Tag: air conditioner control

Article

Tado Smart Air-Conditioner Control in action

Tado Makes Your Dumb AC Smart | Tom’s Guide

Video

Previous Coverage

Tado Cooling brings the smart thermostat concept to the typical air conditioner

From the horse’s mouth

Tado

Smart AIr Conditioner Control

Product Page

To Buy

My Comments

Tado previously initiated a Kickstarter campaign to get the idea of a smart air-conditioner control device up and off the ground. Now this idea has successfully come to fruition and is available for regular sale.

The Tado Smart air-conditioner controller works with air-conditioners controlled by these devices

The device works like the newer smart thermostats but controls air-conditioners that are typically controlled by an infra-red remote control and adds network-based remote control along with the extras associated with it to these systems.

It answers a reality where there is a large number of these air-conditioners; whether in an integrated unit that installs through a wall or window, a portable unit or the more common ductless-split units; that are in service for a long time. Like with anything that is about maintaining comfort in the home, there is a resistance by most of us to substitute the existing unit unless it has broken down beyond repair or too uneconomical to use.

The Tado Smart Air-Conditioner controller is a white box with a white-LED dot-matrix display that serves as the user display. This has to be installed in line-of-sight of the air-conditioner unit because it substitutes the role of that remote control that the A/C depends on. As well, it connects to your home network (and Internet) via Wi-Fi wireless and also supports Bluetooth Smart for proximity detection.

As well, you install an app in your smartphone to turn it in to a control surface for this controller. But it is not just about setting your air-conditioner’s temperature, fan-speed and operating mode from your smartphone’s display but also about functionality like geo-fencing and IFTTT or HomeKit connectivity.

The geo-fencing, IFTTT and HomeKit functionality allow you to have the air-conditioner turned off when you actually leave or switch it on just before you get home so it is comfortable by the time you are there. As well, the Wi-Fi functionality that the Tado Smart A/C controller provides will also be a godsend to those of you who manage your holiday home or shopfront so you can get these places warm or cool by the time you arrive.

Tado are intending to release a multiple-AC function to this controller soon so as to to allow you to manage the growing reality of places with more than one air-conditioner. This will obviously handle the common situation where there is one unit per room but I would like to know whether this multiple-AC function can handle larger rooms heated or cooled by multiple air-conditioners.

What this shows is a Kickstarter project that satisfies a genuine need as is actually put to market in a real continual way. It is also about gaining more value out of existing equipment by enabling it for today’s expectations.

Articles

Beat the summer heat with the Monolyth smart AC unit | Digital Trends

Crowdfunding-Kampagne für selbstlernenden Klimaanlagen-Regler | Gizmodo.de (German language / Deutsche Sprache)

From the horse’s mouth

Monolyth

Product Page

Indiegogo crowdfunding page

Previous coverage

Tado Cooling brings the smart thermostat concept to the typical air conditioner

My Comments

This is how the typical room air-conditioner will be controlled

Another company has followed Tado’s lead in providing “smart-thermostat” and home-network capabilities to the existing room air conditioner. Here, we control a lot of the recently-installed, usually “split-system”, air conditioners using an infra-red remote control and this device, along with Tado’s device mimics the remote controls we use for these units.

Monolyth, who are seeking funding through the Indiegogo crowdfunding platform are providing this device which is a black obelisk box that links to your home network’s Wi-Fi segment to enable control from your mobile device or to benefit from various cloud services that it has. Here, you use your iOS or Android mobile device with the platform-specific app to control your air-conditioner and can use the mobile device’s GPS facility to have the AC unit off when you are away to save power or have it come on just before you arrive to get your premises comfortable by the time you are there.

The Monolyth air-conditioner controller works with air-conditioners controlled by these devices

Compared to its peers like the Tado, the Monolyth implements extra sensors to determine the comfort level such as barometric pressure, humidity and air-quality sensors. This also works along with learning weather-forecast data to optimise your air-conditioner’s behaviour to the prevailing weather situation.

Monolyth also promotes the concept of using the one app to manage systems on many properties as well as multiple air-conditioners on the one property as is becoming the typical case for most installations.

What I value of these devices is that manufacturers are adding a level of network-enabled smart-thermostat functionality to the existing installed base of air conditioners, thus allowing us to see the equipment serve us for a longer time. It also satisfies the reality that we don’t “dump” heating or air-conditioning equipment unless it totally fails or becomes hopelessly inefficient and would rather add functionality to the existing equipment using add-on kits.