August 11 AMA session with PlanetWatch CEO

In this article you will find the answers that our CEO, Claudio Parrinello, gave in the AMA session on August 11.

First of all, let me remind you that if I do not answer your question, it’s probably because the answer is in the White Paper or in the post pinned in our Telegram Group, or it is a topic where mods can help. 

I will also make sure that an extensive FAQ list is published on the website.

Since last Saturday, a major DDOS attack took place against our website, with up to 30 millions of web requests per hour. We have now put in place strong countermeasures and we feel we are safe.

This was an attack on our website, it has nothing to do with the Algorand blockchain or PLANETS tokens as such.

A website is somehow like a house with a doorkeeper. Normally, strangers knock on the door, the doorkeeper shall check if those strangers are good people and let them in, one by one. A DDOS attack acts like paying thousands of people to knock on your door all at once. One doorkeeper cannot handle it, so you need many tough bouncers to help him manage the crowd! 

Our technical team have assessed the impact of the DDOS attack on lost streams. Compensation was issued.

Before answering your questions here are some announcements:

TYPE 1 SENSOR

• The July batch is shipping this week and 25 Airqinos are already shipped.
• The August batch, made of 200 sensors, should be up for sale before the end of the month to those on top of the waiting list and then shipped early in September
• There is a September batch: we secured at least 200 sensors to cover most of past license purchases. So the September batch is sold out.
• There is also an October batch: 72 sensors are allocated to previous purchases. But there are at least 200 sensors still available for this batch.

TYPE 3 SENSOR

We have secured a stock of at least 1000 sensors. Based on previous license sales, at least 250 are still available. 

Deliveries should be in September and October.

We will soon publish on the PlanetWatch Explorer a real-time stock info, for the sensors that we will sell on our website. 

TYPE 4 SENSOR

There will soon be a new Type 4 Indoor consumer-grade device. 

Hopefully I will be able to give you more details next week. 

I can anticipate that it will be a static indoor sensor, not RESET-certified and that’s why we classify it as a Type 4 device. 

Here you can find PlanetWatchers’ questions to Claudio

Why is there an annual license fee that has to be prepaid? Couldn’t an equivalent amount just be subtracted from earnings? Why sell multi-year licenses? What if the sensor breaks down earlier?

We want to boost PLANETS circulation and get people used to purchasing them on exchanges. Plus, we want to give more favourable conditions to people taking a multi-year commitment. 

Please, remember that licenses are transferable to other devices of the same type. This will be automated as soon as possible, but it can happen even now on demand, by opening a ticket, as I announced it. So, if your device breaks down before the license has expired, you can buy a new one and keep using your license.

When it is PlanetWatch selling the sensor, we provide a 2-year full warranty. During the warranty period, we will cover all shipping and repair costs for faulty sensors. This obviously excludes accidental damage, e.g. if your Airqino falls down from your balcony. 

During the PlanetWatch warranty period, if the sensor needs to be serviced, or replaced, you will also get PLANETS to cover the missed streams.

Here comes another announcement.

We will cover all calibration, cartridge replacement costs over each sensor’s lifetime whenever PlanetWatch decides such measures are necessary for Type 1 and Type 3 sensors, as long as they work. 

Will licensees be provided with a PlanetWatch notification when the license is about to expire? 

Yes, we will work on that.

Airquinos were already tested but for how long, where and under what conditions and what parts of the sensors needed to be changed/repaired/calibrated and after what time?

Airqinos were extensively tested and used even in extreme conditions, including at the North Pole, and generally speaking they delivered reliable, multi-year performance. 

In the next days, you will find, in the Type 1 license page, some scientific papers which leveraged Airqinos over the last few years.  

Will PlanetWatch bring back Type 2 sensors?

We should have prototypes in October. Hopefully on the market before the end of the year.

Where and when can I buy sensors from Canada?

From Canada you will be able to buy the Kaiterra Sensedge Mini as soon as we sell it from the PlanetWatch website.

You can also purchase the Type 4 (Atmotube PRO + new one) anywhere, as long as it is a trusted vendor.

Can you resubmit your listing for CoinMarketCap? I have emailed them to complain that they have not listed Planets….to move avail!

I will do it, thanks for pushing!

Can we get some info on possible water sensors? How is it going to work, on rivers, lakes, or home water systems?

It is in the RoadMap, however we feel it is best to build some critical mass on air quality first in order to achieve market validation. 

Unless we have a request from a large corporation or local government to monitor their waters. In that case we could accelerate the process.

Great progress with the new explorer, it needs more wallet info next. E.g. please can you add back the wallet rich list? Top 100 wallets would be useful for understanding how decentralised the project is becoming.

We will put it in our Technical Roadmap as soon as possible.

Claudio, you spoke a few AMAs ago about a referral programme. Is the programme still in the workings, if so could you give us an update on it?

Yes, it is, we are working on it.

Can you tell me which internet provider PlanetWatch uses to send data from the T1 sensor? Is this a local provider that is different for each country?

It is a global connectivity provider. 

We could give more information but, for security reasons, it is better not to get much into details.

How many pieces of Airqinos does EMRIT got so far? Does EMRIT have to buy licenses for the Types as the individual customers? If yes, does the counter count them?

EMRIT sensors connected to PlanetWatch follow the rules spelled out in the White Paper. To me it is all that matters.

When can I order a Type 1 sensor from Turkey?

We will check the regulations. 

How will PlanetWatch understand if people put the Airqino indoors and not outdoors?

I will not disclose details, but our algorithms can do it.

How are you going to show appreciation to the community and early supporters? What about some shuffles with an Airqino or some licenses? Or just a traditional airdrop, but based on the number of streams sent, not number of tokens held.

As I said several times, we are probably not going to use some popular tools which can potentially create compliance problems. We will see in the future.

Concerning indoor units are they able to detect the likes of mold/mildew and are they able to alert the homeowner if that is the case?

I feel it makes sense as of September that you will have my general AMA plus Tech AMA and Science AMA to answer this kind of questions.

When will be Type 1 and Type 2 sensors available for Australia?

Hopefully before the end of the year, as we are also looking to onboard additional, globally certified Type 1 sensors.

Now I have a few Atmotube PROs in different locations, but all of them are indoors. After I get my Airqino, I am planning to put it on my home roof. Is it possible to put two sensors of my own at one location and not reduce rewards? Also is this not against rules?

It’s not allowed to have multiple sensors from the same owner, breathing the same type of air all the time, because they do not add useful information.

That includes outdoors: you could not put Type 1 or Type 2 clusters in your garden. One Type 1 and one Type 2 sensors are ok.

Is there going to be a direct integration between Atmotube and Planetwatch at some point so the streams can be sent to PlanetWatch through Atmotube App directly?

We are discussing it, but it also depends on Atmotube.

In the Airqino specification they mention that the sensors only have 10-20% accuracy “out of the box” without any local scaling/calibration against reference.

All Airqinos delivered to you have been extensively calibrated in a laboratory, so they are accurate.

Hi Claudio, when could we have a PlanetWatch Roadmap?

Sorry, we are late. We are working on the Roadmap. We will deliver it as soon as possible.

Is our data anonymous if it is sold to third parties?

Yes, absolutely. Even from the map, if you zoom in, the Type 3 indoor sensors are no longer visible, you only know that in that pixel there is a PlanetWatch indoor sensor. We never disclose sensitive personal data.

The limits for Atmotube devices is two per person and one of the devices must travel a lot. Can you tell us what is acceptable and what is NOT? 

We are creating a new body of data, so it is best to take a pragmatic approach to this. If at some point our algorithms feel that one sensor is not adding value because it is too close to another, we will get in touch. 

We will not take action without talking to you and discussing together what is going on and what is reasonable.

My device has not worked since Wednesday and I have opened two support tickets and have not received a response. Are you doing anything to address PlanetWatch’s service availability and support response?

Tech tickets require a bit more time. We will strengthen the team.

My question is regarding what benefit Planet gets with the data that miners get? What do you use the data for? To which entity do you sell or intend to sell it? What is the project of this data? Thank you.

Have a look at our recent paper on indoor air quality monitoring. The name of the customer was obviously disclosed with their consent. Generally speaking, we are going to build “data produts”, by aggregating data from the PlanetWatch network. There are a number of data products which are of interest and lots of ways to segment all the information that we are collecting.

For example, we will be able to compare average air quality in households in Paris versus households in the UK. We will also be able to figure out, by asking additional questions to people who are willing to answer, how smoking in the house affects air quality over a typical day or week.

There are a number of very interesting analyses that can be done with this data, and it will alway be done in a 100% anonymous way.

Are you going to update the iOS app? If so, will the Atmotube Pro now work with it without losing revenue?

We are talking to Atmotube about this, to improve the user experience, but there are some elements which are structural to iOS, related to the background mode.

Keep watching our Planet and stay tuned for more announcements coming soon!