Awair Element contingency plan

In light of Awair’s decision to no longer provide Awair Element data streams to PlanetWatch under our current agreement as of April 1st 2022, we set up a contingency plan to enable Awair Element devices connected to PlanetWatch to continue streaming data to us and thus receiving rewards. Let’s dive into the implementation details.

For the time being, this plan unfortunately introduces some inconvenience, since we must ask you to actively send data from your Element sensor directly to PlanetWatch. That is the only means to be eligible for receiving rewards.

The good news is that you will be able to send data from all the Element devices linked to a PlanetWatch email account in an efficient way.

To prepare this plan, we discussed the situation with some community developers and identified people who were working on automation tools to send sensor data to smart home devices. One of these tools is being adapted to retrieve data from Element sensors and send it directly to PlanetWatch. This community tool has been published on GitHub:

• It is open source (GNU GPL v3.0);
• It is written in Typescript and it uses the React and Electron frameworks;
• It is compatible with Windows, macOS and Linux.

We reviewed the code and found no evidence of malicious software. As usual, we will be monitoring data integrity.

We are currently testing the tool’s performance in sending valid data to our endpoint. Tomorrow at the latest, we will enable the tool to retrieve data and send it to PlanetWatch’s system.

In the meantime, as anticipated, we are issuing a top-up bonus of 5.4 PLANETS/day (out of PlanetWatch’s own funds) for 5 days, starting from April 2nd, to cover the transition phase. 

Please note that this tool was developed by community members. Therefore, PlanetWatch cannot guarantee that it will work flawlessly and no further issues will arise. Enquiries related to the tool itself should be addressed to the developers on their Reddit post. 

Using such a tool is the first step in our long-term plan to address the situation. We are already working on the next step, keeping in mind both the community’s and the project’s best interests.  

So, what should I do?

As soon as you get an email from PlanetWatch notifying you that the tool is ready, you will need to download and install it on a PC (no need for a high-end machine). The PC must be permanently running the tool and it has to be connected to the Internet in order to transmit the data to PlanetWatch. 

Again, this tool will allow you to send data from all the Element devices linked to a PlanetWatch email account via a single PC.

We expect that the more experienced and tech savvy PlanetWatchers will adjust and improve this open source tool and develop alternative apps for low-energy consumption devices such as Raspberry Pi, Arduino, Microcomputers, Android, etc. A solution requiring no additional hardware may also emerge, so for now we would not recommend you to invest in additional hardware if you have a computer in your household that can be used to run the tool.

Beware that this community developed tool is set to retrieve data every 15 minutes, which will have no negative impact on rewards. 

Meanwhile, we encourage you to join our Telegram and Discord groups if you have not done so already to stay up to date with the latest news, meet fellow PlanetWatchers and chat.