Dyson reinvents the electric fan for the digital age

SINGAPORE — The company founded by British tech innovator James Dyson is reinventing its bladeless electric fan for the digital age.

 Dyson’s bladeless fan, which it also calls “air multiplier,” was revolutionary (Gizmodo calls it mesmerizing) when it was first launched in 2009, but now the company is pairing it off with a smartphone app that would allow users to control it.

 The new fan in Dyson’s roster of innovative home appliances, the Dyson Pure Cool Link, is a two-in-one machine as it  now doubles up as an air purifier. Built with a sensor, it can detect air quality in its surroundings and work automatically to clean contaminated air.

Sarah Arts, PR manager of Dyson Southeast Asia, says the machine can filter a room of any size and does so at a rate of 30 minutes per 15 square meters. If you have a bigger room, it could take longer, or you can combine more machines for faster work.

 The technology behind the innovative fan – intelligent particle detection and auto purification – makes the device ideal for an experiment with connectivity.  Because the fan is connected to a mobile application, the user can control it remotely, can check the air quality at home, keep track of the purification process, and monitor changes in air quality over time.

 Arts says this is Dyson’s first foray into the connected home. “What we deliver here is a machine that allows automatic purification of indoor air. The smartphone is actually the extension of the fan,” she explains. “It is hardware that works better with software.”

Aside from rating the air quality – good, fair, or poor – the app also gives users information on the current room temperature and humidity rate. It can monitor multiple fans, if there is more than one in the home.

For now, it is only the Dyson Pure Cool Link that is connected to the app, but in Japan the company sells a robot vacuum cleaner (the Dyson 360 Eye launched last year) that is also connected to the app.

 “But in the years to come we will be able to add more and more Dyson devices to the app so you will have total control of your home environment. This is just the first step,” Arts says.

 Lean engineering

 For a machine that has dual function, power consumption is limited to 56 watts (a standard electric fan consumes  approximately 90 watts).

 Arts clarifies that it is not about being “green” or “eco-friendly,” it is more about lean engineering, “We believe in lean engineering or getting the most out of less materials,” she says. “Good engineering is lean engineering.”

 The bladeless fans that the company popularized is very safe for children and for use in the home environment. It is also approximately 75 percent quieter than traditional models because the technology behind the design managed to reduce turbulence and maximize the air flow rate.

Arts says for every liter of air that comes from the fan’s inlets, an additional 15 liters is drawn from the surroundings and blown out. That is why it is called an “air multiplier.”

The logic behind air purification at home, according to Dyson’s engineers, is that indoor air could actually be more polluted than outdoor air. Thus, if you think of the home as a safe haven for pollutants, you could be wrong. Think scented candles, cleaning solvents, deodorants and other common air pollutants like pollen from flowers.

The problem with  modern homes is that they are usually sealed for air conditioning and noise reduction.  Though the naked eye cannot see very tiny particle matters, these particles are nevertheless up in the air and could pose as health hazards.

The new Dyson Pure Cool Link purifier fan uses a 360 Glass HEPA filter, which captures 99.95 percent of ultra-fine allergens, odors and pollutants. Filter life can last up to 4,500 hours. On a standard usage of about 12 hours every day, Arts says it can last a year, after which the filter needs to be replaced. She says it is not meant to be cleaned at home as it can damage the filter and compromise its efficiency.

 Though it  is designed for home use, Arts reveals that the company is actually starting conversations with hospitals, particularly in respiratory wards where patients have lung sensitivity. “We are building a case study to fit them in hospitals and to see how they are received,” she says.

Designing for the connected home

A poster that hangs on the wall of Dyson’s office at Alexandra Technopark probably says it best: “Design is only truly beautiful when it works properly.”

 Dominic Mason, head of category for environmental cool, and a veteran member of the Dyson engineering team, explains that the company simply wants to make products that work better.

“The technology is what is so good about a product,” he says. “The challenge for us is to identify problems that other people ignore then we develop a technology to fix it.”

A brief timeline of Dyson’s history painted on the wall recounts that when James Dyson launched the first vacuum cleaner in the UK in 1993, it was the result of 5,127 prototypes built in a span of 15 years. Mason says the perseverance paid off. In 18 months, the vacuum cleaner became a bestseller.

“When we add connectivity to a product, we add it because we want it to have a tangible benefit,” he says of the company’s new thrust to design new products for  the digital age.

“We will not connect it because it is trendy, we want to make sure that there’s good benefit. In the case of purifiers, we want to make sure that the products can actually interact with the consumer,”  he  explains.