Case study · Smart home web app · Macklos product
Pyrogel: heating that knows when the house is empty
Pyrogel controls an Atlantic ducted heating system from the iPhone, room by room, on a floor plan of the house. The app spots the residents’ phones on the Wi-Fi: when nobody is left, it turns the heating down; when the first person comes back, it brings the comfort back.
The idea
The manufacturer’s app controls the heating, but it does not know whether the house is occupied. Pyrogel adds what was missing: the heating follows the life of the house, without anyone having to think about it.
What the app does
- House modes: Home, Away, Remote work and Night, each with its own setpoint for every zone, for heating and for air conditioning.
- Presence: the residents’ iPhones are detected on the Wi-Fi; an empty house switches to Away, and the first return restores the planned mode.
- Scheduling: times for each day of the week, ignored while the house is empty.
- Floor plan: the ground floor and upstairs redrawn, each room coloured by its setpoint.
- Confirmed commands: a setpoint shows in grey until the heating has carried it out, then in blue.
How it is built
A small Python server runs on a Raspberry Pi plugged into the internet box. It talks to Atlantic’s Cozytouch online service and serves a web app that installs on the iPhone home screen. Credentials stay on the Raspberry Pi, and the app only answers on the home Wi-Fi.
Its mascot, an imaginary half-fire, half-ice creature, changes pose with the mode: laughing when someone is home, seen from behind when it guards the empty house.