Eve Room sets itself apart by monitoring air quality. The ability to detect VOC’s is what sets it apart from other sensors on the market. What are VOC’s? It stands for volatile organic compounds. That is a mouthful isn’t it. When I first started this review, I was a little worried. I was worried, I may find some odd compound in my house that would lead to me having to tent it up and clear it out.
VOC’s are compounds that are all around us. They are released when we breath, perspire or digest food. They are also released from common items in our homes. These can be carpet, paint, furniture, printers, perfumes, cleaning products, tobacco smoke and I am sure there are a whole bunch of other sources.
What can VOC’s do? They can cause eye irritation, headaches, tiredness, dizziness, aches and pains. VOC’s have been known to cause a condition known as sick building syndrome. Traditional home sensors, while they detect smoke and CO2 are not on the hunt for levels of harmful VOC’s.
Eve Room is equipped with a MEMS sensor to measure VOC’s. It is the MEMS sensor ( Micro-Elector-Mechanical-Systems) that detects and measures VOC’s like alcohols, aldehydes, ketones, organic acids, amines as well as aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons. Typing VOC’s is one thing, saying them is a whole different story. You on your own there. The Sensor used in Eve Room is produced by AMS a German chemical sensor company. Elgato displays a link to their site should you want more information on the exact items measured.
I tracked it down and below is a table on the Various VOC gases measured by Eve Room. It also lists, common places that they come from.
VOC’s measured by Eve Room
After having the Eve Room monitor our air quality for a a couple weeks, I noticed something peculiar. I noticed that every once in a while there was a large spike in VOC’s in my house. The first time I saw this, I was really concerned. I was not sure what could have caused it.
I immediately looked through the Eve app, which gives you a detailed graph of your air quality. Is it good, fair, bad.. etc.. You can scroll back through its history and see the trends. I then noticed that there always seems to be a spike on Sunday evenings around 6pm. There were also spikes on a couple Saturday mornings.
When I open the Eve app, and I go to the living room and select the Eve Room sensor, I can see the air quality, temperature and humidity. The data displayed is clear and you have markers on the graphs to show the time of day. You can also look at the data, hourly, daily, or weekly. I scrolled thought the charts and noticed that when I had a spike in VOC’s the temperature was usually high as was the humidity.
