Awair is one of the earliest companies in the space of IoT air quality monitoring with great experience and knowledge as they have released a few consumers based air quality monitors like Awair Original, Awair 2nd Edition, Awair Element, and Glow C. Recently they entered the enterprise market with the release of Awair Omni.

I have seen the evolution of the company from the beginning as they have designed some of the most iconic domestic air quality monitors. The design language of Awair Omni is exactly what you expect from an air quality monitor inside a business environment like an office. The simplicity and the elegance of the product blend harmoniously without creating unnecessary distractions to the occupants of the room yet with the right information always available thanks to the dot matrix LEDs.

Specifications

• Temperature
• Relative Humidity
• Carbon Dioxide (CO2)
• Chemicals (TVOCs)
• Fine Dust (PM2.5)
• Ambient Light (Lux)
• Ambient Noise (dBA)
• 8-hour battery backup
• Bluetooth 4.1.
• Wi-Fi connection 802.11 b/g/n @ 2.4GHz
  • Cellular (4G LTE) w/Gateway and Bracket bundle
  • LoRa w/Gateway
  • Ethernet w/Gateway and Bracket bundle
• USB-C Power Supply or Power over Ethernet (PoE) or Power over Electrical Wiring

For those who are familiar with Awair 2nd Edition/Element, the Omni is smaller yet mightier! Only 10x10x3.5cm or 3.85×3.85×1.35Inch. The placement of the sensors inside the device is also very clever and they take advantage of the airflow the PM sensor creates as it features a small fan.

Nowadays a green building certification is a must for businesses and buildings that want to offer the best conditions for the occupants. Awair Omni can support smarter energy usage and help you meet air quality monitoring requirements. It complies with the most common certifications from WELL V1, LEED, Fitwel, LBC, and RESET.

Awair Omni comes with a standard WiFi module that allows the deployment of up to 5 devices per router which is ideal for a small building or business. However, it supports up to 20+ devices when it is connected via LoRa but it requires a gateway. The benefit of deploying an IAQ monitoring system with LoRa is the coverage range as it can reach 1km line of sight or 5+ floors and 100,000+ square feet indoors. The gateway supports LTE connectivity in case there is no local internet available through Ethernet or WiFi. Another reason some companies choose this option is for security as they don’t want to add the AQM system to their local corporate network.

It doesn’t matter if the building has AC power sockets or not. Omni supports many power connectivities like the common USB-C but also power over Ethernet (PoE) and electrical wire. Sometimes you don’t want to have exposed cables like a USB-C cable in order to avoid accidents, for this reason, electrical wires under the wall are a safer way to connect the device to power.

The Omni uses good and reliable sensors. I correlated the measurements against another WELL/RESET certified monitor and the results were superb (see comparison below).

App & Dashboard

The free Awair Business app for iOS or Android has the same design language as the Home app but it focuses on visualizing the measurements across all the devices in a deployment at once. Very intuitive and easy-to-understand graphs. They have placed a clever button that helps you identify which monitor are you looking at because when you first setting up all the monitors and they all look alike you have a hard time distinguishing them.

The dashboard offers some extra features like floor planning, the ability to export the measurements, managing the devices and the API, but also weekly reports and alert customization. I really like the weekly report, I think providing data trends and actionable insights are essential when you build a dashboard for professionals. 

The Awair Display Mode allows users to display any information from the monitor to a big screen inside a bar, restaurant, office, school, etc. I liked the fact that you can edit the main screen at any time. Right now CO2 concentrations are very important but maybe in summer, the temperature inside a restaurant is important. I always suffer from high humidity here, hence the orange color!

My Experience

Once more, I am very familiar with the Awair products and I think that they have nailed with the Awair OMNI. I see that they have taken care of some details of the physical device others wouldn’t have bothered. For example, the 8h battery autonomy that will ensure that the data will not be lost when an unexpected power surge occurs is fantastic.

Awair is the only company that uses Bluetooth for the set up of a device and I am sure they do that just because it is the easiest way to add a new device to your local network without having to go back and forth between settings.

Technically and although it stores up to 10 days of 1-minute averages, I would prefer if it could store measurements internally for 6 months at least. Sometimes it is very important, especially for academics.

Conclusion

Many building certifications but one product that can help you meet air quality monitoring requirements and earn extra points. Awair OMNI is a well-thought product that has one aim, to help professionals see the air and address potential issues. Price-wise it is competitive. The monitors come with a one-time payment price and depending on the needs of the clients the company bundles them with one year of free access to the subscriptions Dashboard and API. Later you can choose if you want both or either of them.