Flair – HVAC 2.0

@bdash. I'm on it. I'll probably push out updates later today. Thanks!

@bdash Sorry for the delay; we had a whole bunch of meetings in the past few days. The video plays on Safari on OSX and iOS and IE on Windows. Thanks for reporting the issues :)!

Seebeck generator, I assume. Basically stick two different types of metals together and generate electricity when the temperature changes (i.e. every time the central air kicks on and off)

This.

HVAC controls most work as a team, otherwise they end up fighting each other.

As a simple example, picture an office building in which each room has a temperature sensor and air supply.

If a room says "Oh, it's hot here!" The system will try to send cooler air.

Now, imagine that in one of those rooms, there's a little lady who's a little cold. The system however, is in cooling mode, because the room is slightly warmer than the temperature setpoint.

The lady won't have it a decides to bring an electric heater. Now she is heating her room and feels more comfortable. From the point of view of the system, her room is much warmer than it should be. As a consequence, the system sends even more cooler air to her room.

The lady now has to crank up her electric heater to counteract this increase in cooler air...

100% agreed on mileage varying. We are building it to treat the on-time of the system as our cost function with requirements around satisfying temperature (and humidity) levels. We know that in some homes the return location, duct leakage and numerous other scenarios can cause efficiency gain impedements. But as long as we are tracking how much time the system is on for, respecting the blower motor (pressure sensors) and satisfying the user requirements for occupied (and unoccupied) rooms, we can at least gaurentee an improvement of 0 or greater %. In most cases, the gains are very substantive as the returns generally tend to be in larger open rooms or hallways. Tracking is a key component to our system.

yes. the prototype in the video is a fairly early physical form factor that is tailored to a popular vent size. Vent sizes come in a wide variety of form factors (shapes, sizes, materials and mount locations) and we are working on covering (pun intended) the more popular sizes for both floors, walls and ceilings. We have a few tricks up our sleeves around the form factor but (similar to our 'batterylessness' concept), we are keeping those close to our sides until we are a bit further along.

Why would floor vents be a problem? Existing, manual dampers in floor vents often have the moving parts recessed below floor level. The one extra issue might be increased chance of spilling liquids on the unit.

I'm not 100% clear on what you are describing but I'll take a stab. I think you are saying that in order to have a similar 'microzoning' concept, an alternative might be 3 Nests and 3 corresponding compressors.

As a retrofit (say, 1 compressor -> 3 compressors [would probably have to ditch the original], ducting changes and 2 additional nests [assuming you already have one]), I would say flair will be more economical. That being said, even if you had a 'large' home with 3 nests and 3 compressors, it is still going to have N rooms corresponding to a single thermostat hence opportunity for efficiency gains and comfort improvement.

while flair is a distributed thermostat, it builds on top of Nest in a complementary fashion rather than competing with it.

per room routing. Just knowing the temperature in multiple places doesn't give you anything actionable.

what version. I can try and reproduce

eeks, sorry about that.