The Veev Series: Climate Control

Veev’s Climate Control: Coordinated Work on Both Sides of the Atlantic

The Veev Digital Home is a comprehensive, integrated smart home system that is installed during the construction of your home. For the first time, homeowners can control lighting, air conditioning, and other smart devices through a single operating system instead of using a different solution for each smart device.

Temy built software for this smart home system, and climate control was one of the most challenging features to develop.

Climate Control in the Veev Digital Home

The Veev Digital Home has built-in, room-by-room climate control powered by energy-efficient electric HVAC units seamlessly integrated into the walls. This allows homeowners to independently control the temperature in each room rather than rely on a central HVAC system, which can result in uneven temperatures throughout the home.

Homeowners can easily manage the climate in their Veev home using the Veev app, in-wall touch panels, or voice commands through Alexa. They can set and program temperature preferences for different rooms and times of day, keeping the bedroom cooler at night and warming up the bathroom in the mornings.

The Technical Side

The VeevOS climate control system adapts to different homes using various thermostat adaptors and temperature sensors. These sensors gather temperature data and transmit it to the local hub, which then triggers the thermostats to adjust the temperature accordingly. However, some of Veev’s houses have air conditioners that combine sensor and thermostat functions.

The climate control devices communicate with the local hub through DMX controllers (thermostats) and the Z-Wave wireless protocol (temperature sensors) with the help of Z-Wave Hubitat Hub, a comprehensive smart home solution.

The control logic is written entirely in Java.

The Challenge Implementing Room-Based Climate Control

Initially, we implemented Veev’s climate control system following a whole-house approach. This allowed users to set the same temperature level for the entire home. This version was straightforward to implement and test, as it relied on a single, simple logic.
However, the whole-house approach lacked flexibility. To address this, we transitioned to a room-based climate control system, enabling different temperature configurations for individual house zones.
Implementing the logic for the room-based climate control was not a trivial task. The real challenge, however, was testing. This stage required perfectly coordinated work between teams on both sides of the Atlantic.
Before a perfectly synced climate control system was released, we needed to overcome the following challenges:

• Simulating sensor data. Since we couldn’t test the climate control feature on-site, our QA experts needed to simulate different scenarios by manually inputting sensor data into the system and observing the responses.
• Testing simultaneous inputs. With the room-based approach, we had to test the combination of different simultaneous inputs. A single input in time was not enough: we needed to send different data to different thermostats and observe the system’s response.
• Handling cooling-only rooms. Some rooms were configured for cooling only. When testing a scenario where the user set heating for the entire house, it was critical to ensure that the “cooling-only” rooms were not affected.
• Accommodating different climate control solution models. As a flexible smart home solution, the Veev Digital Home supports a range of thermostats and thermostat adapters. We needed to test all heating vs. cooling scenarios with multiple climate control device models.

Outcomes

Overall, the transition to a room-based climate control system presented significant challenges. However, meticulous planning, coordination, and thorough testing helped us successfully overcome them and deliver a perfectly calibrated system.

However, climate control is only one of many Veev Digital Home features. To fully understand how the system works, feel free to read our series of posts: 

• The Veev Series: How Temy Became Part of the Smart Home Revolution
• Veev’s Advanced Lighting Control: Uniting Diverse Lighting Fixtures into One Cohesive System
• Veev’s Humidity Control: The Easy Solution with Tricky Implementation
• Veev’s Doorlock/ Doorbell/ Shades Control: Transforming the Veev Digital Home into a Welcoming Fortress