How Copeland's Sensi Touch 2 Thermostat Revolutionizes HVAC Installation - Tom, Randy & Ben Part 2
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All right, guys. So we have from Copeland, we got back for part two. We got Tom Lorenz. We have Randy Ruiz and we got Ben Reed as well. He's not from Copeland. He's just a colleague of HVAC Know It All. He does a lot of the website stuff, the newsletter stuff. If you guys follow along, you know Ben quite well. Anyway, this is part two of the...

equipment interface module from Copeland. So let's learn more about this technology and this device. This is the HVAC Know It All podcast. I'm your host, Gary McReady. This podcast is sponsored by Cintas. And if you're looking for blue collar uniforms or anything that's an accessory to a blue collar uniform, check out cintas.com forward slash HVAC Know It All for your blue collar uniform needs. Welcome to the HVAC Know It All podcast.

Recorded from a basement somewhere in Toronto, Canada. Your host and HVAC tech, Gary McCready, will take you on a deep dive into the industry discussing all things HVAC. From storytelling to technical discussion. Enjoy the show. So the setup of this and the customization, is this done like through an app on your phone? Since this is more application, we leave that in the thermostat itself. Oh, you leave it in the thermostat. Yep.

You can set, you know, circulating fan, schedule, different, some features, you know, more homeowner friendly features are in the app. But the setup, we want to make sure that, you know, someone doesn't like open their app and change their ventilation, you know, to dehumidification or something. Gotcha. Okay. That makes sense.

Ben, you wanted to jump in? Yeah. Well, along those lines, the IAQ controls is definitely of interest. We spent a lot of time on that at Haven. And what types of inputs is the system using to be able to make its decisions when controlling the accessories that are connected? Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it looks at temperature, the rate of change, temperature and humidity both. So, and then it does its calculations for the algorithms. And then, yeah, that's basically temp and humidity to make those decisions. With ventilation, is it still just temp and humidity as well? Or is it following best practices and setting kind of schedules that are appropriate for the particular scenario? Yes, yeah, yeah. So you can set...

you know, limits on your outdoor, you know, outdoor temperature when you don't want to ventilate. You can open up the ventilation when it's cooler outside and you want to like, we call it, you know, free, free air conditioning. Basically you open up the vent and let some cool air in. So yeah, you can set all that. It's,

whatever you can think of, you can set it up with the thermostat. Also related the, there are other parameters on the IQ side, such as a particulates or, uh, you know, chemicals or carbon dioxide that a lot of other solutions leverage to, you know, automate the indoor environments. Uh, and there are reasons why, um,

it could be a good idea or reasons why you might want to kind of stay away from using those as inputs into a control system. So I'd love it if you guys have any, you know, feedback or stories about why you made the decision to kind of stick with the control sequence that you have right now.

So when you start getting into particulates and all that, we use integrations with IAQ monitors. So we'll take those integrations into the Sensi thermostat and then, you know, they'll turn on like the circulating fan to run stuff through the filter. We just do the integrations there with the particulates. Who's who you integrated with, Tom? Yeah, we're integrated with Woosh and... AirThings possibly? Yeah.

AirThings is integrated with everyone. We'll integrate with everyone. Awesome. It's a good idea to integrate because if everybody's got a different IAQ monitor in their home, like I've got an AirThings and I've got a Haven because I just test things in my own house too. Integration is good when you can integrate with different products because your customers or the customers that contractors have might have an array of IAQ monitors

products to monitor. So if you can integrate with all of them, that's a benefit to Copeland for sure. So Randy, thoughts on that integration and what the process is to integrate with a company that's making a specific IAQ monitor. So on those types, it's mostly a cloud-to-cloud that we've done on some of those. We give them an API that they'll follow so that we can interpret their data.

It's pretty straightforward. Okay. So Ben, do you want to elaborate on that? If the audience is nerding out right now, like what, what does this mean if you want to go, you want to go deeper on it? Yeah, I guess just my, my questions would be is I guess the user interface for the, for the contractor. Cause what I found is that a lot of contractors are unfamiliar with like the

a lot of, you know, the, if you're setting up control sequences, it can be a little bit scary sometimes to be able to be like, oh, should I actually set

You know, this input from like, what's all these steps I have to connect? I have to get an API key or I need to push this button to be able to connect, you know, a whoosh into the system. And then from there, like, how do I know that it's going to be controlling the system properly? So what have you done to to, I guess, enhance that user interface so that the contractor who's setting this all up has the most intuitive and easy solution?

experience to configure this for the homeowner or the property owner? It's all set up through our high def thermostat display. So all the menus and that is, it's all through there. We do testings. What do we call that? Fitness of use testing with contractors just, you know, to make sure they can set it up. They understand it. It's super intuitive. It's a great experience for them. So we'll, we do testing before we even launched the project.

product with the channel with contractors and with technicians to make sure they can... I like how it's done on the thermostat because like you said, if your phone, you're sitting down watching TV and your phone opens up the app by accident and it starts...

changing things, it would kind of suck. So in contractors are used to sitting at the thermostat and playing with it. So it's almost more of like a natural transition to to a setup rather than having to download an app and then connect to the app and then go through it that way. So yeah, it seems simplified. So what is there any other features of this particular product? Like we talked about how it's wireless and how it only needs power.

where it can be used, how it's waterproof, all these things. Is there any sort of other advantages or any specifications you feel are important, Tom, Randy, that you can throw at us? I'll touch on one, the dual-fold capability of it. Okay.

Actually, the EIM has a built-in sensor. So if you're putting in a heat pump for your balance point, your switchover, it has a built-in sensor. So you don't have to wire in a sensor if you don't want. You just use the old built-in EIM.

And that would be the one that goes outside? Yes. Yep. Great. Perfect. If you want to, you can use that sensor that's already integrated and built into the EIM, or you can use our logic routine, our wireless outdoor sensor, or the internet, so your zip code. You can use all those as inputs for that balance point and aux lockout. I think the most sense would be to use the

temperature sensor in the module outdoors because it's the most accurate to like the surroundings of your home and area, right? Yeah, I think so. And it's the easiest already built in. You don't have to wire anything. And Randy, to nerd out a little bit about this is like what, I guess, did you have to do to make sure that the measurements from that sensor were accurate? Because when you embed a sensor into a

another product instead of it being a standalone one, there's a lot of variables that you have to take into consideration when engineering. So I think that I'd love to kind of hear from you, you know, what are some of the considerations that you had to think about during the design of integrating that feature? And then did you encounter any challenges during integration and field testing? So if you could share any of that, that'd be awesome.

I'd love to hear it. Yeah, so we do design thermostats, so we have to be pretty precise on how we measure temp. And like this one, the EIM, we chose parts to minimize heat generation in the device, right? So the relays we picked were latching relays. So they're not, when you're doing Y calls, W calls, you're not constantly generating heat inside that device and causing temp error. And then the location of the temp sensor

We put it in a place that has the most airflow or least susceptible to the heat that's generated inside the enclosure.

But from like a solar point of view, a solar heating, the color of the enclosure was picked to absorb as little solar heat as possible. Those are generally the big things that kill you. And then did you have to implement kind of a lot of compensation logic in there to then dial it in and also do a lot of, let's say, did you do any...

I guess, chamber testing where you're cycling up and down. And maybe if you did, maybe explain that for the audience. So for the EIM, you don't really need to be worried about ramping of temps like you would say a thermostat because you're mostly doing cutoffs and cut in temps, right, for your outdoor equipment. So you're not really looking for ramp rates and things like that that you would do for like a thermostat. You just need to be in that general vicinity.

So you don't need to be quite as precise for a thermostat. You just need to be true, right? You just need to be, are you near that, those 32, whatever your equipment needs to be for those cutoffs. Yeah, that makes sense. But we did tests in NEMA chambers and not so much a NEMA chamber because you're wanting to do extreme temps, more of a thermotron.

Yeah. But like just even paint the picture of like what that process looks like and what the chamber is like. So because a lot of people who don't live in the engineering world, they have no idea what you're talking about. So a NEMA chamber would represent how a house temperature would vary based on how you're cooling or heating it. So it's only going to be in that 60 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

A thermotron is going to go from the extremes of global Earth. It's going to go into negative 40 Fahrenheit to 130 Fahrenheit. And that's where we're going to test the EIM because it's going to be outside. We want to make sure that it's accurate over the temp that you're going to see in the real outside environment. So it's going to be in those sub-freezing temps of Alaska and the scorching temps of Arizona.

And it's an insulated chamber. You basically, you install the EIM in there and then there's some sophisticated controls and very well dialed in temperature and humidity sensors inside. And then over the course of days or weeks possibly is that the temperature is going up and down and up and down and up and down. And then that's how you, not just for this product, but for all of your products that

kind of fall into this similar range of controlling through temperature ratings, they all go through that process, right? Yeah. Yeah. So we're White Rogers, Sensi, we're the same, you know, company. We make ignition controls. We make outdoor controls. The EIM went through the same certification process like our defrost controls went through.

where we do cycle testing from negative 40 C to 80 C. And that's really just thermal shock it to make sure that none of the solder joints open, that your plastic doesn't warp, stuff like that.

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So I've worked in some, I haven't worked on a specific chamber for thermostats and stuff like that, but I used to work at a company here locally where they would, we were the contractor there and it was a massive wind tunnel and the temperatures, they could drive them from super low to super high. Like you said, based on global conditions, Randy, these, these were airplane sensors. These were some high end facilities.

testing airplane sensors in the hottest and coldest temperatures possible even wet dry because there was humidifiers and dehumidification involved in this too. And this thing was a big insulated chamber like you said so it was a pretty cool process to work on these and see how they actually tested these things. So I'm just envisioning this machinery when you describe it. It might look a little bit different but probably the same concept. Yeah it's more of a

It's nowhere near as a big wind tunnel that you see. Okay. Like a fridge. Yeah, it's like a fridge. Exactly. All right. Yeah, so that's what I was thinking of when you were explaining it because that's my experience with sensor testing. Okay, so I think we've covered quite a lot of this. Tom, you have any other questions?

Like, I mean, if we're going to leave contractors with one piece of advice on or a point that's positive to go with a wireless control over wired, I know we kind of touched on it because it's time. But is there anything else that your contractors are telling you that is just been a great thing to do this? And besides time savings, is there anything else?

that they've enjoyed while working with the product. Yeah. Yeah. So easy to install. I mean, it's, I gave it to the EIM to a contractor to install without an instruction sheet and made it happen. So yeah, we really, really focused on ease of install and that communication that wireless comm has to be robust and, and work every time. So it's, those are our two, you know, biggest features. And then the other thing I'm hearing is skew reduction. So it's,

it's not confusing. You have one EIM module that works with a Sensei Touch 2. So it's not just one module for indoor or for outdoor. And then my sales team always laughs at me about this one, but there's no button to press. Like Randy said, you just power up the EIM and you go to the thermostat and you connect it. So you don't have to rub it on steps inside and outside. It just connects. It's super easy. And then the other one I get laughed about is the wiring. So the

we have a little chamber area that once you tighten down that cover, those wires are covered up. That covers not popping off. It's one thing. It's not, there's not a whole lot of benefit. Probably no benefit to a homeowner other than maybe it's some, some cost savings on the install, but that clean install is super important. So it's, it just looks clean. So, yeah, I'm not a fan of wires. If, if I could have, if,

Maybe one day we'll have wireless electrical feeds in our homes. So we don't have to plug cords into, into a wall. I think Tesla was on to that. Tesla was on to that at one point. Right. Awesome. Okay. Randy, any closing thoughts? No, I'm good.

Awesome. Ben, closing thoughts? Yeah, I have one more question for Randy, which is related to, I guess, proving just how reliable the wireless is compared to, like a lot of contractors have bad tastes in their mouths from deploying wireless systems that just don't work that well. So,

What do you have to say to those kind of contractors to give them some faith that this product is going to work for them every time they try to install it? Yeah, let me give you a little history on the 915 megahertz protocol that we implemented. So back in 2019, we purchased the company, acquired a company called Verdant.

They're the real, they're inventors of the 915 megahertz protocol. We took it from them. So Verdant was in the hospitality industry for thermostats, remote sensors, their equipment. They've been using that technology for close to a decade. So it's not a technology that's brand new. It's been field proven. We just simply took it. We implemented it into the Sensi Touch 2.

And then we just started doing our robust testing to where we were stretching it out to see under different applications how far it would go and then comparing it to, let's be honest, the Redlink competition, right? That's the benchmark. And what we found is we compete just as well as they do, if not better. So when we did that, when we designed our thermostat and the EIM, we put a whole lot of attention to the antenna design.

How do we maximize the range out of this thing? How do we not get any minimize the losses? Right. And that's, that's where we spent a lot of our, our development time. Once we had that nailed down, we went to a third party specialist to design our antenna because we're not an RF expert, right? We, we went outside, we, we went to a company. They specifically gave us an intent. We told them what we wanted to do, right? We wanted to get the most range as possible.

They gave us an antenna design. We put that down on our board and that seemed to be the solve most of our problems. Right. And then when we started testing against Redlink, we saw we were watching our packets, seeing how many we were dropping between the receive and the sender. And when we were getting disconnects and comparing that to Redlink.

From what we could see, we were just as good, if not better. Nice. That's really challenging. Like all of those steps to verify the reliability of that type of wireless technology is just a huge undertaking. And I just, as you were talking, I quickly looked at the, I guess there's a website, verdant.copeland.com.

And it brought up a knowledge-based article about the 900 megahertz protocol. And this is like back from years ago. But it also looks like it's mesh. So that's something that we haven't touched on it at all yet. I'm sorry, Gary, but we do need to talk about this just briefly. That's okay, yeah. This is important because it actually impacts how somebody might deploy the technology in the house. So-

The Sensi world, we do not implement the mesh yet. Okay. Yet. That is because the peripheral devices, the EIM, the remote sensors are all peripheral. We don't, where we would want to mesh is if we were going from thermostat to thermostat. And there's not a use case yet to where we would want to use that yet.

it's it's like a three or more um kind of components yeah okay so this is like this is super nerding out stuff most of the the residential guys listening will be like listen just give me the thermostat in the module let me screw it to the unit and let me get on with my day right so but gary you brought it on you brought in an engineer i know product manager of iot products i know i know but i'm i'm just thinking what the audience is thinking what is this mesh i just want to

attach it to the wall and get on with my day yeah there's no mesh right now randy can no no mesh but but no it's it's good to dive into more technical sort of conversation once in a while and i like the fact that you guys did that so anyway i think we've covered everything on on this one we've gone for 40 minutes or so so are you guys are you guys good tom you got all everything you needed to get out on the product and and all that you're good yeah yeah okay great all

And Randy, you were good 10 minutes ago before Ben jumped in with the conversation about the mesh and all. No, but Ben, I'm glad you're here to probe the questions because these are questions that I don't know not being an expert in the field. So guys, thank you very much. I appreciate the conversation today. Thank you. Thanks, Gary. No problem.