thermostat

Universal Electronics launches the UEI Comfort family of connected thermostats designed to simplify installation, daily use and ongoing support of climate control in residential, commercial and hospitality applications.  The first product in the UEI Comfort family will be available to OEMs in the second half of this year with a version designed for the hospitality industry to follow later in the year. These thermostats offer advanced capabilities in a compact design with a vibrant large color display that hosts an extremely intuitive graphical interface combined with supportive physical controls for quick access to common features.

ecobee maker of the ecobee smart thermostat, announced the launch of ecobee3 lite. The new device like the company’s flagship ecobee3; ecobee3 lite features a beautiful and easy-to-use touchscreen for a fraction of the price. Ecobee3 lite will integrate with Amazon Echo, Apple HomeKit, Samsung SmartThings and IFTTT. The ecobee3 lite comes with a new mobile application for Apple and Android devices.

Winter is just around the corner and you might be thinking of replacing your wood stove, which you have had for years.  Quadra-Fire has launched a new series of wood stoves that comes with a “programmable thermostat”, yes, you heard me correctly; a wood stove you can programme to manage the temperature of your living room.  The new Adventure Series wood stove collection makes heating controllable, more cost efficient, and simple to operate as a typical wall thermostat control.

Todo today, announced at CeBIT that they are partnering with IFTTT (If This Then That) to enable the use of the tado's geolocation feature for purposes other than smart heating or cooling. They are also offering developer and partner API for to further Tado's integration with other IoT and home appliances.

I don’t know if you knew but I didn’t see this coming, Google might send averts to us via our appliances. In a statement to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) they highlighted the possibility of serving ads and other contents via our refrigerators, car dashboards, thermostats, glasses, watches plus others.

Of the over 30 energy suppliers in the UK, for some time, only British Gas was offering a smart energy management platform as part of their energy services. Customer needing an energy management solution would have to do it independently or use British Gas Hive. Through a joint partnership with Nest, the smart thermostat company, nPower is offering their own smart energy management service to compete with British Gas.

The home automation market today receive a new entrant from Emerson, The Sensi is their first universal Wi-Fi Thermostat. The Sensi comes with its own App that allows you to control it from a smart phone, tablet or PC. Already a big name in the thermostat and HVAC controls industry Emerson said they want to tap into US $600M market. Emerson said the Sensi give you the added flexibility you cannot get from a standard programmable thermostat, in that it can adapt to your busy schedule.

Venstar has release new developer Application Programming Interface (API) for its ColorTouch Thermostats (Models T5800 and T5900). Now, developers can use ColorTouch's built-in API (in firmware updates 3.08 and newer) to create applications that will allow the thermostat to be controlled by third-party applications, including home automation companies.

I must say hearing that Google has bought Nest comes as no surprise to me, what surprise me is the fact that they are buying so many home related solutions and then we hear nothing after.  We waited with  bated breath when they buy these businesses and introduce new concepts and are left high and dry, because we see no change to the norm.

The lowly thermostat has come a long way from being just a little device tucked away somewhere in your home.  They have now become intelligent part of your home energy management solution to the point where you can automate your home atmospheric control. In recent months we have seen a number of thermostats (e.g. Tado and Nest) offering to make it easier to manage the temperature in your home and the energy you use.  The latest of these is the Honeywell Wi-Fi Thermostat.