FilterWatch - A new beginning

Filter has launched a new crowdfunding effort on IndieGoGo. 

Our previous backers have kicked us off to a great start. These efforts are always marathons. There is a twist with this effort. We are involved in a contest sponsored by Philips and the winner gets $60,000 and 4 other campaigns will receive $10,000. To even be considered for one of the prizes, a campaign must get 100 backers AND reach 50% of their goal. The final vote comes from the employees at Philips.

Currently there are only 25 campaigns competing so chances are good for everyone.

This time around, we have paid for some promotion and will see if it works out. I have the "black hole" feeling at the moment because our Facebook Likes haven't moved up and I can't equate new backers to views of our campaign. Monday starts an email campaign to journalists. We are fortunate to have the experience and backers of the previous Kickstarter campaign and currently it is showing as we have the most backers and highest % of funds acquired.

Getting $10,000 without using that to pay for rewards is like getting $25000 through the campaign. Combine that with the $10,000 goal and you can see that we are close to the original $32000 we asked for on Kickstarter. Yes, we put some thought into this before launching here on IndieGoGo.

We reached $9,700+ previously and we understand some Kickstarter followers have reservations about IndieGoGo but hopefully they can see how a VICTORY lessons their risk significantly!

But who's going for $10,000?, we're shooting for the top prize.

So please tell your friends, your neighbors, your barber, your hairdresser, and let's build something that will make a difference in almost every home.  I would never have believed this previously, but in this case, even $1 makes a difference since at a minimum we first want to reach 100 backers and $5,000 in funds raised.....then we will shoot for the $10,000, then stretch goals, then the top prize......remember, it's a marathon!

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/filterwatch-breathe-easy-save-energy-save-money/x/3232319

John

FilterWatch - Something for Everyone

How important is it to change your filter when it is dirty?  Is $30 a month important to you, maybe not. What if I said you can have free WiFi in your home or save $30 a month on your electric bill? It's the same thing but the word 'free' probably caught your eye. Many of us can expect to save at least $30 per month because our filters should be changed every 15-20 days because we have kids, dogs, cats, blowing dust, smoke, carpets or just an absent mind. The longer you wait after your filter is 20% clogged, the more it is costing you.

What if I told you that your asthma and allergies are triggered by the dust, pollen and dander floating around your house and one of the best things you can do to prevent the triggers is to change your filters often. The dust shouldn't be floating, it should be captured by the filter. The other things you can do that are better, get rid of the cat and the carpets. 

At 76 and 72, the last thing my parents want to deal with is electronics. That was the thought behind FilterWatch Basic. A single button interface that when pushed says "start watching my filter and when it is clogged by 20%, flash a light and/or beep and please give me a different signal when my battery is low. Of course you don't have to be in your 70's to want a little less technology in your life for whatever reason.

The Basic version of FilterWatch has an immense potential of saving millions of dollars in energy costs at an extremely low cost. We of course would like to see 95% of all households with whole house filtration using one of these on every HVAC unit.

Even the most basic technology is often adopted only when higher end versions are first accepted. This is where FilterWatch Wireless comes in play. The thought of all the alerts in your life appearing on your phone as a notification is an inviting option for those of use who have our hands and minds spread out. It really serves as a way to 'organize' all of our life's notifications in one spot. 

Take that one step further and have those notifications come to you no matter where you are located. That's really what 'the Internet of Things' is all about. Since your phone (or tablet) is not in direct contact with the initiator of the notification, it must get the raw alert from your place in the Cloud.

These 2 last scenarios are captured with FilterWatch Wireless BT and FilterWatch Wireless ZigBee. These are both powerful options that go beyond simple alerts and enable advanced monitoring over time with 3rd party applications. FilterWatch Wireless ZigBee is a perfect compliment to your SmartThings, WigWag, or Almond+ home automation controller.

FilterWatch is made possible with the development of a low cost and very small air flow sensor. Many other applications exist where monitoring air flow changes over time can be used to determine looming maintenance issues, unwanted drafts, or just to have fun with another unique sensor. 

In our Kickstarter campaign, we offer a very low cast reward for the DIYers that like to create.

FilterWatch needs your support.

http://kck.st/16blXxK

Kickstarter - FilterWatch is cool but what can you think of?

When you get right down to it, FilterWatch is a product based on an air speed sensor. Almost all of our engineering effort has been directed at creating a low cost, low power air speed sensor. This entailed a lot of trial and error, routing considerations, and filtering. When we got where we needed, it was all about creating a long term monitor to watch the change in air speed through and HVAC filter as it got more and more clogged over time. Not as easy as it sounds considering we don't know when the HVAC system is ON. We determine that using air speed! 

So basically, the 'sensor' has all the information we need to create FilterWatch.

So with our new backers lowing down, we didn't want to leave any stone unturned. We decided to offer a sensor only reward for DIYers.

There are a lot of other ideas out there regarding how air speed changes can be used to determine possible maintenance issues around your home.

One of our backers would like  to monitor his dryer exhaust vent. This is a great idea that can be similar to FilterWatch or maybe it can be 'initiated'. In my case the best place to monitor my dryer vent is in the attic. This way, I catch clogging of the pipe all the way to the point that the air blows into the attic. I ran a quick test of drying times for a typical (albeit large) load. There is a significant difference when I vent the air right out the back (and into the laundry room) versus hooking the flexible hose to the pipe in the wall that goes up and into the attic. Something like a full 20 minutes extra drying time....whoa. This is killing me. My next house will have a short vent go right out the side of the house. 

What ideas do you have?

  

IoT - do standards Help or Hurt

The Internet of Things. Controlling your physical world from anywhere. 

Some of the most common examples of this would be controlling your house thermostat from your car on they way home. The thought is that as society changes, a controller that programs specific times to turn your HVAC system On and Off is too simple to handle the changing lifestyles.

Lights, cameras, temperature, and moisture sensors are other examples. 

What about the sensors that have yet to be created, what about the sensor that has the ability to generate more complex data that involves historic trends. Really smart sensors, that can't be classified as an alarm, or a simple piece of information.

My concern lies with the communication standards that are used to share the sensor information with the 'hub' that connects whole sensor network to the Internet. Those standards can never understand the future and therefore only a limited set of capabilities would be used from the smart sensor. Obviously if the hub and sensor manufacturers are the same or worked closely together, they would just 'make everything work'. 

Do smart sensor manufacturers or even the hub manufactures want to play that game?

As a smart sensor manufacturer, we feel like supporting a home automation standard like ZigBee will enhance the exposure of our sensor and all the benefits it can bring to a household but, it does limit some real capability.

Trending is one of those capabilities. Think about the Nest thermostat controller. It basically learns from data and a user can go online and and look at their data over a long period of time. Almost any sensor whose data can be related to the changing seasons, can bring valuable historic data that can be used to understand their surrounding and changing world.

An example:

FilterWatch has the ability to track the clogged percentage of an HVAC system. Suppose you gathered the clogged percentage once a day for a year. In that year, you had been changing your filter at 25% clogged.  You then decide to remove all carpets in your house and replace  them with wood floors. Changing the filters at 25% clogged resulted in 2 less filters per year. You look at the data for the second year and decide that changing at 20% clogged would add the 2 filters back in each year but your energy savings would be increased by 5%. This can be done because the total number of days between 20% and 25% can be used to make some simple calculations to determine estimated EXTRA run time.

This is where a simple transfer of a certain number of bytes comes in handy. Each byte position is a specific piece of information and a corresponding application understands the position.  A corresponding application picks up the bytes and handles the data however way they feel necessary to enhance  the the experience to the user.

This is where a Bluetooth Smart sensor connected directly to a mobile device and a corresponding application will excel over a system that incorporates standard communication protocols.

Cheers

Where's the pain?

Only 16 days or so left in our Kickstarter campaign for FilterWatch.

While support continues to trickle in, we are not close to our ultimate goal. The journey is incredibly interesting and we continue to search for the magic sauce that will push us to our goal. As a couple of technical guys, we gave away a lot of effort and dollars when we added support for ZigBee Wireless communication to some newer home automation controllers such as SmartThings, WigWag, and the Almond+ by Secufifi. That effort resulted in quite a few new backers in a short period of time. It was probably a wash financially because we gave away the wireless addition but we want backers numbers as much or even more than the dollars.   Consider the fact that adding a pre-certified ZigBee module adds $16 to the cost of each FilterWatch. You can quickly see that Kickstart US supporters did exactly that....they put the first dollars in the tip jar.  We have options, we can simply design our own wireless module and then pay for RF certification. This means we will shop and shop hard for certification services. Initial budgetary pricing comes in at around $8k (and only $4 in parts) if we can nail it the first time through and we do the paperwork (just for FCC). Ah, the decisions we make as boot strapping entrepreneurs.

Recently we had an in-depth review of our project by Subvert Magazine. This was something they started doing for some lucky applicant and it was totally free. Given that we can easily track funding efforts, you can see they they put their expertise on the line. If we make the changes they suggest and continue our typical efforts, they would hope to see a rise in backers. 

You can see that review here:  http://www.subvertmagazine.com/blog/winning-kickstarter-project/

After some intense research with a little help from backers, the 'pain' of poor indoor air quality and triggers of asthma and allergies is a real issue cause by poorly maintained HVAC air filters. It also turns out that your HVAC system is one of the best ways to clean your indoor. Adding room air filters adds to the cleaning efforts for serious asthma suffers but the larger benefit is from keeping your whole house filter (WHF) maintained properly.

You can read all about it here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3165134/#!po=68.7500

So for the final days left, we will focus our efforts on this message and see how far it takes....

John

ZigBee versus Bluetooth Smart a different point of view.

Since we introduced a ZigBee wireless version, a lot of interesting conversations have ensued including between Mike and I. Why ZigBee, why not Bluetooth?

Along they way I found another interesting and successful project on Kickstarter called the Almond+ that will support ZigBee. Its a router moving into the home automation space and it very low cost and open. I have since contacted them to get an understanding of what profile they intend to support.

Back to ZigBee and Bluetooth Smart (4.0, Low energy).

I'm not going to try and mention all the pros and cons of each wireless technology but I will focus on what decisions we as a device developer have to consider when deciding a direction.

One benefit of ZigBee is inter-operability between controllers if the controllers support the ZigBee Home Automation Public profile. This pretty much guarantees that ANY clogged filter device will work with a controller BUT ONLY IF THE DEVICE IS PUTTING DATA IN THE RIGHT/SAME CLUSTERS. for us, this means we are using the Generic Device simple sensor cluster to alert the user of a clogged filter.

How is this handled on the server side? That is a good question and one of the reasons we don't mind committing to open controllers such as SmartThings, WigWag, and the Almond+. As a GENERIC device, how does the server now what it means when a simple sensor is flagged? It doesn't unless it is 'told' what it means and can display it appropriately to the user. (This is a big deal when a someone like us come up with a NEW sensor).

ZigBee is also a mesh network. This means that we don't need to amplify our transmitter so that the controller can receive our signal. It only needs to get to another device that is acting as a router. This helps keep the cost down and the battery lasting longer. and at the same time increase the range of the device.

Speaking of networks, because the controllers that support ZigBee are connected to WiFi, the user has the ability to view and control the ZigBee network remotely from anywhere in the world (except maybe North Korea). This is an advantage for a lot of things like starting the AC up before you get home, turning light out, and security sensing but for a air filter monitor, it might be questionable.

The cost of the ZigBee device over the Bluetooth device is negligible. In fact, the nice thing for us is that it would be a drop in replacement, SAME PCB.

Bluetooth Smart

Bluetooth Smart has a lot of momentum fueled by mobile phones and tablets. Right now it can only be considered a local solution. That is, you need to be in proximity of the sensor to get the alert. Sounds almost useless considering the sensor will be giving you an audible and visual signal when the filter needs changing. (Unless you turned the signals off).

So are there ANY advantages to Bluetooth at this point in time?   Yes.....data.

Inevitably, even our seemingly simple sensor has a lot of data that can be made available to the user which could lead to the user configuring the device differently. We generate data but we also operate based on configuration data. This data is specific to our device and no standard in the world would ever conceive. So while standards are good for competition and inter-operability, it limits the functionality or capabilities that the device can provide.

A well designed sensor will have the ability to be re-flashed over the air and this ability seems to be thought out more carefully in the Bluetooth Smart Ready specifications.

To expose additional data to the user, a custom application would need to written for each platform and this of course means additional support.

Just remember, at some point all the bits and bytes need to be in a place know to the UI that is exposing it to the user.

Please support us at

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/333435704/filterwatch-low-cost-easy-to-use-air-filter-monito

Cheers John

What have we learned so far?

When Mike and I started this Kickstarter project, Our vision was simple, create a really valuable device that in our minds was a no-brainer. In value, we mean that the user will save a lot more money than the device cost them and it would be easy to use and only needed batteries once a year or even longer. That is still a vision of ours as we believe that the power companies should give the device away to their customers as there is a mutual benefit to everybody.

We were a bit short-sighted not to offer a wireless version(s). Sure we had already talked about it but for some reason we felt like a lower costing version would get our volumes up to where they need to be. We should have known, Kickstarter and crowd-funding is a forward thinking concept and it seems to reason that the people who use the site to back projects are forward thinking as well.

A lesson learned.

Well, we added a ZigBee wireless version to focus on a couple forward thinking home automation controllers that had huge success on Kickstarter (Smartthings, WigWag). It wasn't too much of a stretch given we have had some experience with low power wireless and our backers seemed to be receptive to a little longer delivery. These are cloud enabled devices as so you can get a notification to your mobile device as long as you have an Internet connection.

We will consider a stretch goal of a Bluetooth 4.0 version. It turns out that the RF radio we are considering has pin compatible version for both ZigBee and BT 4.0. More software is needed and hence to reach delivery goals, we would have to hire someone to get the mobile software written. A BT version is what we consider a LOCAL RF solution versus a cloud solution. Your watching TV and you get a notification that your filter needs changing.

WiFi is a little power hungry for our taste and so that solution will have to wait a while.

Hopefully all the confusion of adding a feature such as wireless AFTER the fact has been cleared up. I know it is a bit confusing to see all the rewards and wonder what you are getting but I can't change the text so I am left with creating new rewards and explaining to current backers what they are getting for their pledge.

I made it simple, early backers get the MAX device at whatever level they came in at. New backers will need to pledge $50 for that version and $25 for the BASIC version (the one we think the power companies should give out for free).

All you Smartthings and WigWag backers where are you!!!

Feel free to ask any questions or make any comments here...

John