Will AirVision be a free upgrade for existing customers?

Effectively, yes. AirVision will be licensed in various forms, including a Site version (equivalent to Digi-Trend), a Basic Edition (equivalent to E-DAS Ambient), and an Enterprise Edition (equivalent to ATX). Any users with an active support agreement will receive full credit for their licenses (and any network licenses) and effectively receive the upgrade to the equivalent base license. Users upgrading will enjoy many of the user interface enhancements, such as Editor/Report Favorites and the enhanced editor.
To take full advantage of the new communication and processing capabilities, users may elect, on their own schedule, to upgrade their base communication driver license (for Model 8816/8832s) to Enhanced Driver packages, providing direct communication to analyzers, particulate samplers, webcams, etc. Other enhanced post-processing features such as the Automated Data Validation Processor will be similarly licensed as an add-on.

How about my existing data and configuration?

We offer data translation wizards to be part of the installation process. Our goal is to make the upgrade as painless as possible.

What if I have custom software for E-DAS?

Agilaire is endeavoring to put every current custom feature into the main software set. Your license key will identify your custom feature requirements and install them so as not to disrupt other customers’ menus with unnecessary features.

What database does AirVision use?

AirVision currently uses MS-SQL, so you have two options available to you:

  • License MS-SQL through Agilaire or your agency (SQL for Workgroups, 5 user, is about $700)
  • Use SQLExpress licensing at no charge (Digi-Trend versions will use this, small agencies can use this as well).

Using SQLExpress (current version 2008R2) will limit the active database to 10GB, which correlates to a year’s worth of minute data for a 100 parameter network. If you released your minute data on a more frequent basis (say, after 6 months), then you could have considerably more hourly data (30 more years). Similarly, if your agency had fewer parameters, your data retention would be longer as well. We consider it a suitable solution for DigiTrend sites and smaller agencies.
.NET? Will this be a web-based application?
Eventually it will offer web-based versions of all the reports, and some of the other tools like editors. Many users have already voiced concerns about MIIS and security, so the application will certainly note require MIIS to run (that would be bad). That will come later as an option available to you, using the more recent versions (4.0) of the cross-platform Silverlight environment.
I’m not ready to move- what happens to E-DAS Ambient?
Take your time– we expect agencies to take at least five years to make the transition, and we’ll probably have consultants and independent companies using E-DAS for another five years after that. We do plan to turn off the tap on enhancements in E-DAS once AirVision has an equivalent feature set, but we’ll be offering support for a long time.
What about CLAIRE?
Once we have AirVision well along, we do plan to do an overhaul of CLAIRE, including adding multi-language support (e.g., press 1 for English, 2 for Spanish, etc) for those who continue to use the Ambient software to update the CLAIRE system for now.