thermostat

[landlessness]

Background

A thermostat controls the set point of heating and cooling devices. A thermostat typically has a thermometer bundled with it. A thermostat controls a furnace and an air conditioner so we could also include state information about when the furnace or air conditioner is actually running, which is a different dimension than if the thermostat is set to heat or cool. The Nest app actually displays the state of the HVAC device in the its UI. More to think about here.

Proposed Identifier

• thermostat

  Proposed States

• off
• on
• heating
• cooling

  Related States

• air conditioning is running (Nest turns the dial blue in this case)
• furnace is running (Nest turns the dial orange in this case)
• set point is a temperature in degree F or C. (Nest prominently displays the numbers)
• thermometer value (Nest displays current temp as a point on the dial)

  Prior Art

[rogerstrunk]

Wondering about what all info we want to show in the icon in the device list (temp, state, running) and if that might look different than what you see in the larger detail screen? If we are just keeping it simple and adding more info when you click in? Maybe that is something to be addressed in the visual design phase, and we are just figuring out the list views for this. Curious if you had anymore thinking on this one.

[rogerstrunk]

Also, when I did my first pass on icons for this, I included a "fan" state since a lot of systems can have just the fan/blower running without heat/cool.

[landlessness]

good question. probably worth an online meeting to bang through it. there are at least two issues here:

• composite devices
• high/low fidelity in list versus detailed view

a thermostat is actually a composite device: thermometer, fan actuator, heating actuator, cooling actuator, temperature set point and switch (on, off, cool).

plenty more to think about.