Aside from a well placed drip on the back of your neck as you walk under one at the perfectly wrong time, there’s probably very little an in-window air conditioner can do to shock or surprise you. Link this just released Tado to one though and any AC unit with a remote suddenly knows where you are and reacts accordingly.
"It’s a little device that connects to your AC via infrared and actually replaces the remote control. Then you have an app and it gets very intelligent with the app by turning the AC on once you approach your home so it’s nice and comfortable when you get there and when you leave the apartment it’ll auto off the AC so you save energy. So you don’t have to care about anything you don’t have to press a button you just have the app in your pocket and it’s really hassle free," says Leopold von Bismarck of Tado.
You can also control the AC through the Tado unit itself. Each Tado needs line of sight meaning one device can control several air conditioners if they’re in the same room. ACs in separate rooms each need their own Tado.
And what’s particularly exciting to home improvement experts, unlike other home automation thermostats like the Nest or those from Honeywell, this specifically targets a so-called, no offense here, “dumb” appliance an appliance that’s not terribly high tech.
“You know for some homeowners this wouldn’t make sense because they’ve already got central AC but for you know apartment dwellers, multi-family homes a lot of them have individual systems to this is going to be a huge impact I think," says Thomas Baker of This Old House Magazine.
And developers make two big savings claims on Tado, which incidentally is on sale now for $200. Claim number one, that this could help knock up to 40 percent off the average AC electricity bill and number two, if the company reaches its goal in NYC alone of selling 100,000 Tados in the first year, that could potentially cut up to 80,000 tons of CO2 emissions.