Flow - the personal air pollution sensor
!! -- Looking for our free air quality forecasting app? Search for ‘Plume Air Report’ on the App Store or visit air.plumelabs.com. -- !!
*Escape pollution and dodge the smog!*
The Flow companion app from Plume Labs collects and analyses the data taken from your Flow’s PM2.5, PM10, NO2 and VOC sensors and gives you beautiful, easy-to-read reports, maps, and graphs.
*Ever feel trapped by air pollution?*
Air quality, AQI index, smog levels: with Flow, you can find the best clean air commute, hunt down fresh air playgrounds, eliminate chemical hotspots in your home, and that’s just the beginning.
*Did you know?*
Wind and weather, humidity and heat, atmospheric pressure, and many other factors create clean air pockets in urban environments. In fact, air pollution levels change up to 8X from street to street in the city, and even more from room to room indoors! Flow gives you the information you need to stay healthy at home or on the go.
*Stop guessing and start sensing!*
A new study from top researchers at King’s College in London shows that, with good data, you can reduce your exposure to air pollution by as much as 50% by making small changes to your routine.
***Key Features***
Track your personal pollution exposure with live data and daily reports: Flow measures real-time concentrations of PM2.5, PM10, NO2 and VOCs, as well as the AQI air quality level to give you everything you need to understand your exposure and build healthy routines.
Avoid the most polluted places: Flow tracks air pollution variations around you in real time, so you can find clean air.
Flow fits seamlessly into your daily life: Whether you're cycling, running, out in the park with the kids, or relaxing at home.
***Flow in the press***
“I hope many people living in polluted cities will end up using Flow.” —Techcrunch
What’s New
First! You got in on the ground floor with version 1. If you love your Flow and app, let us know with a review!
Category : Health & Fitness
Reviews (24)
This app is fine to look at, but very basic. It is fairly mediocre for data visualization - and hopeless when you want to try to look at long term trends. I find it a little buggy, but not too bad. When pairing, the app got stuck indicating no gps and no Bluetooth, even though both are enabled. It eventually recovered. Given that it has been over a year since the last update, it makes me wonder how well the company is maintaining it. It is a nice little product. Hope they stick around.
The app needs a lot of work. The device itself is excellent but the app lets it down. Here's why: 1. Buggy and currently GPS not working. 2. Inability to usefully see historical data. Perhaps a personal map with history. Data presented in a richer way such as charts of exposure. It's clear the company is using the data much more usefully than I am able. 3. Doesn't always stay connected to Bluetooth.
Really glad I got the Flow its a revelation as to how bad things are around where I live. I am a little confused by some of the readings I'm getting though with some "Very high" readings even when out walking in the countryside/forest away from heavy pollution sources!? Any Ideas? I'd really like to be able to download historical data so I can use it for analysis. What I'd like to see in the app is on-screen buttons to scroll through the graph data so I can record the data manually rather than have to try to maintain my finger on a spot on the graph while I try and write the data down using a pencil held in my mouth! ;-)
Needs improvement. None of the text boxes within the app seem to work. I can tap to select them and see the cursor, but it refuses to summon my keyboard, so I can't actually type anything. Also, I wish the data was a bit closer to real time, rather than needing to refresh or skip between menus before it updates to the current reading. The device itself I also can't recommend. The battery needs recharging multiple times per day, and the pollution is measured high regardless of the situation.
The app is certainly working, in that it links with the Flow device and measures pollutants. The results seem to make sense as well, with increase in particulates when cooking, and increases in NO2 when cycling through traffic. I'm only giving three stars just now though as the software is buggy. Crashes when trying to view up to date graphs for example. I'd also like more control over viewing the data and being able to map each individual pollutant separately. But both the app and device are brand new, so hoping for ongoing improvements.
The flow device is quite a remarkable innovative product, but it is doomed by a rather not so smart app. The following points could improve the app functionality compared to similar smart tech devices in the market: 1. The GPS and blluetooth sync is quite slow when on move or on a bike and sometimes the app fails to recognize that the device was in a "move" state even when connected with app running live. 2. No historical data available to review at a later stage. once the clock is past 12:01 AM all the data is lost and if one forgets to sync the data during a busy work day, we don't know what was the air quality. 3. A suggestion is to embed a mapping of geo-location with historical data which would make it a really smart app. This is only available in the form of summary at the end of day. This summary is also not stable with some bugs as I only see the summarized day report only few days in a week. 4. Comparatively, the plume air report app is quite good with the option of looking at both AQI and concentration values which the this app lacks. The developers should fix/implement some of the above issues so that the app match-up to a truly amazing device.
The app works well enough for looking at data from the current day, but checking past data is difficult, if not impossible. Fortunately you can export your data and DIY. Can't fully judge the accuracy of the device itself, but VOC and PM values behave as you'd expect them to, e.g. when cooking, or using hand sanitizer... The NO2 values on the other hand seem a bit random.
02.05.2021: Since about a week the history function stopped working. The app is still stuck on a gadget level; no real time data shown with real world values, which could be compared to local air pollution stations, just an "index" which is calculated based on some model. Announced feature updates like the transition of the AI algorithms from the app to the hardware itself did not seem to have happened. App development seems to be stuck.
Hardware (V2) seems good but the app needs work. Regularly fails to log moves or full moves when out and so shows pollution as being at home. Summary shows no GPS data even though Bluetooth and GPS indicators are lit up blue and I'm shown correctly on the map tab. App takes a long time to load and just shows the splash screen, sometimes for minutes. I suspect it is doing a network request at start-up, which is of course very bad practice. Graphs are hard to scrub accurately on a small screen.
Great to see this app. It looks good. It be great to be able to download the data and also to see graphs for days before the current. Also to graph by pollutant type. For example, I've noticed the much higher VOCs at home than elsewhere, but have no idea if the levels are problematic.
It doesn't allow you to see the map of your ride afterwards. When cycling I can't see the pollution on my route (obviously) and so the only way to get the data is download as an excel file which is not at all visual. I don't understand how it can map your wall or ride as it collects the data and can store your routes to compare pollution levels.
It is okay. Requires to have your Flow device constantly docked, as the battery is weaker than Tesco Tea and it is always in conflict with other Bluetooth devices. It must be an older version of Bluetooth, as 11 months has passed with missing data and Lockdown measurements are an indicated constant green, with nothing to compare with!
Without exporting the data there is no way to change the scale so you can see more detail or pull back and see long term trends. It would be good to put symptoms in so you could use some ai to correlate symptoms with pollution profiles and time of day even weather. The graph is displayed in elapsed hours since the app decided you wanted to be on a journey or in a spot making it difficult to see what time things happened. The most basic tasks you would want to perform you cant.
Great product, very useful. The only two things I would like to change are longer battery life and stop the humming from the Flow. I can't charge it next to my bed because the sound is annoying me. Apart from that a really innovative product.
App works well once battery optimisation is set to manual otherwise it stops syncing. Graphs are nice and an app history is decent enough. Being able to set alerts on levels would be nice. Minor niggle is that you can't get rid of the notification bar which only ever tells you it's syncing or not and so is pretty useless.
It needs some sensor. So giving 5 star, as I don't have. So uninstalling.
Following on from earlier review, as of recent app and/or firmware updates gps/maps no longer works properly (have checked gps functionality simultaneously whilst running another app and gps trace on that was perfect. Have also tried without anyother apps runnjng but no trace with flow...) Contacted support, and as many other reviewers have commented on, support is terrible. Can't recommend till they sort this important feature out.
Very flakey data drops give fragmented graphs. I am running BOTH Flow devices (sadly having to do this using separate phones). Something appears to be broken in data processing? I have been generally happy until recently. Just about to reinstall to see if that changes anything.
In general, the app has a work-in-progress feeling about it. Sometimes an empty screen appears when you click something. There's also a few minutes' lag before movements show up on the app.
Can't really comment on the app because either the app or the device has a fault and Bluetooth won't connect for more than a few seconds every few days. Support though I can rate, it's non existent. No response at all since the autoresponse raising the ticket - 5 days ago now! It's still within the 30 day return period too! Have they gone bust? Do no buy!
Have just updated my Google Pixel 3 XL phone to Android 12 Beta 1 and flow is not detected in app. Though it is detected by the phones Bluetooth. On Android 11 worked ok. So as far as I can tell it seems to be software issue. Other items like a Garmin watch and Bluetooth headphones work ok.
The concept is really interesting, and the new alerts were necessary a long time ago, great that you implemented it. Is it possible to have a notification or a widget that shows the air quality?
The Bluetooth sync is a lot better in the latest version, but the map views in the feed are not rendering. I just get a grey grid.
This app is literally lifesaving to me. I live in Illinois, evidently the nation's NO2 capital. I'm nearly 80 and have always been air gases sensitive. Illinois is a bad state for elderly and children, because it has an absolute veil of secrecy on any hourly NO2 readings. This means, that as long as the readings that they take have a AQI 100 or less, they (under the law) can tightly conceal this data. What I have found is that even if NO2 is currently the highest pollutant,they do this.