Technology Designed to Help You Breathe More Easily

Silicon Valley has been the leader in many things for decades, but rarely has the region's first place position been for something as undesirable as air quality. Following the record-setting disaster that has wiped out my one-time hometown of Paradise, Bay Area residents are choking on the resulting downwind smoke, seeking answers as to how unsafe it is, and how they can gain relief. And while I know that a week-plus of uncomfortable air is hardly the worst outcome of these climate change fueled infernos, it's something that needs to be addressed.

After last year's record-breaking California fire season that saw unthinkable damage burn through Napa county, I expected we would have bad air days this summer. Planning ahead, I bought two sleeves of N95 air filter masks from Amazon and stowed them in my garage for a not so rainy day. After a summer that saw fires rack up acreage, but air quality stay within range, I wondered if it was another foolish purchase just taking up space. But in the blink of an eye, with the Camp Fire in Butte County, the masks seemed inspired.

With the sun's eerie glow as a backdrop and smoke where fog or blue sky should be, I found myself at the Google campus, expecting to be the only one looking like I intended to rob a bank. But, while I was in the minority, contracted employees including security vendors and valets, who spend much of their day outside, wore them as part of uniform, and many of my colleagues showed up with them as well. By this week, it was rare to see a group of people walk by mask free, as estimates said sucking down Bay Area air was the equivalent of a dozen cigarettes a day.

As for those who took their masks off to smoke? Well. I admire your dedication.

Traffic to EPA sites on Friday, November 16. (via @googleanalytics)

As we all saw our skylines and views mucked by gray and brown bits of my past, area residents everywhere flocked online to sites like AirNow.gov and PurpleAir.com, marveling at how our Air Quality Index (AQI) levels were deep into the unhealthy range. So many people flooded the government's AirNow site that they had to reverse a heavy website revamp, and individual city pages were among the most trafficked government sites all week.

On Thursday, after a week of fashionable awkwardness with my mask, I made some quick buys from the Google bus, aimed to help our air quality at home and contribute our AQI to the crowdsourced data. My first purchase was a pair of Molekule air purifiers that promised to cleanse our dirty and polluted air at home. The second was for a PurpleAir sensor, so I'd know just when we should leave the house with masks, or if we should hole up indoors.

Luckily, b8ta had Molekule devices locally, and the company's general manager made a home delivery to my front step by Thursday evening. They'd promised free overnight shipping to California, but same day was beyond expectations. I set up one device downstairs and the second upstairs, and they've been plugging away at removing toxins from the air so my family can breathe easily. Unsurprisingly, it even comes with a spartan app, so I can move the filters from silent mode to most aggressive, remotely.

This morning, my PurpleAir sensor came.

Like Rachio's smart sprinkler system or the Nest outdoor cameras, these new Internet of Things devices come with the smallest set of instructions. Power them up, connect to Wifi and you're essentially on your way. It even came with a Nest branded power supply, which surprised me, but made immediate sense. With the minimal amount of effort, I registered my PurpleAir device and am now broadcasting the AQI from our house to the shared map.

There's no PurpleAir app (at least that I could find) which would make tracking AQI and our personal data easier, but the website works, and mobile site works well enough on my phone. Still seems like a minor oversight for 2018.

Clearly, the avalanche of attention toward hourly AQI levels and scramble for air filters is going to spike and fall with the latest wildfire or other pollution disaster. I may feel in the future that telling the world my air is just fine isn't world changing. But I've always been delighted in being able to see the data and make decisions. That's why Fitbit works. That's why Nest makes sense. That's why I went solar with Sunrun.

The tragedies that have hit California, and are nowhere near done, are going to have impact on families and our entire region for years to come. We should adapt to a world that acts on data and protects those things we can control.

Our Smartphones Have Surpassed Their Role as Computers In Our Pockets

The prevailing mantra holds that as our phones become increasingly smart and constantly connected, that we're walking around with the equivalent of computers in our pocket.

These intelligent devices can do practically everything their PC predecessors could, from email and web browsing to document sharing and creation, music and photos, and any application you can think of. In fact, I'd argue that we're not only seeing people spend more hours with their mobile devices than traditional PCs, they're more functional as well - as the smartphone has surpassed the PC. Ever try taking photos with your iMac? It's tough.

Now, instead of considering these phones and tablets as miniature computers, which are used to access our desktop content on the go, we're seeing the reverse take place. The smartphones are initiating the activity, and the desktop connects us to the results. Instead of many small computers in our pocket, our PCs are essentially larger versions of our phones - and we come to our Web browsers and desktop apps to pick up where our phones left off.

Rachio's Web site is as Functional as the App

Not too long ago, it was common to expect apps to be made for our smartphone platforms that were extensions of our Web experiences. These simple mobile apps were wrappers for our cloud-based data, or simply sucked down web pages and media, but didn't offer experiences that were enhanced by being mobile. It was just a mirror of what you could get on the desktop. However, as the app ecosystem exploded for iOS, Android and other platforms, coding for the smartphone became the primary destination and effort for new companies and ideas.

Automatic's Web dashboard leverages data from the mobile device.

You could see this evolution go in a a three step process, from "Mobile too" to "Mobile first" and in many cases now, "Mobile only." Mobile experiences can't just be a shadow of the desktop version, but instead are now carefully crafted to meet rigid design expectations, with a user experience that adapts for smaller screens, and gets better with understanding of the user's location data or other apps installed on the phone. We're spending more and more time inside of our mobile apps, which can be our primary messaging and sharing vehicle, our second screens while watching TV or using the desktop, or a constant companion - to the point we hold them in our hands as we walk everywhere, or put them out on the table in front of us wherever we may go, waiting for the next chirp to grab our attention.

Fitbit takes its data and makes smart charts and graphs on their site.

The natural evolution of this mobile first, mobile centric reality is that we're now no longer going to our phones to pick up where our desktops left off, but the reverse. And when I do end up in front of a full-sized keyboard and monitor, I'm clamoring for smart Web experiences in my browser that reflect activities that have happened on the phone. If it's a miss, I may end up closing my laptop and picking up my Nexus 5 instead.

For applications that are primarily experienced on mobile, seeing a strong Web interface that contains the same data as on mobile is a pleasant surprise. You can see this difference in the way Fitbit has worked hard to have a great Web experience to mirror mobile, while the Moves app does not. Automatic and Rachio have a workable Web experience to match their mobile version.

Managing the Nest thermostat via the Web - same as the app.

Not too long ago, trying to use the Web and get data on our phones was exasperating. We had subpar experiences, had to make excuses for short email replies, or say we'd get to something when back at the desktop. But now, often, when at the PC, you're pining for what's on the phone - even if you can send texts or make voice and video calls from the browser. It's delightful to see when the two are working in sync, and the desktop experience makes the phone experience better. As a user, I'd be delighted to see the front-end experience for the same shared back-end data become more in sync and know the devices are working well together for every service.

Disclosures: I work at Google, who is behind Android, owns Nest, and makes browsers and apps for desktop and mobile. I work on the Google Analytics team, which has a great web experience and mobile apps for Android and iOS. (The first version of this post incorrectly said Nest didn't have a strong Web interface. I was wrong.)

Rachio Users Save 10 Million Gallons of Water Amidst Drought

California, and much of the Western United States, is in the midst of an incredible drought. But despite the dire warnings to stop wasting water, most sprinkler systems are still pretty dumb, or are just too obtuse and challenging to operate, putting homeowners on the wrong side of conservation. Rachio, which makes a smart, good-looking system you can schedule with a mobile app, just told early users, myself included, that their combined efforts saved more than 10 million gallons - more than a drop in the bucket.

Rachio's Note to Customers Today Reports 10M+ Gallons Saved

Unfortunately, in our home, we know we're higher on the end of water consumption than we'd like to be. Our three kids need baths far too often, and we do our unfair share of laundry and dishwashing. But through heightened awareness of using less water, and our own switch to Rachio, we've been able to cut down our water usage forty percent year over year, and are down 60 percent from just two years ago.

We've dropped our water consumption 60+% in 2 years, and 40% year over year.

Like our move to Sunrun for solar energy, we'll never be perfect, but we're doing better for the environment, and for our wallet. In our bimonthly statement, by switching from a dumb sprinkler system to Rachio, we've already saved more than $100. Two to three more months of savings like that, and our Rachio has paid for itself, in addition to being easier to schedule and just plain looking better.

The Rachio App In Action for a Quick Drip

If you believe this drought is going to continue, or expect that sunny days are going to greatly exceed rainy ones for the near future, there's really two major moves you could adopt to take advantage of it. First, make energy from the sun that's hitting your house anyway, and second, stop using all that water. If you must use your sprinklers, do so sparingly, and overnight, when it's more likely to have impact and not evaporate. You won't catch ours running during the day and spilling into the gutter - thanks to Rachio.

Rachio's Smart Sprinkler Controller Brings Intelligence to the Yard

Most sprinkler systems are pretty dumb, or offer up a near-impossible menu of options with an indecipherable array of buttons, which serve to confuse - usually leading to one of two outcomes: you being the proud owner of a dead lawn, or being the idiot who left his sprinklers on in the rain. I haven't been happy with mine for a long time, but that's now all changed, with a system from Rachio, my latest move to make my home smarter and more connected.

Like my Nest thermostat and smoke detectors, Rachio converts a long-neglected but important part of the home, and gives it intelligence, tapping into the Web and putting the power of a data into a smart app on my phone. Now I know exactly how much my yard is getting watered, when the sprinklers will spring on next, and can make changes for seasonal adjustments.

The Rachio App Shows Weather, Next Water Cycle and Status

When we moved into our home four years ago, we inherited a well intended, but poorly implemented sprinkler system, offering three watering zones, and options to water each area on odd days or even, or by days on the calendar, with adjustments for time and percentage of the usual watering levels. I could tell it to run, or to be off, but I honestly couldn't tell you the number of times I'd expect the sprinklers to go on, but they wouldn't, or my wife or I would get lost in the menu. The sprinkler system was a mess best left ignored.

So this weekend, I took this beast of a device off my house, and, despite my lacking an electrical engineering degree, managed to put the $249 Rachio Iro system in place and running fairly quickly.

This Sprinkler System Had to Go

I was first encouraged to photograph my existing setup and label each wire before installing the Rachio system, as you can see above. This fallback also served as an escape route had things gone wrong, to go back and set things up as they were before and carry on with the mediocre status quo. But the instructions were pretty straight forward, and within minutes I was on my way to having a better looking and better behaving system.

The Rachio Iro Looks Like a Nest or iDevice (Image via Electric Imp)

Following the included diagram, I hooked up the wires to the Rachio system, plugged it in, and then used the Rachio app on my Nexus phone to enter an account, add my WiFi credentials, and then performed a "Blink Up" on the device - a feature that comes from Electric Imp, to send the WiFi data to the unit via the small photosensor in the bottom left of the unit. That was cool, and once I realized I had to do that without too much light behind me, the WiFi indicator on the Rachio flipped from red to green, and we were good to go.

With the unit set up, I now don't have to go back out to the side of the house to mess with the scheduling any more. Instead, I went into the app to name the watering zones, and could even go so deep as to say what type of zone they were, including whether it was grass, shrub or trees, the soil type, from topsoil to clay, the amount of shade, the slope and the type of sprinklers I've got.

You can get as detailed as you like, or just let the system run with its presets, which at the very least will get your yard watered exactly when you want it to.

With this move, I've been able to transform a complex set of pipes and wires to an app I can control anywhere. And just like I can use my phone or tablet to turn the heat on or off in my home with my Nest thermostat, or to manage my Sonos speakers, I can now turn the water on and off with the press of a button.

The foundation for Rachio's beginning was as simple as seeing a neighbor's sprinklers on in the rain. Here in California, where we're in yet another drought, and fines are being threatened for water wasters, bringing a smarter watering system makes even more sense. In fact, my scheduled watering times don't even start if more than a dab of precipitation is predicted for my zip code. So it's not only smarter and better financially, but like my move to solar energy with Sunrun, it's just a good idea for the environment.

Taking complexity out of products and making them delightful will always be a great idea, and the more old tech under assault by smart engineering, the better we'll all be. For a topic as boring as watering one's lawn, I'm pretty excited about this.

Disclosures: Nest (mentioned above) is a Google subsidiary. I work at Google. I've always paid full retail for my Nest products, and happily paid for my Sunrun, Sonos and Rachio equipment too.