Blog 1 - HVAC, Sensors and the future

When I look at sensor technology and how it will progress into the future, I imagine how important it will be for HVAC. Nests, for example, utilizes phone apps to change the temperature within a house while you are not home, and also utilizes location abilities to sense when a person arrives home and to change the indoor temperature. Moving into the future, it would be no surprise to me at least if Nest continues with more sensor technology to improve their system overall. While Nest is just one example of the use of sensors and HVAC, another interesting source that one company has decided to pull from are the vents in a house with central air. Keen Home has created a smart vent that can be preprogrammed to be open or closed during certain hours of the day, similar to the Nest. (1). These smart vents also come preprogrammed, which shows a move that Nest could not do. When the vent is assigned a specific location, it comes programmed given the estimated time the space is used. For example, if there is a home office, the Keen program will automatically estimate the vent should be open during typical working hours when one would spend the most amount of time. As stated in The Brilliant Air Vents You Never Knew You Needed, “..rather than compete with the Nests and Winks and Honeywells of the market, Keen is more like a new member of a relay team, carrying the baton forward.” The idea of the smart vent moves HVAC designs into the future with different technologies, but there is still much more that can be done to improve the use of systems going forward. It’s not just in smaller systems, such as the thermostat or vent that technology is moving towards the future. There are also programs that improved HVAC design. OpenStudio, is used to “support whole building energy modeling using EnergyPlus and advanced daylight analysis using Radiance” (2). With programs like OpenStudio out there that work to improve the design process and products like Nest and Keen that improve the efficiency in use continuously make moves towards the future of a more overall efficient design.

One of the largest pushes forward is getting rid of batteries in sensors so that there is no need for replacing. One article that talks about this brings up the idea of thermoelectric technology in many products, such as refrigerators, headphones, watches, etc. (3) In doing this, “charging” or repowering an item only has to be done in bolts or rarely, as opposed to batteries continuously being in use. Doing this allows products to be much more efficient and shows the steps that are happening to create a better (in some cases future) – but technology is also a fear many have.

(1)    “The Brilliant Air Vents You Never Knew You Needed” (January 14, 2015) https://www.wired.com/2015/01/brilliant-air-vents-never-knew-needed/

(2)    OpenStudio (November 25, 2015) https://www.openstudio.net/

(3)    “Here Comes the Thermoelectric Future: We Tried Out the Next Generation of Self-Powered Sensors” (January 4, 2019) https://www.cnet.com/news/thermoelectric-future-we-tried-out-the-next-generation-of-self-powered-sensors/

RESPONSES:

To Maalik – I agree how crazy it is the spending that occurs in automation and development is continuing to grow. While I specifically focused on household HVAC systems and sensors, your research into AI use brings to light a whole new level of futuristic designs.

To Hailey - I also use small technology regularly, such as my headphones, and I think it's fascinating how the technology improves and continues to get small. I also looked at the thermoelectric technology moving to the future, and in moving towards using thermoelectricity, I see that technology will be able to be used more often, and improved as well.