Sunday, November 11, 2018

Smart thermostats research- existing products

After brainstorming my ideas I felt that the one I liked the most was the idea looking at saving energy within the home through collecting data from outside. I wanted to make sure that the product was not already existing and take inspiration from similar products. I did some research into smart thermostats to see what features they had.

Tado smart thermostat

This thermostat is based around tracking the owners location. It is able to detect when you leave the home and when you are retiring home. This allows for the home to be warm for when you return. this device does try to help save some energy as it allows for energy to be saved when no one is home, which i think is an effective tool. However it does not gather environmental data, what if when you are retiring the home is already at a good temperature and energy could be saved by not putting the heating on.

Hive active heating multi zone smart thermostat

This smart thermostat is very similar to the last. It is able to track when people and in the home or not  and control the heating that way. This one can also connect to water tanks to help heat the home which makes it different slightly from the last. Again is doesn't consider external environments when heating the home it only looked at people within the home.

Nest learning thermostat

This thermostat does different slightly from the ones before into that is claims to have a few more features. This one comes with an app allowing you to control your heating from anywhere and gives you information on how to save energy. The thermostat claim to learn your schedule and how you like the heating through the day, yet who can really say that they follow the same schedule everyday. I feel that this feature would actually not save you much energy at all and could mean that you are using energy when you do not want to be.

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