FIELD

This invention relates generally to the monitoring and control of HVAC systems and/or for other systems for controlling household utilities, and/or resources. More particularly, embodiments of this invention relate to systems, methods and related computer program products for facilitating user-friendly installation and/or operation of a monitoring and control device such as a thermostat.

BACKGROUND

While substantial effort and attention continues toward the development of newer and more sustainable energy supplies, the conservation of energy by increased energy efficiency remains crucial to the world's energy future. According to an October 2010 report from the U.S. Department of Energy, heating and cooling account for 56% of the energy use in a typical U.S. home, making it the largest energy expense for most homes. Along with improvements in the physical plant associated with home heating and cooling (e.g., improved insulation, higher efficiency furnaces), substantial increases in energy efficiency can be achieved by better control and regulation of home heating and cooling equipment. By activating heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) equipment for judiciously selected time intervals and carefully chosen operating levels, substantial energy can be saved while at the same time keeping the living space suitably comfortable for its occupants.

Historically, however, most known HVAC thermostatic control systems have tended to fall into one of two opposing categories, neither of which is believed be optimal in most practical home environments. In a first category are many simple, non-programmable home thermostats, each typically consisting of a single mechanical or electrical dial for setting a desired temperature and a single HEAT-FAN-OFF-AC switch. While being easy to use for even the most unsophisticated occupant, any energy-saving control activity, such as adjusting the nighttime temperature or turning off all heating/cooling just before departing the home, must be performed manually by the user. As such, substantial energy-saving opportunities are often missed for all but the most vigilant users. Moreover, more advanced energy-saving settings are not provided, such as the ability to specify a custom temperature swing, i.e., the difference between the desired set temperature and actual current temperature (such as 1 to 3 degrees) required to trigger turn-on of the heating/cooling unit.

In a second category, on the other hand, are many programmable thermostats, which have become more prevalent in recent years in view of Energy Star (US) and TCO (Europe) standards, and which have progressed considerably in the number of different settings for an HVAC system that can be individually manipulated. Unfortunately, however, users are often intimidated by a dizzying array of switches and controls laid out in various configurations on the face of the thermostat or behind a panel door on the thermostat, and seldom adjust the manufacturer defaults to optimize their own energy usage. Thus, even though the installed programmable thermostats in a large number of homes are technologically capable of operating the HVAC equipment with energy-saving profiles, it is often the case that only the one-size-fits-all manufacturer default profiles are ever implemented in a large number of homes. Indeed, in an unfortunately large number of cases, a home user may permanently operate the unit in a “temporary” or “hold” mode, manually manipulating the displayed set temperature as if the unit were a simple, non-programmable thermostat. Thus, there is a need for a thermostat having an improved user interface that is simple, intuitive and easy to use such that the typical user is able to access many of the features such as programming energy-saving profiles.

At a more general level, because of the fact that human beings must inevitably be involved, there is a tension that arises between (i) the amount of energy-saving sophistication that can be offered by an HVAC control system, and (ii) the extent to which that energy-saving sophistication can be put to practical, everyday use in a large number of homes. Similar issues arise in the context of multi-unit apartment buildings, hotels, retail stores, office buildings, industrial buildings, and more generally any living space or work space having one or more HVAC systems.

Some attempts have been made to make programing of programmable thermostat more appealing to greater numbers of users. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,181,317 and 7,634,504 discuss methods for programming configuration information for thermostats wherein a series of interview questions are asked to a user. The user responses to the questions are stored and one or more schedule parameters can be modified based on the user responses. It is believed, however, that such approaches rely heavily or entirely on the user's answers, and as a result will be either wasteful of energy and/or unnecessarily subject the occupants to uncomfortable temperatures when people make mistakes when enter their responses to the questions.

U.S. Pat. No. 7,784,704 discusses a self-programmable thermostat that initially appears to function as an ordinary manual thermostat. The thermostat privately observes and learns a user's manual temperature setting habits and eventually programs itself accordingly. The thermostat looks for patterns, such as three similar manual overrides on consecutive days. Manual set point changes override current programmed set point temperatures. It is believed, however, that further improvement can be made in discussed method's ability to generate energy efficient program schedules.

SUMMARY

According to some embodiments a thermostat is described that includes: a housing; a ring-shaped user-interface component configured to track a rotational input motion from a user; a processing system disposed within the housing and coupled to the ring-shaped user interface component, the processing system being configured to be in operative communication with one or more temperature sensors for receiving ambient air temperature, the processing system further being configured to be in operative communication with an HVAC system control the HVAC system based at least in part on a comparison of the measured ambient temperature and a setpoint temperature, the processing system further being configured to identify a user's desire to immediately control the setpoint temperature value based on the tracked rotational input, the processing system still further being configured to automatically reset the setpoint temperature to a less energy-consuming temperature upon an ending of a predetermined time interval and to generate, a schedule for the thermostat based at least in part on repeated identifications of the user's desire to immediately control the setpoint temperature; and an electronic display coupled to the processing system and configured to display information representative of the identified setpoint temperature value.

According to some embodiments, the electronic display is disposed along a front face of the thermostat housing, the ring-shaped user interface component comprises a mechanically rotatable ring that substantially surrounds the electronic display and is further configured to be inwardly pressable by the user along a direction of an axis of rotation of the rotational input motion, and the mechanically rotatable ring and the housing are mutually configured such that said mechanically rotatable ring moves inwardly along said direction of said axis of rotation when inwardly pressed. According to some embodiments the thermostat housing is generally disk-like in shape with the front face thereof being circular, and wherein the mechanically rotatable ring is generally coincident with an outer lateral periphery of said disk-like shape.

According to some embodiments, the electronic display is further configured to display to a user a notification relating to the generating of the schedule. According to some embodiments in cases where two or more immediate control setpoint temperature changes are identified within a short time interval of less than 90 minutes, the generating of the schedule is based on a latest of the two or more identifications. According to some embodiments, the automatic resetting of the setpoint temperature is to a base setpoint temperature of lower than 68 degrees Fahrenheit at times when the HVAC system uses heating and to a base setpoint temperature of greater than 78 degrees Fahrenheit at time when the HVAC system uses cooling. According to some embodiments the generated schedule is automatically adopted as an active schedule for the programmable thermostat.

According to some embodiments, a method is described for generating a schedule for a programmable thermostat used for control of an HVAC system, the thermostat comprising a housing, a ring-shaped user interface component, a processing system, and an electronic display. The described method includes: accessing an ambient air temperature measured by one or more temperature sensors; detecting and tracking rotational movements of the ring-shaped user-interface component to track at least one rotational input motion of a user; identifying a first setpoint temperature value based on the tracked rotational input motion at a first point in time; controlling the HVAC system based at least in part on a comparison of the measured ambient air temperature and the first setpoint temperature value for a predetermined time interval; automatically resetting the first setpoint temperature upon the ending of the predetermined time interval; identifying a second setpoint temperature value based on the tracked rotational input motion at a second point in time; controlling the HVAC system based at least in part on a comparison of the measured ambient air temperature and the second setpoint temperature value for the predetermined time interval; automatically resetting the second set point temperature upon the ending of the predetermined time interval; generating with the processing system, a schedule for the programmable thermostat based at least in part on the first and second setpoints and the first and second points in time; and displaying information representative of the first and second identified setpoint temperature values on the electronic display.

According to some embodiments, the generated schedule is automatically adopted as an active schedule for the programmable thermostat. According to other embodiments the user is notified of the generated schedule; and user input is received as to whether or not to adopt the generated schedule as an active schedule.

According to some embodiments a thermostat is described that includes: a disk-like housing including a circular front face; an electronic display centrally disposed on the front face; an annular ring member disposed around the centrally disposed electronic display, said annular ring member and said housing being mutually configured such that (i) said annular ring member is rotatable around a front-to-back axis of the thermostat, and (ii) said annular ring member is inwardly pressable along a direction of the front-to back axis; a processing system disposed within the housing and coupled to the annular ring member; the processing system being configured and programmed to dynamically alter a setpoint temperature value based on a user rotation of the annular ring member; the processing system being further configured to be in operative communication with one or more temperature sensors for receiving an ambient air temperature, said processing system being still further configured to be in operative communication with an HVAC system to control the HVAC system based at least in part on a comparison of the measured ambient temperature and the setpoint temperature value; the processing system being still further configured to identify from the annular ring member user input relating to the user's preference regarding automatically generating a schedule and to determine therefrom whether or not to automatically adopt an automatically generated schedule. According to some embodiments, an audio output device is includes that is coupled to said processing system, the thermostat being configured to output synthesized audible ticks through said audio output device in correspondence with user rotation of said mechanically rotatable ring.

As used herein the term “HVAC” includes systems providing both heating and cooling, heating only, cooling only, as well as systems that provide other occupant comfort and/or conditioning functionality such as humidification, dehumidification and ventilation.

As used herein the term “residential” when referring to an HVAC system means a type of HVAC system that is suitable to heat, cool and/or otherwise condition the interior of a building that is primarily used as a single family dwelling. An example of a cooling system that would be considered residential would have a cooling capacity of less than about 5 tons of refrigeration (1 ton of refrigeration=12,000 Btu/h).

As used herein the term “light commercial” when referring to an HVAC system means a type of HVAC system that is suitable to heat, cool and/or otherwise condition the interior of a building that is primarily used for commercial purposes, but is of a size and construction that a residential HVAC system is considered suitable. An example of a cooling system that would be considered residential would have a cooling capacity of less than about 5 tons of refrigeration.

As used herein the term “thermostat” means a device or system for regulating parameters such as temperature and/or humidity within at least a part of an enclosure. The term “thermostat” may include a control unit for a heating and/or cooling system or a component part of a heater or air conditioner.

As used herein the term “immediate-control input” to a setpoint temperature refers to input from a user to immediately alter the currently active setpoint temperature. Thus an immediate-control input to a thermostat, also sometimes referred to as a “real time” setpoint entry, indicates a user's desire to make an immediate change in the currently setpoint temperature in an HVAC system being controlled by the thermostat. Immediate-control inputs can be made by users either by directly manually interfacing with the thermostat, or by using a remote user interface such as by using a mobile phone, tablet computer and/or web interface on a computer.

As used herein the term “schedule-change input” refers to input from a user or other source to modify a programmed schedule for setpoint changes. Thus a user's schedule-change input to a thermostat, also sometime referred to as a “non-real-time” setpoint entry or change, indicates the user's desire to make changes to one or more of the thermostat's programmed setpoints. In contrast to an immediate control input, where the user desires to immediately effect the currently active setpoint, a schedule-change input indicates a user's desire to make a change (for example temperature or time) to a setpoint that will become active in the future. As in the case of immediate-control inputs, users can make schedule-change inputs either by directly manually interfacing with the thermostat, or by using a remote user interface such as by using a mobile phone, tablet computer and/or web interface on a computer.

It will be appreciated that these systems and methods are novel, as are applications thereof and many of the components, systems, methods and algorithms employed and included therein. It should be appreciated that embodiments of the presently described inventive body of work can be implemented in numerous ways, including as processes, apparatuses, systems, devices, methods, computer readable media, computational algorithms, embedded or distributed software and/or as a combination thereof. Several illustrative embodiments are described below.

