The partnership between General Electric and Quirky generated its first product today, the Aros in-room air conditioner that can sense when the homeowner has left or is returning and keeps track of energy usage to help save money.
The Aros was developed by Quirky, a crowd-source site where people input their ideas, and GE, which poured a massive investment into Quirky last year.
Designed for apartment dwellers, the $300 device is an 8,000 BTU air conditioner that for all intents and purposes, looks like any of the thousands of AC units sticking out of windows in any big city. The difference is on the inside and in how it is controlled. It is now available for pre-order on Amazon with shipments expected in May.
Aros is a smart device that connects via Wi-Fi to a home's network. Instead of just having an on and off switch, the Aros is controlled via the Wink app for iOS and Android. There is also a touch capacitive control panel on the unit's front.
The app is the heart of the device. Not only does it relieve the user from having to decide whether or not to leave the unit on when they are not home, but it can track the AC's energy use, learn the owner's usage patterns so it knows when to operate, and finally turning itself on when the smartphone and its owner reach a certain distance from the house.
It handles this last task by accessing the smartphone's GPS location service. Once the phone is sensed leaving the area, the unit can be set to turn off and then turn back on when the app realizes the person is coming home. By keeping track of the energy used, it can suggest the most energy efficient times when to run or not run and finally it learns from the owner's own schedule when the person is around.
Basic features include three cooling modes, three fan speeds and like every other in-window unit, it has a pair of retractable screens to help it fit into the window properly.
GE and Quirky said the Aros is only the first in a line of products that use the best of what both companies offer. From GE came money and access to patents, while Quirky brought its hoard of civilians who vote on whether an idea should be developed, along with a team of engineers and marketers.
Quirky itself is a bit unusual. Instead of trying to raise money for others to bring products to market, it attempts to raise the idea itself. People submit a proposal for a new gizmo and then others vote on whether it is worth developing. If the device works its way all the way to production, the inventor along with all those who helped, could get a piece of the financial pie.
"After receiving the submission for this invention, it was clear that this was a product that absolutely needed to exist, but a challenge that most companies would shy away from," Quirky founder and CEO Ben Kaufman said in a statement. "With the support of GE's technology expertise, scale, and supply chain, we were able to focus our efforts on leveraging our community's ideas into a beautifully designed product where every aspect of the product's interaction was attended to."
