Building control systems often include heating, ventilation, and/or air conditioning (HVAC) systems to control the comfort level within a building. Many building control systems include a controller that activates and deactivates one or more HVAC components of the HVAC system to affect and control one or more environmental conditions within the building. These environmental conditions can include, but are not limited to, temperature, humidity, and/or ventilation. In many cases, the controller of the building control system may include, or have access to, one or more sensors, and may use parameters provided by the one or more sensors to control the one or more HVAC components to achieve one or more programmed or set environmental conditions.
In some cases, the building controller may be a thermostat that is mounted to a wall or the like of the building. A typical thermostat includes a local temperature sensor and/or other sensors, which may be used to sense one or more environmental conditions of the inside space proximate to the thermostat. In some cases, the thermostat may have access to one or more remotely located sensors that, in some installations, are mounted to a wall or the like in the building at a location remote from the thermostat. In these installations, the sensors are typically mounted at or near the walls of the building, and at particular fixed locations within the building.
In some installations, the thermostat may be configured to wirelessly interact and/or communicate with the remotely located sensors or other devices (e.g. dampers, furnaces, boilers, or other HVAC components). In some situations, the thermostat may transmit and/or receive HVAC system control information to/from the remote sensor or other device. In some configurations, the thermostat, remotely located sensor, or other device may include an antenna to facilitate such wireless communication. When provided, an antenna is often manually mounted to the thermostat, remote sensor, or other device during device assembly. This, however, can have orientation issues, inconsistent interconnects, and can increase the cost of assembly. Alternatively, an antenna is sometimes printed on a printed circuit board of the thermostat or other device. This, however, does not have a three-dimensional configuration of the antenna, which may be advantageous in certain application. In both cases, the robustness and/or performance of the antenna can be limited. Therefore, there is a need for an improved antenna and method of mounting the antenna to a building controller, remote sensor, or other device.
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