As far as Dipul Patel, Ecovent‘s CEO and co-founder, is concerned, home heating and air conditioning technology has been living in the Dark Ages. He compares the standard home HVAC (forced air) unit to an early automobile, before the dawn of speedometers and fuel-level indicators.
Patel likens his startup’s Ecovent home temperature control system to more recent advancements in car technology, like the check-engine light. “But in the future,” he says, “we’ll be able to add the whole dashboard [to heating and cooling controls]. We’ll know when it’s time to change air filters. We’ll eventually know when you’re getting ready to go to bed—because you’re brushing your teeth, or you’ve turned off the lights in the living room—and we’ll automatically adjust the temperature in all the rooms in your house.”
The lynchpin to Patel’s vision is not a Wi-Fi-connected thermostat (though that plays a role). It is the lowly duct vent.
Ecovent allows a homeowner to use an Ecovent smartphone app to set a desired temperature for each room. The Ecovent system consists of three pieces of hardware: a sensor module that plugs into a room’s wall outlet; an electronically controlled battery-powered vent that replaces each existing heating and air conditioning vent in the home; and the Ecovent hub, which communicates with both the wall-mounted sensor units and the special vents via a proprietary 915 MHz wireless protocol. The hub uses either its integrated Wi-Fi radio to communicate with a Google’s Nest thermostat or with Emerson Climate Technologies‘ Sensi home thermostat. The Ecovent solution will still work without being linked to the home’s thermostat, but not optimally, according to the company.
The module that plugs into a wall outlet includes temperature, humidity and pressure sensors. The vent includes temperature and pressure sensors, as well as an actuator that adjusts the vent’s damper, thereby changing the amount of air emitted by that vent.
To obtain accurate temperature readings, Patel says, the wall-mounted sensors are designed to compensate for the heat being generated by the module’s electric components. “If you don’t have good airflow,” he states, “the sensor creates a microclimate [from the heat being generated by the plug].” The plugs are thus designed in a manner that creates enough airflow through the module to thermodynamically pull air from the room into the plug, Patel explains, praising the know-how of Ecovent CTO Nick Lancaster, with whom he worked on Lockheed Martin‘s missile defense engineering team before launching Ecovent. “He’s like Morgan Freeman from the Batman movies,” he says. “He can make anything work.”
The hub collects the temperature, pressure and humidity data from the wall- and vent-mounted sensors in every room in order to determine each room’s temperature, and then decides how best to meet the homeowner’s desired temperature levels. It may do this merely by sending commands to open or close specific vents, but it also considers such variables as how much pressure this will generate within the ducting—the system is designed such that the hub will not cause pressure to build up in the ductwork, which can harm a furnace or air conditioner. Over time, the hub also factors in historical data, such as spikes or dips in a given room’s temperature that occur at roughly the same time each day, and that likely correlate with the position of the Sun or the use of kitchen appliances.
The hub is also designed to maximize the vents’ battery life. So it may determine that the best means for keeping the rooms at their desired temperature levels would be to adjust the home’s thermostat setting—either rather than or in addition to opening or closing the vents.
The Ecovent system, named “Automation Product of the Year” at CES 2015, has attracted more than $1 million in pre-orders. Ecovent announced this week that Emerson Climate Technologies, the heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems business arm of technology firm Emerson, led a $6.9 million Series A funding round. Venture firms Tamarisc and Blue Fog Capital were also named as investors.
Patel says the bulk of the funding will be put toward manufacturing the Ecovent hardware in order to fulfill pre-orders. He expects to begin shipping the products during the fourth quarter of this year.
Ecovent is not the only startup that is innovating the duct vent, however. Keen Home, a New York-based company launched by classmates at NYU’s Stern School of Business, sells electrically controlled vents that communicate with ZigBee-enabled smart home hubs and are adjustable through a smartphone app. Rather than requiring all vents throughout a home to be replaced, Keen vents are meant to be used only in rooms that tend to be underutilized or are only used during certain parts of the day. A temperature sensor is integrated into each Keen vent, as is a pressure sensor, which is used to ensure that a closed vent is not creating dangerously high pressure within the home’s ductwork.
Using the app, a homeowner can set a particular bedroom to be warmer or cooler than the rest of the house, or set a home office to be at 72 degrees from 9 AM to 5 PM and then at a warmer or cooler temperature (depending on the time of year) outside of “office hours.”
Keen is pre-selling its vents at its website for $77.50 each (it recommends four to eight vents for an average-sized home). It plans to make the vents available for pre-order through Amazon’s Launchpad, an online store for smart home products, soon. Keen says it plans to start shipping its products by early fall.
Ecovent is currently taking pre-orders for its system, which includes two wall-plug sensor modules, two vents and the hub, for $420 (for $490, a buyer also receives a Sensi thermostat).
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story stated that the Ecovent hub uses either its integrated ZigBee radio to communicate with Google’s Nest thermostat, or its integrated Wi-Fi radio to communicate with Emerson Climate Technologies Sensi home thermostat. In fact, it only uses its Wi-Fi radio. Patel explains that the ZigBee radio is not currently used, but may be in the future.