New Eve home air-quality monitor from Elgato uses ams gas sensor for accurate VOC measurements

Unterpremstaetten, Austria (27 July, 2015), ams AG (SIX: AMS), a leading provider of high performance sensors and analog ICs, today announced that Elgato (www.elgato.com) is using the ams AS-MLV-P2 MEMS VOC (volatile organic compound) gas sensor in its new Eve family of home monitoring devices.

The 9.1mm x 9.1mm x 4.5mm AS-MLV-P2 is a low-power gas sensor which measures levels of VOCs in the ambient air with unrivaled accuracy. It produces a precisely varying resistance in response to changes in ambient levels of pollutants commonly found in indoor environments.

In Elgato’s Eve Room, the measurements of VOC concentrations captured by the AS-MLV-P2 are converted into an indoor air-quality score. Eve Room also gives the user temperature and humidity readings.

Its design is sleek, unobtrusive and easy to configure and use. Highly power-efficient, it has no wired connections, using a low-power Bluetooth® Smart radio for communications and a replaceable battery for power. The low-power operation of the AS-MLV-P2 was therefore particularly attractive to the Elgato design engineering team.

Traditionally, gas sensors have been power-hungry devices, drawing a high current to supply their heated sensing element. The revolutionary micromachined design in the AS-MLV-P2 developed by ams achieves very high sensitivity to low concentrations of VOCs while consuming just 34mW in normal operation, making it ideal for battery-powered products such as Eve Room. The highly repeatable production process used to fabricate the surface-mount gas sensor also results in extremely stable operation over the lifetime of the end product.  

The AS-MLV-P2 directly measures ambient concentrations of a broad range of reducing gases associated with bad air quality such as alcohols, aldehydes, ketones, organic acids, amines, and aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons, which can be harmful to human and animal health at high levels. These VOC measurements provide a more useful measure of indoor air quality than the carbon dioxide sensors commonly used for air quality monitoring today, since CO₂ concentrations are strongly affected by the presence of human beings and animals, which exhale the gas.

In Eve Room, the AS-MLV-P2’s VOC measurements are displayed in the free Eve app, which runs on any compatible iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch device. Displaying attractive graphs and comparison charts, the app provides insights that help users to make their home environment healthier and more comfortable, while benefiting from the latest smart home automation technology.

‘Thanks to the VOC sensor from ams, Eve Room measures indoor pollution levels with great accuracy at the same time as featuring a user friendly and battery-powered design,‘ said Dr. Markus Fest, CEO of Elgato. ‘The technology and support provided by ams enabled Elgato to deliver one of the most advanced products built for Apple's HomeKit platform.’

The AS-MLV-P2 gas sensor is available now in production volumes. Unit pricing is $14.30 in order quantities of 1,000.

For samples and technical information, please visit AS-MLV-P2 or contact chemicalsensors@ams.com.