RuuviTag Brings Sauna to Your Mobile

We Finns are known for our sauna culture. Saunas can be found everywhere in our Nordic country: city homes, country cottages, hotels, sports centres and gyms — even at the Finnish Parliament. It’s hardly surprising that it’s considered one of our favourite pastimes regardless of age, gender or social status. Heating a traditional sauna is almost like a ritual, a family tradition passed on from generation to generation.

Ruuvi, a Finnish technology company, created an environmental sensor that can be used where others fail due to high temperature and other challenges unique to saunas.

Ruuvi Station alerts you when the sauna is ready

It’s late Friday at the home office. You’re pushing through your last tasks when your phone suddenly vibrates in your pocket: it’s an alert notification from the Ruuvi Station app telling that the temperature inside your sauna has reached +75°C. It’s time to unwind and relax.

Using RuuviTags is that easy: install RuuviTag into a safe place inside a sauna, add the sensor in the Ruuvi Station app and configure a temperature alert — your brand new intelligent sauna experience. It has arrived on your mobile!

Unique environmental challenges – temperature and the beacon

Traditional saunas, such as the smoke sauna, can take hours of preparation before use and requires special care during the process. The dark black interior of the smoke sauna is created by the soot that burning wood releases inside the room. Soot is not dirt, though — it’s known to have antibacterial properties similar to charcoal. The lingering smoke aroma inside the smoke sauna makes it unmistakably unique.

But soot can spell trouble for a beacon sensor, wholly unprotected from the fine particles created through the burning process. RuuviTag is housed inside a protective case, which covers it from dust and other delicate particulate matter, and prevents the beacon sensor from getting into direct contact with water. The environmental sensor breathes through a special IP67 certified water-resistant vent sticker allowing the sensor to accurately measure the surrounding conditions.

Saunas aren’t precisely friendly places for electronic devices: temperatures can typically reach 70–100°C, and temporary humidity, as well as the possibility to get in direct contact with water, are genuine threats for any electronic components.

Using an environmental sensor inside a sauna requires careful planning, and choosing the right one for such challenging conditions can prove difficult. Finnish RuuviTag is an excellent choice due to its temperature range (up to +85°C, when fitted with an extended temperature range battery), as well as the humidity and water resistance provided by its unique enclosure.

Most popular types of Finnish saunas

A traditional sauna consists of a stove used to burn dry wood and a basket of rocks, where water is thrown to increase the humidity inside the room.

A smoke sauna (savusauna) is considered the original Finnish sauna experience, and it’s known to provide a soothing and soft heat with a light smoke aroma.

Another variation of wood-burning sauna, typically called a sauna with chimney (puusauna), uses a chimney on top of the stove to guide the released smoke outside the sauna room. The experience is comparable to the smoke sauna, minus the smoke aroma provided by burned wood.

The modern electric sauna, which is a sauna fitted with an electric stove, was initially invented in Finland in 1938, and it’s the popular choice in contemporary Finnish society: it’s easy to use. It can be fitted inside a city apartment with ease. Real sauna enthusiasts might claim that an electric sauna misses the authenticity of a traditional sauna. Still, hundreds of thousands of city-dwellers with their private saunas consider access to the sauna a luxury that the modern Finn profoundly appreciates.

Public and shared saunas provide access to anyone, and it’s also one of the rare places where stereotypically quiet and introverted Finns gather to socialise and relax.

Land of a thousand lakes…and million healthy saunas

European bathhouses and related traditions date back to 7000 BC. Although Finnish bathing habits are poorly documented in history, it’s believed that European bathing culture would have arrived in Finland around the same time. The Earliest written mentions and descriptions of sauna customs in the historical region were written by Nestor the Chronicler in 1112.

The age of Reformation and the arrival of Lutheranism shook Scandinavia around 1530. Although bathhouses were primarily destroyed in Europe during that time, and bathing became largely unpopular, the Scandinavian population continued to bathe.

Historically sauna has been a place that provided health and hygiene, shelter and relief from the cold, where children were born, and where the deceased was washed and prepared for burial. It’s not surprising that sauna has also found its way to Finnish folklore (Kalevala — Ilmarinen’s wedding) and art (Akseli Gallen-Kallela — In the Sauna). Sauna tradition is deeply rooted in the fabric of Finnish society.

In the modern-day, it has been estimated that there are over two million public and private saunas in Finland, for a population of 5.3 million.

Conclusion

Using a particular sensor beacon can upgrade your sauna to the next level.

RuuviTag is a highly user-friendly environmental sensor that can operate in an extended temperature range, such as typical sauna conditions. Its unique protective enclosure allows using the tag safely in traditional and modern saunas.

Click here to go to measurement use cases.