A recent startup business that has been helped along the way
with funding from Kickstarter, has just launched a smartphone app that will allow the user to control their
home air conditioning unit remotely. They have also just signed up to a partnership with the Apple backed Homekit smart home product.
The company is called tado° (pronounced Tah-Doh) and it easily reached its initial Kickstarter target so that it could instigate the development of the air conditioning remote control app. tado°s owners have boasted about the fact that their product is compatible with more than a billion AC units in a number of countries across the globe.
The people behind tado are now forging ahead with plans to integrate their heating and cooling products with Apple’s HomeKit smart home product sometime later this year.
What is Apple HomeKit?
If you are unfamiliar with
HomeKit, it is the latest way to connect different home appliances to the World Wide Web. Apple are looking to release HomeKit alongside their latest iOS 8 operating system, and HomeKit has been designed to simplify the process of connecting many appliances and devices around the home to the internet. Eventually, it is hoped that most of the major appliances around the home will be controllable remotely, including heating, lighting and security as just a few examples.
Thanks to the ability to integrate with HomeKit, tado° users will be able to gain much more from tado° products if they also have an Apple device. It is hoped that this integration will allow users to control the temperature of their home or make sleep time changes by simply giving a voice command to Siri. In addition to which, the users of tado° will eventually be able to control a lot of other major devices around their home, just as soon as they become HomeKit compliant, which should be sooner rather than later.
“We believe in intelligent technology that is intuitive and automatically ensures that no energy is wasted,” says Christian Deilmann, founder and CEO at tado°.
How does tado° work?
Tado° works by allowing you to control your air conditioning unit by making use of your smartphone, just so long as the air conditioning unit has a remote control. It is the tado° wall plate that once installed, takes over the functions of the remote control, which also has the extra benefit of removing another remote control from everyday use.
Getting started with tado° is easy, and as soon as you have mounted the device to the wall, you will need to teach it to recognise the remote control that came with your air conditioning unit. As soon as you have completed that step, you just connect your smartphone to it via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. You then get to control the temperature remotely by simply using the tado° cooling app that you can download on to your smartphone, or by just using the capacitive surface of the wall mounted plate if you do not have your phone nearby.
It is also claimed by the manufacturers that by installing and using the tado° system, it is possible to save as much as 27% on energy bills, making it both economical and good for the environment.
More than just a Remote Control
The great thing about using tado° is that it doesn’t just turn your smartphone into a glorified remote control, it is also smart enough to detect when you leave the house, and it turns the air conditioning off as you leave. In addition to which, it will restart the air conditioning system when it detects you approaching your home, which is a great way to save energy, and in-built humidity sensor also allows the device to detect and control humidity levels when you are away from home as well.
The app, which is available on both Android and iOS is also able to give you useful reports relating to user behaviour and air conditioning activity, and of course, it will save you from trying to locate the remote for the air conditioner!
Availability
For those people who are interested in becoming a part of this game changing technological revolution, the tado° device is available to buy and although only available in white at the moment, other limited addition colours are going to be available soon. The only downside to tado° is the fact that you are left with no other option but to install the device yourself, so is something that is better in the hands of someone who is proficient in DIY.
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