Timeline: a brief history of our Cosy smart thermostat

2013: The first spark of a smart idea…

It was early 2013 when we first started thinking about creating our very own smart thermostat. Up until then, we’d been busy focusing all our attention and know-how on making solar, electricity and water-monitoring tech.

But, we soon became fascinated by the tech behind smart heating controllers – and were inspired to create our own stylish and easy-to-use smart heating controller, as an alternative to the home heating tech already on the market at that time.

We knew it would be a challenge, but we also knew that we had the skills, creativity and determination to make a success of it.

Testing, testing, 1 2 3

So, we created many different prototypes, conducted lots of focus groups (everyone we spoke to was keen on simplicity and having interactive controls), drank lots of cups of tea, tweaked our designs and… before long, Release 0 (R0) was ready to be installed in trialists’ homes for further (very successful – phew!) testing in November 2013. 

2014: Kickstarter campaign

Spurred on by the success of our R0 trial, we began developing Release 1 (R1) – or what’s now known as the Kickstarter Cosy. In order to raise enough funding for us to produce Cosy on a larger scale, and to help us make further developments to Cosy, we launched our Kickstarter campaign in March 2014.

Just one month later we hit our fundraising goal by raising over £20K from 147 lovely backers. Thanks guys!

Award-winning good looks

Following on from our Kickstarter success, we were able to make some modifications to the way Cosy looked – and even won an award along the way – taking the Silver International Design Award in 2014. Hurrah!

Cosy, what’s in a name?

Did you know that the working name for Cosy was Cello? We ended up going with Cosy because, well, even saying the word cosy makes you feel all warm inside, doesn’t it? And this is exactly the sort of feeling we want our lovely Cosy customers to feel when they come home after a long day at work.

To the future… and beyond!

Since then, we’ve rolled out a number of updates – these include making Cosy able to control your hot water tank and up to two heating zones, along with making Cosy’s temperature tracking ability even more accurate.

Never fear though, we’re not ones to rest on our laurels – and we’re constantly working away to make Cosy the best it can be. Stay tuned for more exciting Cosy developments coming your way (ahem – in-app notifications – ahem!) in the not too distant future…