Eve Room – Indoor air Quality Sensor to Moni

Much Improved IAQ Sensor!
In 2018, the second generation of Elgato’s Eve Room air quality sensor debuted, and some pretty big changes came with it too. The Eve Room sensor detects temperature, humidity and air quality; and is compatible with HomeKit, Apple’s home automation system. Although the temperature and humidity sensing capabilities have more or less remained the same, the Eve Room’s air quality sensor has received a substantial upgrade. Another huge upgrade is the way the Eve Room gets power.The first of the 3 most significant changes to the Eve Room is that is no longer guzzles AA batteries. Instead, it has a USB power cord and a rechargeable battery! Nice! The rechargeable battery will last for 6 weeks before it needs to be recharged, which is just about perfect. It gives us the convenience of AC power and at the same time portability if we need it. This addition alone might have been enough for me to buy the new Eve Room, but there is so much more.The new Eve Room 2nd Gen has a new volatile organic compound (VOC) sensor, the SGPC3 by Sensirion. Historically, the sensitivity of MEMS MOS gas sensors degrade over time, with a very significant drop after 2 years of use. The new Sensirion sensor’s sensitivity won’t degrade over time. That’s a pretty big technological advancement that adds quite a bit of value to the device. This ensures that the sensing capabilities of the Eve Room 2 will remain excellent throughout its ten year lifespan.The way the second gen Eve Room outputs its VOC data is improved too. The 1st gen Eve Room converted its VOC data into equivalent carbon dioxide (CO2) measurements, which is not really the best data to judge the quality of indoor air in a home or small space. The 2nd gen, however, outputs the pure TVOC data. As a result, VOC events are seen more accurately on the Eve app’s graphs as spikes that come and go quickly. VOC events are typically sudden and disappear just as suddenly. So, the 2nd gen Eve Room actually gives us a truer picture of what is going on in our homes, at least as far as VOCs are concerned. The air quality scale that the device uses is based on VOC research from Europe, who are currently ahead of the U.S. in VOC studies in the home. With the new scale also comes some additional recommendations such as exposure times for each level and “Hygenic ratings” which primarily have to do with comfort.The excellent Eve app on the iPhone has thankfully remained much the same. All the graphs, time comparisons, etc. are still all there. A++A change that I was thinking would be a big one but isn’t, is the new e-ink display. E-ink displays are found most commonly on e-readers such as the Nook. If you shine a light directly on it, you can see it. But it’s all but invisible from across the room. It just blends in with the shadows… which isn’t necessarily bad. If the display was lit, the device would stand out in the room. Because the e-ink display is unlit, and the new Eve Room’s size is much smaller, it blends in even better… which is a good thing. I know a lot of work went into designing the e-ink display, but I’m sad to say that if my Eve Room 2 was replaced with a version that didn’t have an e-ink display, I wouldn’t even notice.In general, I’m very happy with the new Eve Room. It’s definitely an upgrade from the earlier version. I like its smaller size and how it’s not as noticeable in the room, I love the power cord, and I am very happy with the VOC sensor upgrade. The decision to drop the estimated equivalent CO2 readings and settle on just measuring VOCs was a good one I think. Overall, it’s a great little device that I can highly recommend. If you’d like to read more, google techheroesinc blog and you’ll find a much more useful version of this review.

This is one of those products that does exactly what it promises it will. How refreshing!I would have liked a longer battery life between charges, but I’m ok plugging it in and running it with constant charging (but nice that it keeps working through our regular power outages).I would also appreciate if it was matter capable so that I could use it with other platforms like google home, but it is what they say. A HomeKit accessory first and foremost.Recommended.

So far its been quite a useful little device – I’ve got it sitting in my bedroom so I can monitor the humidity/temperature/air quality conveniently, and track overall trends. I haven’t run it against another tracker in any category to be able to detect how accurate it is, but I can say as a general trend that it does indeed register when devices are turned on that would adjust room conditions, and when my air purifier (Conway Mighty) detects poor air quality, so does the Eve – and the Eve usually detects it first.That being said I do have a few things I would note as a bit of a complaint about the device:The app design is, well, kind of shit. The Eve Room is part of the Eve smart device platform, so its app is a multipurpose focus. You open the device and it pulls up a general room list that it autopopulates (presumably from iOS home since it lists my Philips Hue). There is no way to see the data from the Room here, I need to click into the room at which point I can see the current stats of humidity/temperature/air quality, and then I have to click the actual device to get the trendlines. I would very much prefer to not have to click through two things I do not care about or interact with just to get the results of the only device that I do have.Similarly is the iOS Home integration: when you open the app you can see the current humidity, temperature, and air quality (with a descriptor like ‘Good’ instead of the star system or particulate measure). You cannot click this to get more detailed results, you explicitly can only get trends via opening aforementioned Eve app and clicking through. I would absolutely love to see it have more of a breakdown here, though honestly I would also honestly love for it to be able to communicate with the Google Home line, or abillity to export to a log file. If it had these (or even just Google Home conenctivity) I would think this to be an infinitely higher quality product.Thankfully it has seemed that the Eve Room is quite good at storing data over time. When I don’t check it regularly, the next time I refresh the app I can pull all missing data and break it down into hourly/daily/weekly measures without any problem. At the end of the day, if you want a HomeKit enabled environmental monitor, this is probably one of your best bets. Its small, the screen is clear, and it seems quite accurate – but I definitely wish it made better use of its connection, and I definitely wish it was better integrated.