10, etc. However, the Piera sensor form factor is similar to - and works much like - the traditional low-cost sensors that use a laser to measure particulate matter as it traverses a small optical sensor. It performs at the level of much more expensive sensors that actually track the mass of particulate matter in a cubic meter of air. The chip adds computing power to analyze the behavior of particulates and count exactly how many are in a sample, and at more sizes. Piera’s specially designed chip devotes more computing resources to counting, and then analyzing, particulate matter. The company’s CEO is hoping that the ability to more accurately measure particles will give Piera an advantage over the existing sensors on the market today. Piera makes an air quality sensor, but at the heart of that sensor is a newly designed custom chip that provides a lot more processing power than traditional chips used on sensors to analyze the particulates that any air quality sensor must monitor. To that end, this week I met a startup called Piera Systems, which combines air quality monitoring with a specially designed chip in a way that could bring better and more granular information to users. Are y’all sick of me writing about air quality yet? I view the monitoring of indoor air quality and management of in-home energy as the two biggest trends to emerge from the last year or so, so I’m very focused on them these days. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |