Smart thermostat and remote access to temperature controllers

SOREL is a manufacturer of electronic temperature controls for the heating industry. The company was founded in 1991 in Germany and, today, provides controllers for customers in more than 60 countries worldwide.

With climate change being one of the biggest problems of today, SOREL focuses on developing and providing intelligent solutions for weather-compensated heating systems, solar thermal systems, smart thermostats, manufacturing freshwater systems, domestic hot water, heat pumps, and much more. These controls are energy saving, reliable and easy to use, ensuring fast and secure setup and minimal technical support.

Some of the many SOREL controllers worth mentioning are the TDC Solar Controllers. This product range consists of temperature difference controllers for various types of solar systems – from simple to more complex systems. One of them is the LTDC (Large Temperature Difference Controller), which can be used for complex systems. The controller is or can be equipped with a large range of features that includes data logging, VFS and RPS flow and pressure metering, speed-control of standard pumps or high-efficiency pumps, etc.

SOREL strives to make the controllers as user-friendly as possible, as well as technically powerful, as heating technology is increasingly becoming more and more complex. Being able to remotely access the controllers was an important feature to increase usability and convenience. SOREL is predominantly an expert in the field of embedded hardware, so they got Nabto to create the IoT connectivity through the Nabto Platform.

’’The reasons we chose the P2P IoT solution from Nabto was the high level of security in their software, and the inherent privacy that our end-users get. Also, the minimized risk and responsibility we get when end-users manage their data on their own device was important – and, of course, the excellent end-users experience thanks to highly responsive user-interfaces accomplished by direct connections’’

– Jonas Bicher, CEO of SOREL

As mentioned above, the Nabto platform uses strong, encrypted communication and P2P connectivity, which combines results in maximum privacy. A direct P2P connection between the controller and the end-user client is established (PC, tablet or smartphone), from which the user can remotely access the controller and monitor or log data from their heating system. Since the dataflow is communicated securely via strong encryption and directly between device and client, user-interfaces will be highly responsive, and data is never stored on a third-party system (like a cloud server).

Some of SOREL’s controllers have built-in Ethernet sockets, where others can be connected by SOREL’s data logger device that enable a connection for remote access. The SOREL data logger links SOREL devices together and connects them to the internet through the Nabto platform.

As the remote control feature of the SOREL solar controls turned out to be a great success, SOREL decided to expand the use of Nabto’s P2P technology into more products – for example the smart thermostat °CALEON. It has a touch panel, where the temperature, configuration, etc. can be remotely controlled. Besides the touch panel, the °CALEON also comes with an app that, through a P2P connection, enables remote control of the heating and cooling system – for example for controlling the temperature in a specific room.

’’By enabling remote access to our products, like the °CALEON smart thermostat, the user now has easy access to a lot of features from their mobile device, whenever and wherever they want. They can view temperatures in real-time throughout the whole house, configure a time program, activate holiday mode, and much more. We already knew that the Nabto technology was working great in our solar controllers, so adding the technology to the °CALEON was an easy decision that we have made great use of since.’’

– Jonas Bicher, CEO of SOREL