SilverSTAT 7 - The Future of Smart Energy Management

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PR (highlights are mine :)):

The New SilverPAC Advanced Thermostat Provides Intelligent HVAC Control Coupled with a Smart Energy In-Home Display and 802.11 Wi-Fi. The SilverSTAT 7 Provides Solutions for Smart Climate, Smart Energy and Smart Living!

SilverPAC, a leading provider of innovative home entertainment solutions, announces the preview of their new SilverSTAT 7, advanced seven-day programmable thermostat. The company partnered with Windows Embedded to develop a truly innovative device that features a Smart Energy In-Home Display (IHD) to help monitor utility usage and expenses in style. SilverPAC has long been dedicated to the future of consumer electronics with its visionary universal remote controls and advanced digital picture frame. It continues to extend its reach by introducing the breakthrough SilverSTAT 7 with its commitment to smarter homes and smarter living.

The SilverPAC SilverSTAT 7 is embedded on Windows® CE 6.0 R3 and Intel® Atom™ platform and aims to replace standard household thermostats with an advanced home climate control system. The device is elegantly designed with its seven-inch touch screen display that is able to illustrate the distribution of household energy down to individual appliances.
With its IEEE 802.15.4 wireless interface, the SilverSTAT 7 will speak to the new smart meters that will have the ability to send information on real-time electricity and gas use in households directly to utility companies. This process eliminates the inconvenience of meter readings and the inefficiencies of controversial estimates.

SilverPAC seeks to provide an answer to this dilemma by helping to implement ‘demand response monitoring’ systems with its SilverSTAT 7. The concept involves encouraging reductions in peak energy demand by providing customers with an instantaneous view of their ongoing energy usage and utility pricing on their networked IHD. Energy and budget savings can be achieved by turning off or rescheduling the use of appliances for a more cost efficient time.

The device has an 802.11 Wi-Fi interface that allows it to successfully communicate with a home network and Internet services, a Z-Wave Home Automation interface and Zigbee protocol for lighting and appliance control. Zigbee is among the list of communication protocol the US Congress has recently approved for devices supporting new Smart Energy grid system.

In a press release from the US Department of Energy, Gary Locke, US Secretary of Commerce, said, “President Obama has made a smart electrical grid a key element of his plan to lower energy costs for consumers, achieve energy independence and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Today, we took a significant step toward developing the open and transparent interoperability standards necessary to realize the Smart Grid vision.”

The SilverSTAT 7 is more than a seven-day programmable thermostat. It has the added benefit of useful smart gadgets to enhance the convenience of daily tasks with the attractive feature of streaming photos, music and content direct from Live.com and the PC. It even has the simplicity of time management with a calendar and scheduled alarm notices. Through Windows technology, users can control their digital universe with access to e-mail, stock prices, real-time weather forecasting, billing and price schedules for energy providers and more!

SilverPAC is energized with the opportunity to help consumers manage their green energy with the SilverSTAT 7 – Smart Climate, Smart Energy, and Smart Living!

The SilverPAC SilverSTAT 7 will be officially released in June 2010. For more details and information about the product or sales, please visit www.silverpac.com.

Looks like it’s not just a thermostat, but a whole HA controller and media hub/interface…

And now for the eye candy - screenshots:

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Very Impressive!

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wow, ambitious project, looks cool

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AND VERY EXPENSIVE!!!

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Haven’t seen the price quote yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it around $1.5-2k…

They published some more pictures showing the actual device:

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Their beta program you can get it for $799 normally 1299.

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I looked on their site, but did not see anything about their beta or how to be a part of it.

Does anyone know any details ?

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At that price, I’d rather write/purchase an app for an iPod Touch (or the iSlate if that happens) to work with Vera. Looks like you could get the same functionality and for a whole lot less money. That way you could dedicate it to hanging on the wall, or take it with you and use it for other things.

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I agree. Besides the fact this is certainly beautiful gadget, it’s not a good value.

If you follow sites like Engadget etc you know that there are tons of tablets coming this year, and there will be more in the future. They are much much less expensive, just as capable of hanging on the wall, and could be excellent platforms for no less beautiful applications that communicate to Vera as their backend. And being generic platforms they could do a lot more then just being UI for Vera - for much less money.

I easily see as such a tablet could show energy usage, control Vera, Squeezebox (or whatever audio distribution system you have), run Skype all at the same time.

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Hi,

Great answer 325xi, thank you! The things said by you is what we aim for: control much of your home equipment from Vera. We will also have the Energy function up and running on real and accurate measuring devices, which will collect real data for usage, not the Watts value entered by the user in some field. Great things to come, I can assure you!

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Oh, wow, some piece of real info! ;D I should probably go eat my hat for “blaming” MCV of being secret :slight_smile: Just kidding…

Anyway, nobody suggests buying that beast. The main purpose of the post was to show what kind of beautiful interfaces are possible and maybe inspire someone to do something like that.

I am myself a DIY geek - I too bought into Vera because it’s relatively cheap and has a potential of doing all sorts of great things with it. I built my own multi-room distributed music system out of cheap reflashed Asus WiFi routers. I have a MythTV based media system with dedicated recording backend and couple frontends. I use couple of old tablet devices (slates they call them now?) around the house to access and control Vera, audio and video systems. I’m toying with my own touchscreen interface for a whole-house HA, AV, Security & Control system. But I’m a developer, not a designer, and wouldn’t be able to create such a beautiful interface, as in this device. But at least I can look and learn/inspire from it…

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Yes, the posts from MCV have been almost completely free of information for a couple of months now.

And denix, that sounds like a really great system you’ve put together. I can only assume you don’t have a woman living in the same house with you. :wink: Even with my less complex system, my dear, patient wife uses the vagaries of our Vera setup as the source of much humor with our friends.

To your point: Yes, the graphical representation of the SilverPAC is beautiful. If the rest of the UI, and especially the functionality of the UI, is up to that level, it just might be worth spending a grand or two to get it. Pardon me for being skeptical, though. To date, Apple is the only developer that has ever achieved that.

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@CMRancho,

Actually I’m married and have a kid… :slight_smile: And it sure puts a huge strain on your hobbies and free time! Don’t tell my wife I said it ;D Although she’s quite understanding, so I’m lucky! I wish I had more free time, so I can finish several projects I put on hold long ago.

Anyway, thanks for the compliment, but my system is quite rough and “heterogeneous” - still working on unifying it and making it less geeky and easy to use for regular users…

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The link above is for the SilverPAC evolution 5500 Universal Remote Control. Not the Silver STAT 7, two different products.

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aharding was correct - the $1200 price is for the remote control. Here is update on the TStat though ($600, but not very soon):

And now, thanks to a gracious tipster, we've received some deets on that Silverstat7 home energy management solution (er, touchscreen thermostat) we first hepped you to a couple days ago. Along with 802.11g WiFi, this guy supports the Zigbee and Zwave protocols (as you probably guessed), so it should be able to play nicely with your existing smart meter, switches and outlets. Earlier reports of a June 2010 release date may have been premature -- look for it this fall for about $600 MSRP.