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THE SOTH JOURNAL

Lighting and climate

Ideas, know-how, and a little inspiration for your connected home.

WORTH A CLOSER LOOK

Lighting and climate

Trane's new monitoring kit adds eight sensors and a cellular link to almost any older furnace or air conditioner

Trane and American Standard, the two residential heating and cooling brands of Trane Technologies, launched the HVAC Performance Monitoring Kit on 30 October 2026. It is a retrofit add-on for existing systems: the company says it fits virtually any 24 V non-communicating HVAC system, whatever the brand or age. That covers the common single-stage, t
Oct 31, 2026
3
min read

Zephyr 4.5 adds HTTP/3, an SSH shell, NAT routing and a DALI lighting driver, and writes SPDX 3 SBOMs with the Cyber Resilience Act in mind

The Zephyr Project released Zephyr 4.5.0 on 28 October 2026. Zephyr is the open source real-time operating system behind a lot of IoT firmware, including Nordic's nRF Connect SDK and many sensor, gateway and wearable products. The release had contributions from 1,297 people, a record according to the project, and it will get fixes until 28 October
Oct 30, 2026
3
min read

Tesla's Heat Pump Optimization lets Powerwall 3 and 3P in Europe boost an SG-Ready heat pump when solar is in surplus or power is cheap

Tesla Energy announced Heat Pump Optimization for Powerwall 3 and Powerwall 3P in Europe on 30 October 2026. The feature lets the battery system tell a heat pump to run harder when the roof produces more solar power than the house uses, or when grid electricity is cheap. In its post Tesla called the heat pump "one of the biggest electrical loads in
Oct 30, 2026
3
min read

Ona's €165 kit makes a split air conditioner heat the house when power is cheap and uses the walls as a heat battery

Dutch startup Ona has launched a €165 kit that turns an ordinary split air conditioner into a price-aware heater. The idea, described by IO+ on 29 October 2026, is simple: run the air conditioner in the afternoon when electricity is cheap, let the concrete walls, floors and ceilings soak up the heat, and coast through the expensive evening hours on
Oct 30, 2026
3
min read