The basic convective state appears when a very small temperature gradient is applied. It consists of two big rolls parallel to the heater and filling the convective cell. A primary instability in the homogeneous basic flow gives rise to a one-dimensional cellular stationary pattern. For higher values of the control parameters, time dependent patterns appear after a secondary instability. Various regimes are analyzed: oscillations, traveling waves and standing (alternating) patterns.

These patterns become spatio-temporally chaotic very near the threshold. This system is a natural candidate to be controlled, because of the low dimensionality and because one of the parameters (temperature difference) can be easily varied in space and time.

The hydrodynamic characteristics of these patterns are provided. Local temperature measurements allows to describe the physical mechanisms responsible of the instabilities. A comparison with different one dimensional models are provided.