Timeline: a brief history of our Cosy smart thermostat
Published: 20/09/16 By: April Bowles
Published: 20/09/16 By: April Bowles
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.
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.
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!
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!
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.
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…
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
_GRECAPTCHA | 5 months 27 days | This cookie is set by the Google recaptcha service to identify bots to protect the website against malicious spam attacks. |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-advertisement | 1 year | Set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin, this cookie is used to record the user consent for the cookies in the "Advertisement" category . |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional | 11 months | The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". |
PHPSESSID | session | This cookie is native to PHP applications. The cookie is used to store and identify a users' unique session ID for the purpose of managing user session on the website. The cookie is a session cookies and is deleted when all the browser windows are closed. |
viewed_cookie_policy | 11 months | The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data. |
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
__utma | 2 years | This cookie is set by Google Analytics and is used to distinguish users and sessions. The cookie is created when the JavaScript library executes and there are no existing __utma cookies. The cookie is updated every time data is sent to Google Analytics. |
__utmb | 30 minutes | Google Analytics sets this cookie, to determine new sessions/visits. __utmb cookie is created when the JavaScript library executes and there are no existing __utma cookies. It is updated every time data is sent to Google Analytics. |
__utmc | session | The cookie is set by Google Analytics and is deleted when the user closes the browser. It is used to enable interoperability with urchin.js, which is an older version of Google Analytics and is used in conjunction with the __utmb cookie to determine new sessions/visits. |
__utmt | 10 minutes | Google Analytics sets this cookie to inhibit request rate. |
__utmz | 6 months | Google Analytics sets this cookie to store the traffic source or campaign by which the visitor reached the site. |
_gat | 1 minute | This cookie is installed by Google Universal Analytics to restrain request rate and thus limit the collection of data on high traffic sites. |
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
_ga | 2 years | The _ga cookie, installed by Google Analytics, calculates visitor, session and campaign data and also keeps track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookie stores information anonymously and assigns a randomly generated number to recognize unique visitors. |
_gid | 1 day | Installed by Google Analytics, _gid cookie stores information on how visitors use a website, while also creating an analytics report of the website's performance. Some of the data that are collected include the number of visitors, their source, and the pages they visit anonymously. |