By Albert Tsoi:

This past Sunday, January 4th, members of Team Ecovent headed to Las Vegas to exhibit at the 2015 International Consumer Electronics Show, more commonly referred to as CES. CES is an internationally renowned consumer electronics and technology trade show that happens every year. This year 3,600 exhibitors, including Ecovent, showed off cutting edge technology products, many of them never before seen. We’ve had an amazing time demoing our system of smart wireless vents and sensors to consumers. We’ve been showing consumers exactly how we’re going to get them comfortable in their homes by delivering room by room temperature control. CES is like the Willy Wonka chocolate factory for nerds, so it’s been incredibly exciting and fun. We’re at the halfway point, and below is the list of my top 5 favorite moments of CES 2015 so far.

5. Experiencing The Huge Presence of the Connected Home

CES is a massive event. It’s estimated that over 150,000 people will be in attendance. That’s bigger than the entire populations of Dayton, Ohio, Kansas City, Kansas and Savannah, Georgia. It’s been amazing to literally see how big home automation and the connected home is this year. Visually, home automation and the connected home seemed to dominate the floorspace at Tech West, where Ecovent’s booth is located. Whether it’s home automation hubs, fans, electrical plugs, coffee pots, thermostats, or security cameras, tech companies are getting in on the action. It was impressive to take it all in and see the future of home technology in the present.

4. Getting to Experience and Show off Ecovent As We Get Closer and Closer to The Final Product

With each iteration of our smart vents and sensors, we get closer and closer to production units. I, along with consumers, were able to hold, touch and see updated designs of our smart vents and sensors as well as our mobile app. We were able to show how far we’ve come and demonstrate, on a much more granular level, what we’re set to roll out this August. CES 2015 was a coming out party in terms of showing what we’ve got and we couldn’t be more excited!

3. Winning the TechHome 2015 Mark of Excellence Award for Automation Device of the Year

At Ecovent, we do what we do what because we believe in solving the world’s most overlooked problems, starting with the problem of lack of control of individual room temperatures in homes. Execution is our constant and we’ll settle for nothing less than excellence. We don’t do it for showmanship or for glitz or to create a cool gadget for the sake of creating a cool gadget. Frankly, we think HVAC is sexy but we know that not everyone thinks this (we’re working on changing that perception because HVAC IS sexy). Ultimately, we’re here to make something that actually improves the lives of our customers. However, from time to time, it’s nice to get a little recognition for what we do and we got more than a little of that at CES.

We’re proud to announce that we were the winner of TechHome’s 2015 Mark of Excellence Award for Automation Device of the Year! We were also 1 of 3 finalists for Energy Efficiency Product of the Year and 1 of 4 finalists for the Disruptor Award. It was an honor to be among big name nominees like Sony, LG, Bosch, Crestron, Honeywell, and Lutron, and in some cases, beat them. : )

2. Meeting with our Customers and our Reservation Holders

We feed off of positive energy and that’s exactly what we got at CES. We were able to meet some of our beta customers and reservation holders in person! We heard stories about the dramatic temperature differences they have in their homes and how they how much they want need Ecovent because they are just plain fed up being too hot and too cold in their own homes. We love meeting our customers because it puts faces to the problem we’re solving, like the problem of a 15 degree temperature difference one of our beta customers had in his home (spoiler alert: Ecovent solved it). There’s nothing better than hearing how you’ve fixed something someone just thought could not be fixed before learning about Ecovent.

1. Meeting With Consumers Who Experience the Problem We’re Solving

Over the last three days, we’ve met with several hundred consumers, maybe more. We tell them that Ecovent solves the problem of having rooms in their homes that are either too hot or too cold. Literally not a single person has said that they haven’t had that problem. Some of them have said that they don’t have forced air heating and cooling systems (many of them are from Europe or Asia since CES is an international event, and forced air is less common there than in the U.S.) but everyone who does have a forced air system has said they’ve experienced the exact problem we’re solving.

Responses have included, “Everyone in the U.S. has this problem!”, “My wife is going to be really happy when I tell her about this. You may save my marriage!” and “The concept makes so much sense. I can’t believe this hasn’t been done until now!” Keep it coming folks, we want to hear more from you. It fuels us and it’s only going to push us harder and make us execute faster.

That’s it for now. Stay tuned for more and check us out on Twitter and our Facebook page for our latest CES 2015 update.

 

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