With the opening up of the consumer electricity market in Singapore, one of the hot topics amongst the colleagues had been which retailer to jump to once they are eligible to do so. Makes sense, since it is cost-savings that matter, who cares about loyalty? In any case, there are other ways of saving electricity other than changing retailer. One of which would be to monitor the usage of household appliances that consumes a lot of electricity. Oh, do you know that household appliances on standby mode (with red light on) is still consuming electricity?
Oh and then there is this smart home talk all these while as well. From Google Home to whatever nots, everyone is talking about controlling others, remotely. By others I mean household appliances lah. Sometimes I feel it is quite ridiculous to pay hundreds of dollars just to be able to come home to lights switching on by itself or maybe to be able to operate the coffee machine so that you always wake up to a nice hot cuppa. I mean, got hands to turn on the lights yourself right? And how much time does it take to make a cup of coffee in the morning leh?
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| Simple modernistic design, reminiscent of Apple products. Really environmentally-friendly packaging as well. Good job! |
Anyway we got acquainted with
Ambi Climate 2 recently and I was pretty intrigued with the ability to control the air-conditioner unit remotely. Hahaha, now I need not get up from the bed to grab the remote controller anymore because my phone is almost always by my side and I can switch off the air-con when the kiddos turn them on "illegally". So what exactly is the Ambi Climate 2 and what does it do? Let me try to break it down in simpler terms as I triy to understand it better as well.
The Device
Well it looks like a pretty sleek and futuristic piece of equipment to me. It would have been great if it was wireless, because I simply hate wires everywhere it the house. You need to place the device within the length of the cables provided, and ensure that the device is within IR communication range to your fan coil. Because it is supposed to take in the readings of your usual resting area, it will have to be placed near your bed lah.
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| I would have really preferred a wireless model, because I am still restricted by the location of my power point and the length of the power cord lor! |
Setting Up
Setup itself is really super straightforward. It is so simple that it takes only a few simple pictorial pages and setup time of less than 5mins to get it up and running. Most time was spent on downloading the Ambi Climate app lor! Once the device is connected to your home Wi-Fi, you are all good to go. With the app, you are actually communicating to the device through your home Wi-Fi and controlling your air-con through it.
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| Simple plug and play. Just need to download Ambi Climate App and follow the instructions. |
Smart Control
First off, there are 4 modes that you can choose from and I am currently using the Comfort Mode, which allowed me to give feedback to the device such as if I was feeling too warm or too cold. Once it received a few of these feedback, it will start to auto adjust the temperature to suit you!
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| Four different modes to choose from, with an "off" button too! |
The
Away Mode is something that I do not foresee myself using but it does allow one to set the threshold of your choice (heating, cooling or drying). So that the condition of your room will be set to what you want when you return. I am stingy and not anal about needing precise control, so I will probably just turn on the air-con just before I am back I guess.
If you know exactly what temperature you want the room to be, you can simply use the
Temperature Mode which will simply use the most efficient methods to cool your room down to the temperature you set.
Okay let's be honest here too. It is stupid to pay over $100 just to be able to control the fan-coil in my room from anywhere using my mobile phone isn't it? Because what one is really paying, is the AI behind the device that enables one to have better control of the temperature in the room. But then again if you want to use it this way, it's called the
Manual Mode.
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| Whatever you can do with your manual controller, is mirrored in the app. |
My Take
The air-conditioner is an essential for most of us here in tropical Singapore. So much so that you will realize that the little ones will even protest when brought out to non air-conditioned places. We usually use the air-conditioner at night and the kiddos will call and ask us if they would like to turn it on in the afternoons when they are back from school. Now with Ambi Climate app installed, I can remotely monitor the temperature of the room and even turn off the air-conditioner if required. But Ambi Climate definitely does more than that!
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| I can easily see the temperature fluctuations as well as the operating times of the air-conditioner. |
The device basically upgrades my controller with Artificial Intelligence such that it actually knows my preferred comfort and maintains it for me! I used to wake up in the middle of the night previously when the temperature gets too warm or too cold, because it is a static temperature I set using the manual controller. Now the A.I. monitors indoor humidity, changing weather, sunlight entering the room, and even the time of day for me and ensures that I will always be comfortable! The company even promises savings on electricity bills but I had not been using long enough to experience that.
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| The deployment shows you what the A.I. set, as well as when my kiddos meddled with the manual controller. |
However going by logic, if I had to set my temperature to the lowest possible and then put on my blankets before going to bed in the past, to the Machine Learning A.I. algorithms taking over planning the most optimum temperature for me these days, I reckon there would be some considerable savings for me in the months ahead. So yes, thumbs up to a smarter "home" from me! take over
