Eggstraordinary: Beijing Startup Origins Offers a Palm-Sized Solution to Affordable Air Quality Monitoring

This post is sponsored by Origins, a young technology company based in Beijing that develops cutting edge smart devices designed to help people build and sustain a healthy lifestyle.

Beijing’s air pollution is an expensive problem. The Chinese government has devoted tens of millions of renminbi to air quality monitoring, and the US government has spent USD 25,000 alone for the AQI reader at its Beijing embassy. But for the price of that single American sensor, an entire network of 300 of far more affordable sensors can be purchased, allowing Beijingers to track pollution in real time and know where they can go for a breath of fresh air.

That’s the notion being put forth by Liam Bates, the founder of Origins, a Beijing-based startup that sells highly sensitive air quality monitors for under RMB 400 each, and is readying a mobile app to be launched in early June that can show users the results of those readings. 

Dubbed the Laser Egg, this monitor shows AQI levels in the immediate vicinity. The palm-sized dome shaped device looks like an all-white miniature version of R2-D2, and virtually all aspects of design are similarly futuristic. The way it works, however, is brilliantly simple. A little gap at the top of its dome allows air to flow inside. Once the air enters the Egg it comes across an interior laser, causing that beam to refract in several different directions. A sensor rests under the laser, and the amount of refracted light hitting that reader, allows it to determine the size of the pollution particles in the air.

Bates says the most obvious application of such a device would be for people’s homes, allowing them to know when the AQI is high and prompting them to switch on their air purifiers. But he adds that the Laser Egg has further potential in far more ambitious areas. Chief among those initiatives is Origins’ forthcoming smartphone app, which will display the monitor’s readings, warning users of poor air quality and showing them the nearest location with cleaner air. 

For now, users can utilize that function by carrying the Laser Egg on their person, but Bates envisions a network where Laser Eggs are positioned in venues citywide, letting users receive air quality updates on their mobile app from the nearest placed monitor. He adds that such a function is extremely useful because air quality levels can vary wildly from place to place and fluctuate greatly from moment to moment, which is a much more complicated reality than what most Beijingers understand about the city’s air pollution. 

To demonstrate Bates switches on a Laser Egg at his courtyard office in Beixinqiao. The device gives an AQI reading of 1 on the Chinese scale and 4 on the American scale. He then flicks a lighter under a scrap of paper, and brings the tiny flame next to the monitor. The reading on its display screen immediately jumps from 4 to 330 on the American AQI scale, before settling at 490. 

He sums it up thusly: “On a day when the AQI is 700 outside it’s like breathing with this burning piece of paper next to your face.”

That realization surprised Bates, but what shocked him even more is how quickly and vastly air quality levels can change. Since founding Origins and working on the Laser Egg with his team, Bates has frequently corresponded with local municipal officials and even received funding from the Chaoyang government. Some of those officials described how easily their current monitor’s readings can be skewed. For instance the reader in Dongsi, the closest one to the Origins’ office, measures highly elevated levels daily between 6pm and midnight because of all the smoke billowing up from chuan’r vendors during those hours. 

“People laughed when officials threatened crackdowns on chuan’r, but it does make a difference,” Bates says. “And if barbecue is having that big of an impact, imagine how that compares to factories.”

Bates argues that if one monitor can be thrown off so easily, then a far more effective alternative would be a network of monitors pinpointing the specific source of pollution in real time, and also the areas where that pollution hasn’t reached. This, of course, saddles governments with a price problem, because of the conventionally hefty cost of such monitors – an issue that can be addressed by Origins’ more affordable Laser Eggs. 

This point became abundantly clear when Bates visited the Better Air Quality Conference in Sri Lanka last November. The annual event, organized by Clean Air Asia in conjunction with the World Bank and United Nation’s Environmental Program, is attended by officials from across Asia looking to brainstorm air pollution solutions. 

“These governments are pouring millions of dollars a year into pollution monitoring, and after my presentation, many of their officials came up saying: ‘Wow, we don’t need to be paying so much?’” explains Bates. “Low cost air quality monitoring is an entirely new field, and a lot of Asian countries are very interested in it. Despite air pollution being a huge problem in China we’re actually pretty lucky, because the monitoring here is better than in many Western countries. That helps the government know what the problem is, but having access to even more monitors will help us get more of the information we need to truly find a solution.”

Photos courtesy of Origins, Uni You