ReAirVent was an early byitl product — a Wi-Fi-controlled ceiling vent designed to fix the universal problem of "that one room that's always too hot or too cold." Instead of bolting a smart sensor onto an existing HVAC system, the idea was to give the vents themselves a brain.
The build
Three blades, each driven independently by an MG996R servo through a small gear stage. That meant we could rotate them in unison to choke airflow off entirely, or angle each one separately to redirect the air across a room. A custom PCB handled servo control, Wi-Fi, and sensing — temperature and humidity on-board, with the intent to coordinate setpoints across a whole-home mesh.
The power story was the part we were most proud of. An 18650 Li-ion cell sat in the enclosure, fed by a Qi wireless receiver glued behind the grille. The vent could recharge on the ceiling — no ladder, no dropping the unit — by parking a Qi pad above the drywall. For installations that wanted reliability over magic, a 24 VAC hardwire path was the fallback.
What we learned
The mechanism worked. The Qi power-through-drywall trick worked. What didn't pencil out was the rest of the path to market: certifications for an in-ceiling battery-powered device, retrofit labor cost vs. a $20 manual damper, and a 2022 smart-home market that was already crowded with cheaper sensor-only solutions.
We shelved it.
The interesting residue, though, was the enclosure work itself. ReAirVent was several months of iterating a custom PCB into a printable, serviceable, manufacturable case — and that turned out to be the part other hardware founders kept asking us for help with. It's part of why byitl today designs the whole device, board, firmware and enclosure together. ReAirVent is where we learned the case can't be an afterthought.