PiCO: a smartphone powered air quality monitor that fits in the palm of your hand

January 24, 2018 Ivan Jovin Air quality, Crowdfunding, Health tracker 2 min read

PiCO: a smartphone powered air quality monitor that fits in the palm of your hand

Air pollution is the world’s single largest environmental health risk. Short-term exposure to unclean air can cause allergies, insomnia, headaches, fatigue and asthma. Long-term exposure has much more serious health effects. Major cities around the world have become frontline spaces in the fight against climate change and polluted air.

PiCO comes from a South Korean based outfit. For a few days in 2017, the country’s capital took the title of being the most polluted city in the world. Schools in Seoul were closed and people stayed indoors, not knowing that the air inside can often be more polluted than the air outside. And this is where Pico steps in. Its, what the company calls, the world’s smallest air quality monitoring device that instantly tells you what you’re breathing and what you can do to fix it.

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The portable air quality monitor packs some quality tech into a little box-shaped gadget. This includes a Laser Particle Sensor that measures how much light is scattered by particles in the air and a MEMS Metal-oxide Gas Sensor that picks up potentially harmful gases. PiCO sniffs out PM10 and PM2.5 fine dust, VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds), it measures carbon dioxide concentrations in the air and even tells you the current temperature and humidity.

Powered by your smartphone, you can take PiCO with you and it will keep you updated on the air you’re breathing. Alternatively, PiCO can connect to an external battery and link up with a smart device via Bluetooth. To give you a bigger picture on air quality. the smartphone app even taps into global AQI databases,.

The project is off to a healthy start, having raised more than $10,000 in just over 24 hours. Delivery is set for April, 2018.