Become a PlanetWatcher

September 29 AMA session with PlanetWatch CEO

September 29 AMA session with PlanetWatch CEO

In this article you will find the answers that our CEO, Claudio Parrinello, gave in the AMA session on the 29th of September.

Before answering your questions, let me first start with some announcements.

  • The Airqino September batch sales starts today and the emails to purchase the sensor are being sent out.
  • The Kaiterra September batch sales will start on the 5th of October.
  • Bitmart told me that they hope to be able to launch the PLANETS listing on their platform by the 18th of October.
  • Payments on www.planetwatch.us from Non-European PlanetWatchers are no longer processed via Paypal. You will be asked to pay via credit card and the transaction is processed by Stripe. This is temporary, because as soon as the token is available in the US, Canada and worldwide, payments will move into PLANETS-only settlements.

In the last few days it has emerged that our communication on some matters has been misunderstood by many people, so I have to take responsibility for the fact that the message was not clear enough. 

At the same time, I should say that some people have really gone over the top and used the word “lying”, referring to our communication, which I found completely inappropriate and unfair. To me, “lying” means deliberately hiding the truth and misleading somebody in order to gain some benefit. 

Now, let’s get into the misunderstanding. At the end of a session I will assign myself a very important task: publish and maintain a clear, exhaustive and continuously updated FAQs document. I will personally double-check every single answer. It is going to be very time consuming, but I need to be 100% sure that what you read is what I said.  

In order to clarify all matters, let’s start writing together these FAQs:

  1. What is the goal of PlanetWatch? 

PlanetWatch aims to become the global leader in environmental monitoring by building valuable data products based on crowdsourced data streams from approved sensors. Everything we say and do aims at achieving this goal.

  1. How can I contribute to PlanetWatch?

In order to stream data to PlanetWatch you basically need two things:  

a) a license 

b) an approved sensor.

  1. How can I get a license and an approved sensor?

Here comes a misunderstanding about whether or not approved sensors can be bought from third parties. 

Remember: our focus is data, so initially we did not really want to get involved with hardware. 

Here are two simple approaches to hardware:

  1. We build hardware, sell it, and you can only connect PlanetWatch hardware to our network.
  2. The other extreme – most of you are familiar with the Helium network. The Helium approach to hardware is: just provide a list of the Hotspot models that have been approved by the community and the Manufacturing Oversight Committee. They say: “Please do your own research as a vendor listing does not equal endorsement or recommendation.”

We could have taken this last approach, which would have made our life much easier.

On the other hand, not getting involved with hardware means that there is a risk that PlanetWatchers are unable to procure themselves sensors, or are exposed to sudden price increases, and so on.

For this reason, we felt that at least for some of the sensors of interest, we could make a service to the community by buying in bulk sensor lots, building our own stock and then reselling them to you in an orderly fashion, using licenses as a placeholder on a waiting list for our own hardware stock. 

Again, the spirit of this was to ensure that at least some sensors could be made available to the community at favourable prices and not get scooped by big players. Moreover, some devices such as Kaiterra Sensedge Mini, are not sold by the manufacturer to retail customers. They are sold by other entities, which may not always be reliable. 

So the spirit was making a service to the community, as reselling third-party hardware for us is more pain than gain. 

But we never said you can ONLY buy from us.

Think of Atmotube PRO: some people bought it from Atmotube, others bought it from us.

Bottomline: when we sell a sensor, please note that you can always choose to buy it from us or elsewhere. However, remember what I said about Kaiterra: when bought from us, you have a 2-year warranty and 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. If you buy your Kaiterra from another vendor, first of all you may not get a 2-year warranty. Moreover, if it turns out that the sensor needs recalibration maybe just two weeks after you activate it (perhaps because it is a refurbished device?), we will not cover these costs.

By the way, Kaiterra activations will start when we finish the delivery of the September batch. 

Summary: you can buy wherever you want, but not all vendors are equal. If you do not buy from us or from the manufacturer, you take a risk on warranty, calibration, performance, etc…

Here you can find PlanetWatchers’ questions to Claudio

What does a successful 2021 look like for PlanetWatch?

The first goal is to deliver as many sensors as possible to current license holders.

How much do you believe in your project?

100%. I am very excited about our progress, very sorry about all misunderstandings, and there are a lot of good things going on in the background which I cannot disclose yet.

Is it true that you sold 500 Airquinos to some companies?

I am just going to write another FAQ. Question: Do you also sell devices to companies? Answer: Yes, when this helps achieving our goal. The goal is to grow the network fast to make data relevant.

Can you tell if the new Type 2 sensor will be sold by PlanetWatch or by the manufacturer?

The safe answer for me at this point is: some certainly from PlanetWatch, but some devices might hit the market sooner or later via other channels (e.g. somebody buying from us and reselling at a premium), but…buyers beware! If you buy from us you get some warranties and conditions, if you buy from somebody else, just do your homework.

When will Kaiterra be shipped after payment?

The goal is to deliver it within 2 weeks from the emails being sent.

When is the second batch of Type 3 Sensedge mini? In November or December?

In November, if all goes well

I see in RESET’s data providers page that there are 16 sensor manufacturers (incl. Awair) – don’t they have sensors that meet PlanetWatch data quality requirements and thus speed up the sensor saturation?

Yes, in principle. However, onboarding a sensor to PlanetWatch has requirements beyond the hardware part. We need e.g. unlimited API access to the data. Some manufacturers allow that but there are additional costs involved, etc. RESET compliance is one of the requirements for a sensor to be onboarded as Type 3, but please do not assume a sensor is/will be onboarded until we officially say that it is onboarded and approved by us. 

Would it be possible, in the future, to buy all sensors through you (PW) instead of having to rely on external vendors?

In fact, we are looking to develop some hardware of our own for some use cases, but this is a big challenge.

What are the rules for interior sensors when it comes to hotels, schools, hospitals, etc…?

Rules are those stated in the White Paper. Tokens go to sensor owners. If they are corporates, they may want to swap tokens for planting trees, etc.

Why wasn’t there a communication to let us know when the Atmos were in the Amazon store? That’s disappointing.

Apologies, my mistake was not communicating the exact time. The page went live in the late morning (France time) and sensors got sold out very quickly.

When do you think Airqino will be certified for the rest of the world?

I got no feedback from the manufacturer for now.

Are there concrete plans to drop NFTs?

Yes, this is an area where we can and will reward early adopters, based on license purchase order.

Do sensors sold through B2B sales require a license? If so, are these licenses added to the totals on PlanetWatch’s licenses pages? 

B2B licenses are not accounted for on our website, as this is a dedicated sales channel for the community. On the other hand, the Explorer obviously shows all active sensors in the network, regardless of who the owner is.

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

4 thoughts on “September 29 AMA session with PlanetWatch CEO”

  1. How come my question was not answered?
    I added it well before 48hrs till he did it.

    Will I be on a wait list and be 1st notified when type 2 device is ready since I bought type 2 license?

  2. Why did you list the awair element as approved sensor when your app doesn’t even support it!

    1. Hi,
      The AWAIR Element integrations with our system is not yet completed.
      We’ll let you know how to set up the sensor with your license as soon as the integration is completed.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *