French company Netatmo is going full force this year. After their debut at CES 2013 and the launch of their personal weather station, the company just launched a new connected Thermostat for the home.
Built from a plexiglass block, the Thermostat was designed by Philippe Starck and strikes as a beautiful piece of hardware. The clean design of the Thermostat allows it to be used in any orientation with its auto-adjusting eink screen. There might be no physical buttons but there are plenty of ways to communicate with the device. The whole device acts a button when pressed on top or at the bottom to change temperature, but the physical interaction is the least of it.
Most likely you won’t be using the physical buttons on the device. The beauty of the Thermostat is that you can remote control it with your mobile devices or through the web-app. With a few setup questions the Thermostat will ask you about your daily schedule to get you jumpstarted with the device, creating a schedule to turn on/off your heating system. Afterwards you can always change the schedule or manually turn it on or off.
There is of course a potential huge amount of energy savings associated with this device. You can turn off your boiler when you are already at work, or turn it on before you actually arrive home, making the whole heating dynamic more fluid and suited to your needs.
The Thermostat is akin to the wildly successful Nest but there are some very important differences to take note. The Nest device is targeted to the USA market, in which the thermostat receives current from the boiler itself. In Europe things don’t exactly work that way, making the Nest device and all simliar setups useless in this market. Netatmo’s implementation is not only fully compatible with the European standard installations, but it also provides more flexibility of use. The Thermostat can be connected directly to the boiler, or it can be used wirelessly through the home, making it perfect to sit on top of the kitchen table.
Netatmo is providing a very elegant solution for a common problem. It is estimated that in France alone there are 14M homes that can benefit from this product, and 1 out of 3 French want to better control their heating system. It is undoubtedly a huge market with a great potential.
Netatmo releases a connected thermostat, a European 'Nest' with French Design http://t.co/KbZpRNO5Pm by @BrunoVazMoco
— Rude Baguette (@RudeBaguette) September 26, 2013
The Thermostat can be pre-ordered from mid-October and will ship in three weeks from now. Priced at 179€ (tax included) and considering the energy savings you can make with this product, the Thermostat is an instant want for the home, on top of it being a Starck designed product this is really a no brainer.