If you live near our planet poles either near the north pole or south pole your region may experience seasons and effects of climate change. You have to buy a thermostat to control your room temperature. Have you thought about how it magically it adjust itself?
A thermostat is a system that uses sensors to sense the temperature of your room or your any desired physical system and helps to control and maintain temperature near your desired setpoint. They are used to heat or cool systems in water heaters, streambeds, HVAC systems, air conditioners, building heating, central heating, ovens, refrigerators, and scientific incubators. We have mechanical thermostat and electric thermostats. A mechanical thermostat uses a bimetallic strip in the form of coils to operate directly with electrical contacts to control the cooling or heating.
The early history of Thermostat.
Maybe the earliest thermostat was developed by Cornelis Drebbel a Dutch innovator around 1620. It used mercury to control the temperature of a chicks incubator. Andrew Ure the Scottish invented the modern bi-metallic thermostat in the 1830s. The early industrial application of thermostat was in poultry incubators to control and regulate temperatures.
The digital thermostat no longer uses moving parts to control the temperature but rely on semiconductor devices or thermistors. Its interest that for about 135 years, this HVAC automation control technology had been existing. You can imagine how old cooling systems were, furnaces operating in basements of building pumped hot air inside.
Modern Smart Thermostat
The technology has advanced for 135 years to recent smart thermostats which represent invention and innovation. Smart thermostats have characteristics such as they have vacation modes, connected to the internet, programmable and above all they must include computer algorithms.
How do AI and IoT come to play in this technology?
The IoT Sensors sends communicates with AI to send commands to your modern thermostat and control your room
The AI system needs a lot of data to run and make a decision precisely. IoT collects this data using sensors installed all-around your smart home. The AI cloud receives this data for analyzing and processing. The AI algorithms produce control commands which thermostat receives and helps it to control unit temperatures. The IoT sensors are an indication of how technology has affected the old automated room temperature control systems. This makes the old technology outdated. A smart thermostat has few sensors hence easier to predict using algorithms how much energy it will consume for a given period.
At first, this technology was trial and error but many companies tried to experiment with the technology and now the technology is real and here with us. Many companies are now thinking of thermostat because they will be more useful to provide comfort especially with the crisis of climate change and application of clean energy.
Google Nest Thermostat
Google is known to invest in AI, IoT and machine learning and their nest wifi enabled and responsive products are very common. “All of Google’s investments in machine learning and AI, they can very clearly benefit Nest products. It just makes sense to be developing them together.” Google’s Senior Vice President of Hardware explained.
Nest thermostat is one of their devices. It is one of thermostat out there which learn how your home behaves and adapt to it. You feed it with data manually and adjust it weekly. By doing this you are teaching it to learn for some time. The system also takes accurate data and communicates with HVAC devices using battery energy and AI making it adaptable and responsive hence consuming less energy. It also sends an alert when your battery dies, when there is the overconsumption of energy and when HVAC device fails.
We can be proud and happy with these devices and continue providing more information about them. They run on autopilot making temperature control automatic. They save energy, time, cost and helps you to focus on what matters.