Testing AirBird – an intelligent indoor climate sensor

Testing AirBird in a co-creation process as part of BLOXHUB’s Smart City Research Cluster.

AirBird is an intelligent indoor climate sensor that helps create healthy buildings by nudging behavioral change. It quickly detects poor indoor air quality and gives feedback via bird sounds or a soft glow to prompt you to adjust ventilation, heating, or cooling.

Combining Leapcraft’s sensor and hardware expertise, VELUX’ knowledge of a healthy indoor climate and GXN’s sleek geometrical design, AirBird is the result of a powerful collaboration.

Canary in a coalmine
The idea originated in the mind of VELUX Group’s Director of Sustainability & Architecture, Lone Feifer, who shared her first thoughts on the subject in a LinkedIn article ‘forget the coal, but get the canary back’ in the beginning of 2019. The title of the article is a reference to the fact that canaries were used for detecting carbon monoxide in British coal mines in the late 19^th century. With a highly sensitive nature, the canaries would quickly show signs of distress when the poisonous gas began to build up to dangerous levels. In the same spirit Airbird will quickly send a friendly warning if a poor indoor climate begins to affect your productivity, ability to learn or general sense of well-being.

In the following months the business collaboration was established and Realdania backed the testing of the idea in a co-creation process as part of BLOXHUB’s Smart City Research Cluster. The investigations into the use of AirBird in classroom settings are featured in Lara Anne Hale’s industrial postdoc project.

In the hands of GXN’s architects the canary’s battery-powered counterpart has been designed in a simple and elegant language taking its cue from Japanese origami. The little bird can perch on a shelf or be wall-mounted.

Read more about AirBird here:

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