GLAS provides look at future of efficient thermostats

The striking aesthetic of the new GLAS thermostat is unavoidable. And that’s just how developer Johnson Controls planned it.

GLAS looks like, well, glass.

The sleek, transparent face with touchscreen capability enables users to quickly monitor indoor air quality and engage the HVAC systems inside their homes – be it single or multifamily structures – to generate increased efficiency.

GLAS is not a typical thermostat. It’s not even a typical smart thermostat. 

“It’s not just a plastic box on a wall like you see traditionally in this industry, residentially and commercially,” Don Albinger, vice president of product management for Johnson Controls, said in showing the device at AHR Expo 2018. “It blends in and is really part of the home.”

GLAS is due to be available in spring 2018.

Though Johnson Controls, which developed the first thermostat 135 years ago, has been a global leader in the controls field for more than a century, GLAS represents the company’s first step into the home automation marketplace. And that initial venture brings with it – besides aesthetics – key technological, consumer-centric features:

• Occupants can easily understand the indoor air quality within their space.
• Occupants can see what contaminants – VOCs, CO2 and humidity – are impacting their interior environment.
• Occupants can easily find and use information collected by GLAS to help make HVAC systems more efficient.

“These are a unique set of features that can really help someone from a wellness perspective,” Albinger said. “Technology like this should help people operate within their space. Technology should help you have a better life inside of those spaces.”

Considerable research, consumer feedback and analysis drove the solution’s development. Johnson Controls not only sought direction on the look and feel of the product, but also usability and desired accomplishments.

“Devices like this really need to serve you as a consumer inside your home and a commercial building. It needs to work for you,” Albinger said. “That’s really a difference. It’s not just a gadget that has this next incremental feature that you try to outpace someone else. It’s a device to help you in your home, to help your lifestyle.

“As we add a portfolio of technology that connects to it, it will serve a purpose. It will serve a purpose in the future for security, it will serve a purpose for home automation and connecting you to the outside world and information and serving you from an equipment standpoint.”