Lume
Lume
Got Poop? Find out if you're drinking or swimming in contaminated water.
The Lume is the first single-unit fluorimetric sensor for continuous microbial contamination monitoring. Its integrated power and data transmission reduce deployment and maintenance costs while delivering higher sensitivity and accuracy than other sensors or traditional sampling methods.
Continuous, real-time microbial water quality monitoring — for the cost of a single grab sample.
The Virridy Lume: a sensitive, continuous, in-situ, remotely reporting tryptophan-like fluorescence sensor for semi-quantification of fecal contamination as E. coli.
Public health and pollution-response decisions depend on timely, spatially resolved information. Traditional culture-based sampling typically delivers results 24–48 hours after collection and is often too sparse to capture short-lived or localized contamination events. As a result, many contamination pulses remain undetected.
Lume directly measures tryptophan-like fluorescence and applies data-driven modeling to estimate microbial contamination risk in near real time. Each sensor operates autonomously and transmits data via cellular or satellite networks to a secure cloud platform, where results are available through dashboards and APIs.
For the cost of a single grab sample, Lume delivers thousands of in-situ microbial estimates.
Field and laboratory evaluations demonstrate that Lume provides reliable quantitative and categorical estimates of microbial contamination across environmentally relevant concentration ranges. Model-estimated E. coli concentrations closely align with laboratory reference methods over approximately three orders of magnitude.
Continuous microbial data allow organizations to move from reactive to proactive water quality management. By capturing rapid changes that occur between laboratory samples, Lume supports earlier detection of contamination events and more confident decision-making.
Detect contamination as it occurs
Support same-day recreational water advisories
Continuously screen source and receiving waters between lab analyses
Prioritize confirmatory sampling
Improve situational awareness during storms and infrastructure failures
Reduce uncertainty between sampling campaigns
Lume is deployed across a range of monitoring contexts, including drinking water source protection, wastewater discharge monitoring, and recreational water management.
Lume builds on peer-reviewed research and multi-site field validation to address the limitations of traditional microbial monitoring approaches. By combining optical sensing with adaptive data modeling, Lume maintains performance under changing environmental conditions where static thresholds and infrequent sampling fall short.
The Lume is a fully integrated, internet-connected (cellular and satellite) sensor solution. The sensor head measures tryptophan-like fluorescence, turbidity and temperature.
Sampling can be remotely programmed for between 30 seconds and 24 hours, and reporting between 5 minutes and several days. With 24-hour reporting, the battery will last up to a year on a single charge.
The sensor head can be cleaned with a hand-twist removal of the cover. The battery can be charged with solar or wall power. The antenna can be internal to the Lume, an external whip (as pictured) or on a wire.
The Lume has been validated for drinking water monitoring across chlorinated and unchlorinated supplies. Binary classification at regulatory thresholds of 1 and 10 CFU/100 mL yields 91–92% overall accuracy with Cohen's kappa of 0.82–0.84, indicating strong agreement between sensor and laboratory classifications with minimal bias toward either class. The sensor also detects chlorine residual presence with 85% accuracy.
The Lume algorithm has been developed and extensively validated against Colilert® E. coli in freshwater systems. The platform has also been successfully deployed in saline coastal environments, where regulatory compliance is based on enterococci. In these initial ocean deployments, Lume achieved over 76% categorical accuracy using just six training samples.
An array provides the temporal and spatial coverage that single grab samples cannot. By measuring every few minutes, arrays capture short-duration events—storm pulses, combined sewer overflows, irrigation returns—that a weekly schedule typically misses. Placing sensors to bracket reaches, confluences, and outfalls adds spatial resolution, allowing teams to localize hotspots and rank likely sources.
Bracket reaches, confluences, and outfalls
Localize hotspots and rank likely sources
Higher decision accuracy for advisories and source ID
Reduce routine logistics and lab spend
Rapid outcome verification of BMPs and repairs
Monitor chlorinated piped water and distributed systems
Interact with live sensor data or explore the water quality dashboard.