FlowerThermo

FlowerThermo

A modern thermostat, inspired by a blooming flower.

ORIGIN:

This project was created from start to finish in about a week. My intention was to submit it to the "renderweekly" contest on Instagram. The rules of the contest were to design and render a modern and minimalistic thermostat in less than a week. I have later decided not to submit my design and create more renders.

DESIGN:

The design of the thermostat is the product of brainstorming and experimentation in Autodesk Fusion 360. I aimed to create a design which is a combination of soft/organic shapes and more modern and geometric shapes. Combined in a way, so the soft/organic parts seamlessly flow into the geometric parts of design.

Very soon I decided there will be only one large button and a see-through display. This design decisions were made mostly because I thought it looked cool, but also the large button allows for greater ease of use, and the see-through display allows the thermostat to better merge with the rest of the room.

I wanted the button to have and organic and tactile design. With the rough idea in mind, and a bit of experimentation in Fusion 360 I came up with the rough shape of the button. The shape vaguely resembled that of a blooming flower. I further developed the design in that direction.

With the red brushed aluminium ring around the large button I separate the interactive section of the device from the non-interactive and bring more attention to the large button, and the flower like shape. At the same time the ring adds a bit more detail to the overall design.

FUNCTION:

The user interacts with the thermostat via the single large button. All the information is displayed on the see-through display. The main button can be pressed and turned. With these two motions it is possible to change the "active" room and set the temperature of the "active" room. The name of the "active" room is displayed at the top of the display, below it is the target temperature in that room, and at the bottom the current temperature in that room.

ACTIONS:

Changing the target temperature: User presses the button, releases, and then turns the button to the left if they wish to lower the target temperature or to the right if they wish to raise the target temperature.

Changing the active room: User presses the button, holds it, and simultaneously turns the button to change the active room.

More advanced settings of the thermostat,  such as the names of the rooms, their volume, number of available heating elements and their power, and other settings of more technical nature could be configured through an app on a smartphone or proprietary software on the computer. The connection between the thermostat or the app/software could be done via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. To prevent cyber-attacks on the thermostat and then the rest of the devices on the network, all connections must be encrypted.