Australian-owned company ActronAir continued to push the boundaries at this year’s ARBS Exhibition, unveiling its standard-setting new control and user interface technology, QUE.
After two years in development, the colour touchscreen controls will be available in the final quarter of the year.
Customers will have access to the latest in control technology which allows users to easily operate their air conditioning units either from home or remotely from their smartphone or tablet device. And, though it’s a new release, it has already picked up the Australian Good Design Award, alongside other innovative products like the Tesla Power Wall.
While the company has been looking into developing this sort of service for the last 10 years, it’s only recently the technology had matured to the point of making it possible.
“As far back as 2005 we looked at doing colour touchscreens,” Kevin Mundy, director at ActronAir explained. “We actually made a mock up one, but really the resolution was just too pixelated and slow to respond. Now the timing is right for this technology especially with the widespread use of smartphones and other devices. We have faster processors, better screens and wireless technology which allowed us to make something really good.”
While air conditioning units have long been feature-packed, those features are often buried under complicated controls. The QUE system makes it easy for untrained users to access its advanced systems.
“Over the years, I guess people have wanted more and more features. We used to pack them into horrible old interfaces that no one could really use,” Mundy said. “But with new colour touch we are able to utilise those features and make it very intuitive for a non-technical person to use — a mum with kids at home, or a grandparent using the air conditioning can use it.”
Mundy said the interface needed to be as good as the market leaders in mobile OS design. “Definitely the smartphones like Apple or Google have set the new benchmark. We thought that if we want to do colour touch then we will do it well, or don’t do it at all,” he said. “The expectations are set pretty high, anything less than that and people would question why it’s not as good as their phone.”
Users also expect to be able to do everything from their phone, so along with the wall-mounted touchscreen unit, ActronAir also developed a proprietary app to control the device wirelessly.
“The apps are brand new and have been developed for both iOS and Android,” Mundy said. “It can be controlled remotely whether you are in the house or anywhere in the world. In the old days if you went out on a hot day and left the air conditioning on, not knowing when you were going home, it would be very costly. Now you don’t have to decide, it’s all managed for you.”
The Que system is also a boon for installers and service technicians, giving diagnostic readings straight from the device.
“I guess myself coming from a service tech background it was always hard to try and diagnose what was wrong with the air-conditioner. You had to get all your tools out, put your refrigeration gauge on the outdoor machine, get out thermo couples, sensors, wire them up to the unit and try and work out what’s going on,” Mundy said.
“What we have now is our new feature we call our digital dashboard. You go into the menu, go into the dashboard and you actually see a virtual outdoor machine, temperatures, pressures compressor speed so you know at what speed the compressor is running at, what capacity. You can actually diagnose a lot of it from the touchscreen now.”
For more information visit www.actronair.com.au.