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What does having a Nest thermostat get you? I'm a tech dude, I build modern software, but I live in a dumb, old fashioned house. My programmable Honeywell therm

What does having a Nest thermostat get you? I'm a tech dude, I build modern software, but I live in a dumb, old fashioned house. My programmable Honeywell thermostat, which has no internet connection, does a perfectly fine job of keeping my home the right temperature. My door locks use a key, and keys have great battery life, and my smoke detectors beep instead of speaking to me. What am I missing by not having internet connected stuff?

seanmcdirmid 7y ago
Mainly a Nest thermostat looks cool.
outside1234 7y ago
you can turn it on remotely, like when you are on the way home from work, and have a warm house when you get there. to me, that is the killer reason to have it online.
- seandougall 7y ago
  If you have a predictable schedule, there are plenty of offline thermostats that let you set target temperatures for different times of day. If you don't, I can see how being able to control it remotely would be nice. (But an embedded microphone is still creepy and unnecessary.)
  - rtkwe 7y ago
    Then you're in luck because the Google Nest thermostats don't actually have microphones in them at all! https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9330256?hl=en https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9330256?hl=en
beznet 7y ago
Im in the same boat, I find the concepts very fascinating but almost all of it is trying to solve problems that don't even exist for me. The only thing my friends with IoT devices do are party tricks on voice command with their smart lights. Other than that, I find the so called 'problems' these devices solving are extraordinarily trivial.
- 0xffff2 7y ago
  My favorite part of my IoT loving friends' party tricks is that they only even seem to work about 40% of the time. Most of the gimmicks might be worth having if they worked 99.9% of the time and I didn't have to sell my soul to get them, but as is they're a half-baked solution to problems that I don't actually have.
YourMatt 7y ago
It's nice that it knows when I leave and adjusts accordingly automatically. If I need to come home at a non-routine time, I can adjust from my phone so that it's comfortable when I get home. I don't see the need for most smart devices, but the Nest thermostat has actually been really useful for me.
mey 7y ago
I value privacy, my nest thermostat is the only IoT device in my house that talks to the internet or can be accessed remotely without a VPN. What I find most valuable is it programs itself. Am I cold? Turn it up a bit, hot? Turn it down a bit. Suddenly I have stopped having to adjust it at all. Even as life has changed. It has some nice other features, such as preheating/cooling, telling me how long it will take to get to temp, energy savings by allowing the electrical company to shift my cooling earlier before the afternoon rush. I bought my Nest before Google bought the company, and I will switch brands instead of buying one of the Google built devices, again over privacy considerations. Hilariously enough, we entered the name of the thermostat as HAL.
- eslaught 7y ago
  Ok, but what on this list actually requires an internet connection? I guess the integration with your power company. But aside from that? You could put a local AI model into the Nest, and it shouldn't need to talk to the internet at all. It can keep the data locally, and be programmed to draw inferences without help from the mothership. For some reason we've decided it's ok to gratuitously connect everything to the internet "just cause". Sort of like how data maximization has become a thing because the costs are low, so why not?
  - xnyan 7y ago
    Posted elsewhere, but my A/C had a small leak and was slowly loosing efficiency. At peak heat it could not keep up, but I had no way of knowing that at work. My $99 Emerson Sensi messaged me that the cooling was not keeping up and there was a problem. I could turn off the unit remotely to prevent stress on the compressor and fixed the small leak well before I would have known without a internet enabled thermostat. I did A/C repair in college, fixing it early more than paid for the maybe 50 extra bucks wifi cost. The thermostat itself is on an isolated wifi network,
    - ChristianBundy 7y ago
      That doesn't answer the question: why does that require internet access?
heavyset_go 7y ago
> What does having a Nest thermostat get you? Nothing that a programmable thermostat plus a Home Assistant instance won't get you.
- kelnos 7y ago
  I run OpenHAB at home (and have tried HA), but setting all this up is not in the wheelhouse of the majority of people. Doing the in-home setup is difficult enough, but safely exposing it to the internet is not something I'd ever ask a non-technical person to do. Meanwhile, you just swap your old thermostat with the Nest, tell it how to get to your wifi, install an app on your phone, and you're done.
  - rtkwe 7y ago
    Yeah that's what a lot of the responses in this thread don't get or dismiss. These things could be run in a much more privacy protecting way but that comes with all sorts of configuration and setup headaches that most people don't want to deal with. And being able to access the devices from anywhere is a feature most people want even if it's only useful occasionally and a central API running all interactions means if it works while you're home it will work anywhere rather than it working while you're home then not working because something something DynDNS/NAT.
  - heavyset_go 7y ago
    I think you're overestimating how difficult it is to setup a smart device with something like Nabu Casa's Home Assistant Cloud.
    - maccard 7y ago
      And youre over estimating the technical literacy of the average person. This is the first time I've heard of nabu casa, I just checked out their website and they're immediately talking about yaml, I've browsed every page I can see and I can't see anything about setting it up. Another labe mentionrd docker and JWT as troubleshooting steps - that's too much for 99.99999% of people to ever use.
Mirioron 7y ago
These kinds of devices are just slightly better than the old ones, because it's possible to programmatically control them. They would be an interesting idea, because they offer slightly better convenience than the previous devices, but they are such a huge privacy violation that they aren't worth it. Take out the privacy violating parts and they could be interesting products.
mochomocha 7y ago
It gets you troubles. Just bought a house that had some installed. Had weird "lost connection" failures, and the "smartness" trying to learn what's the right temperature for you doesn't work. After two months, I still have to wake up in the middle of the night to manually reset the temperature to something reasonable.
xnyan 7y ago
I have a cheaper thermostat with wifi, a few months ago it alerted me that the temperature had been more than 5 degrees over setpoint for half an hour and something was probably broken. I was able to remotely shut off the unit and after I came home from work, sure enough the coils had iced over due to a refrigerant leak. It was only hot enough for this to happen at the peak of the heat when I was at work. I was able to catch the problem early and fix it cheaply all for the cost of a thermostat (Emerson Sensi) about $40 more than a non wifi model.
- icebraining 7y ago
  Is there any advantage in involving you in the loop, though? Couldn't it just shutdown upon detecting the problem and turn on a warning light for you to see when you got home?
JCBarry 7y ago
It is probably worth mentioning that the Google Nest Thermostats are one of the only Nest devices without a microphone. Source: https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9330256?hl=en https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9330256?hl=en
- tareqak 7y ago
  Thank you for this information 'JCBarry. I was legitimately alarmed and confused. I searched for the word “thermostat” in the article, and I didn’t find it, but I could easily be out of date with respect to Google’s Nest and IoT branding. Thanks again,
  - JCBarry 7y ago
    Happy to help!
exclusiv 7y ago
A programmable keypad is nice. I have a Z-wave one which can notify my Smarthings hub which notifies me when it's locked or unlocked. The Nest thermostat allows me to control the heat remotely. These two things are great for rental properties. Guests often forget to lock the door, I have records of when guests or maintenance people are coming or going, I can adjust the heat to 55 when nobody is there which saves a lot of money and more importantly I can ensure the heat is not turned off (which could cause frozen pipes) which some guests do for some reason. Outside of a rental, these things aren't as useful. But I'd still get a programmable keypad (I've been running the Yale touchscreen ones in the mountains for years). It's very handy for friends or maintenance and with a Smartthings hub you can unlock the door remotely and give no code. Or give a code and change it later. I got the one with a key backup just in case but I haven't had the touchscreen fail yet. I do run the Nest cameras outside and they've been nice to check snow levels, bust the spa maintenance guy for not even showing up, expose a neighbor for stealing firewood and rocks, expose guests who brought an actual bus full of people, expose another guest for filming a movie, and plenty of other things that have been helpful documentation. It's kind of crazy how far the Nest cams pick up audio and how clear it is. So be cautious of these things because they are constantly recording and it makes it easy to scrub for footage (detects and quick links to voices, dogs barking, people, etc). I only listen to the audio when it's applicable (guests are doing something they shouldn't) but I'd imagine that some homeowners are watching and listening for fun.
- J5892 7y ago
  I'm assuming that by rental property you mean AirBNB or some other short term rentals. I would never be okay with my landlord controlling or monitoring my thermostat.
- barneygale 7y ago
  > The Nest thermostat allows me to control the heat remotely. On a flat you're renting out? That's insanely unethical.
  - ahupp 7y ago
    The comment specifically says: "I can adjust the heat to 55 when nobody is there which saves a lot of money and more importantly I can ensure the heat is not turned off (which could cause frozen pipes) which some guests do for some reason."
gfo 7y ago
Don't forget they also have a smoke/CO2 monitor. I use that because it would be really handy to know about those being issues prior to coming home. Of course, the next question is always "How do I confirm this?" but if it means I can catch those problems sooner, regardless of whether I'm home, I'd rather do that. And yet, this article has me re-thinking it. Maybe removing the Nest alarm and getting Simplisafe's detector is the better move (but I need to look into theirs first).
nsxwolf 7y ago
They look cool and the knob has a nice feel to it.
throwawaymanbot 7y ago
Does it HAVE to record conversations? It could do all you want but be less Zuckerbergian.
marcosdumay 7y ago
Why does a thermostat integrate with cameras and microphones anyway? Do they have any internal one? Anyway, I do really want a smart home lock. Just changing the shape of the keys so that they would stop puncturing my pockets when I walk would be enough of a gain. I also want a programmable bedroom light that can slowly dim on at morning. I don't have those because the costs are much higher than the benefits. I'm sure a smart lock will lock me out of home at some point, with no way in. A smart light will also fail at the worst possible way, and I don't want to deal with it.
- seandougall 7y ago
  > I also want a programmable bedroom light that can slowly dim on at morning. FWIW, a lot of cheap CFL bulbs do this on their own. It's one of the reasons I hate CFLs for most uses, but I've come to appreciate that the light in my kids' room starts at about half (perceived) brightness and takes a minute or two to warm up.
  - Marsymars 7y ago
    I think the key part is that the bulbs come on automatically, not necessarily the ramping up of brightness. I don't really care about brightness ramping, I just have my bedroom Hue bulbs come on at max brightness at 6500K at 5:00 every morning, switch to 2700K at noon, and 2000K (and dimmer) at 20:00.
- errantspark 7y ago
  > also want a programmable bedroom light that can slowly dim on at morning Oh you absolutely do, this has been by far the best (arguably only) benefit I've seen from home automation. Sunrise is now whenever is convenient. The lights slowly come on over 30 minutes and it feels like I'll wake up at some convenient time for my body during that period, rather than having my sleep interrupted by an infuriating alarm. > A smart light will also fail at the worst possible way, and I don't want to deal with it. I haven't had any problems with mine (v1 hues), they default to working like normal bulbs so the worst case scenario is you toggle the switch off and on and you get an illuminated lightbulb every time. Also (true of any LED light) they will continue to work even after you've shattered the glass by accident. > changing the shape of the keys so that they would stop puncturing my pockets when I walk Have you considered alternate solutions such as less-tight pants? ;P
balabaster 7y ago
I have an Ecobee rather than a Nest, but I had the Nest before I moved and the one thing I note is that it having access to temperatures and weather outside the house means it can choose just to run fans to circulate the air from outside to regulate the temperature inside instead of running the heating or AC. If it knows the outside temperature is the temperature you want inside, it can just shut everything off. A dumb thermostat only knows what the inside temperature is... or more specifically, when the little coil bends to connect the electrodes, it trips the heating on until the coil bends the other way and disconnects them. If the external temperature was sufficient, your thermostat could've chosen to circulate external air into the house instead of running the heating. Also, it knows when you're not home, so it can then just shut down everything until temperatures would cause other problems such as frozen pipes. Additionally, you just dial it to where you're comfortable and if you get too hot or cold, adjust it again. It learns what temperature you like it at at certain times of day, it takes a week or two to really get to know you, but once it does, it just keeps the temperature comfortable and you rarely have to touch it or even look at it after that without you needing to go through a complex programming process like you do with most other thermostats. That's pretty much what a smart thermostat gets you. Whether or not you consider that useful or a good use case for your needs is really down to your own evaluation. I like that my thermostat is smart enough to be able to regulate the temperature in my house without needing to kick on the AC or heating, which reduces my power consumption somewhat and is somewhat better for the environment, but is also better for my wallet.
- _-___________-_ 7y ago
  The system in my house just has an exterior temperature sensor. You don't need an Internet connection to know the temperature outside your house, and the "outside temperature" it's getting from the Internet may be quite different than the temperature of the air outside your house anyway. Knowing when you're home can also be done quite well without any Internet access - just see if your mobile device recently associated to the wifi. These things can trivially be built without the privacy concerns. The business model might be a bit harder if you can't collect the data, though...
  - 7y ago
ocdtrekkie 7y ago
I live in an area where I can go from heat to cool needs in a single day, and I have pets with sensitive temperature needs. So I have a thermostat I can control via the Internet. However, it is not a Nest, and only I can control it. It's not connected to any account or cloud service. It doesn't have direct IP connectivity at all, so it can't be turned into a part of a botnet. And it works just fine without the Internet.
rch 7y ago
People managing AirBnB checkouts in cold, remote areas appreciate being able to check and adjust the thermostat remotely.
dreamcompiler 7y ago
I loved my Nest thermostat when I first bought it. I could change the set point with my phone without getting out of bed, or set the house to the right temperature before I got home. It would automatically go into energy-saving mode if nobody was home. I could track my long-term energy usage with an app on my phone. That was all very nice, but then Nest blew it. They kept forcing firmware updates to the thermostat that I had no control over. Some of them bricked the device for a period of time; some merely changed the UI so that options on the thermostat moved around or literally disappeared. I finally got fed up and reset the thing and refused to give it my wifi password. Then Google bought Nest which made me doubly sure I'll never connect the thing again. Now it just works as an ordinary dumb thermostat. A rather expensive dumb thermostat, but it does the job. The extra features that came from connectivity are not worth the company's disrespect for my right to control the devices in my home.
- homero 7y ago
  I got a dumb but wifi Sensi thermostat, glad i did
  - rbritton 7y ago
    I replaced my Nest with a Sensi once Google took over. In doing so, I extensively researched the available options searching for an acceptable one that could be used without a cloud server somewhere, but those just don’t exist in any decent-looking package. Choosing the Sensi was a compromise on settling for a company not likely to go out of business or discontinue the device within the near future and whose core business doesn’t conflict with keeping any data private.
  - dreamcompiler 7y ago
    From the Sensi website: "As existing features are enhanced and new features are released, your thermostat software is kept up-to-date automatically." No thanks. Been there, done that. With a simple device like a thermostat, I don't want the thing changing all the time. Security updates are fine but every update needs to be under my control and the device should be designed with a mechanical switch that restores the previous version of the firmware. And really even security updates should be unnecessary if the code is written in a type-safe language with good security practices.
bdcravens 7y ago
> What am I missing by not having internet connected stuff? I'd say that's a question that can be asked of anything that's Internet-connected. Phones, watches, TVs, cars, etc. They probably all create a level of convenience, typically at some cost Like all costs it's up to each person to make a decision whether that cost is too great - usually these questions are really veiled value judgments on others' cost/benefit analyses.
finestkludge 7y ago
Nothing, in my opinion, but I do have a sort of funny story about IoT thermostats. My SO's dad is a gadgets guy, and he travels constantly for work. He is also incredibly vigilant about bills. They're the kind of family that can't touch the thermostat until a certain time of year, weighs insurance costs into every decision they make, etc. Anyways, when he was traveling—even in cold months—he would see the thermostat going up on his phone and panic, turning it down. His kids, who were freezing in the house, would turn it up again because winter, and several hours later the cycle would repeat. They were basically locked in a constant battle to warm their house against their miserly dad and the cloud.
- nilram 7y ago
  Classic story I heard was of a landlord who locked the thermostat in a plastic air-flow case. The college roommates who lived at the residence learned to strap an ice pack to it. Hilarity ensued when the landlord would come by to check on the heating system.
- techsupporter 7y ago
  This was also the subject of a Judge John Hodgman episode: https://www.maximumfun.org/judge-john-hodgman/judge-john-hodgman-episode-424-barbecuties https://www.maximumfun.org/judge-john-hodgman/judge-john-hod... (He’s the “PC guy” from the Apple commercials, among many other performances, and he has a podcast where he acts as a more cerebral and empathetic Judge Wapner, hearing “cases” and making rulings. The show has quite the internal lore, complete with local court rules, standing, and binding precedent.)
ubermonkey 7y ago
IMO? Nothing. I do have some WeMo switches on some lamps in our living room. I got them instead of fiddly-dip-switch timers before a vacation several years ago, and it turns out I like having them come on an X time automatically, and turn off at 10, when we typically go to bed. We never interact with them; it's great. But the thermostat is dumb (but programmable). The locks are all regular locks. We have no smart speaker (dear god WHY?). The TV is dumb. Why? Because I've spent 30 years in software, and my watchword is "don't put firmware in shit that doesn't fucking need firmware."

seanmcdirmid 7y ago

Mainly a Nest thermostat looks cool.

outside1234 7y ago

you can turn it on remotely, like when you are on the way home from work, and have a warm house when you get there. to me, that is the killer reason to have it online.

seandougall 7y ago
If you have a predictable schedule, there are plenty of offline thermostats that let you set target temperatures for different times of day. If you don't, I can see how being able to control it remotely would be nice. (But an embedded microphone is still creepy and unnecessary.)
- rtkwe 7y ago
  Then you're in luck because the Google Nest thermostats don't actually have microphones in them at all! https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9330256?hl=en https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9330256?hl=en

beznet 7y ago

Im in the same boat, I find the concepts very fascinating but almost all of it is trying to solve problems that don't even exist for me. The only thing my friends with IoT devices do are party tricks on voice command with their smart lights. Other than that, I find the so called 'problems' these devices solving are extraordinarily trivial.

0xffff2 7y ago
My favorite part of my IoT loving friends' party tricks is that they only even seem to work about 40% of the time. Most of the gimmicks might be worth having if they worked 99.9% of the time and I didn't have to sell my soul to get them, but as is they're a half-baked solution to problems that I don't actually have.

YourMatt 7y ago

It's nice that it knows when I leave and adjusts accordingly automatically. If I need to come home at a non-routine time, I can adjust from my phone so that it's comfortable when I get home. I don't see the need for most smart devices, but the Nest thermostat has actually been really useful for me.

mey 7y ago

I value privacy, my nest thermostat is the only IoT device in my house that talks to the internet or can be accessed remotely without a VPN. What I find most valuable is it programs itself. Am I cold? Turn it up a bit, hot? Turn it down a bit. Suddenly I have stopped having to adjust it at all. Even as life has changed. It has some nice other features, such as preheating/cooling, telling me how long it will take to get to temp, energy savings by allowing the electrical company to shift my cooling earlier before the afternoon rush. I bought my Nest before Google bought the company, and I will switch brands instead of buying one of the Google built devices, again over privacy considerations. Hilariously enough, we entered the name of the thermostat as HAL.

eslaught 7y ago
Ok, but what on this list actually requires an internet connection? I guess the integration with your power company. But aside from that? You could put a local AI model into the Nest, and it shouldn't need to talk to the internet at all. It can keep the data locally, and be programmed to draw inferences without help from the mothership. For some reason we've decided it's ok to gratuitously connect everything to the internet "just cause". Sort of like how data maximization has become a thing because the costs are low, so why not?
- xnyan 7y ago
  Posted elsewhere, but my A/C had a small leak and was slowly loosing efficiency. At peak heat it could not keep up, but I had no way of knowing that at work. My $99 Emerson Sensi messaged me that the cooling was not keeping up and there was a problem. I could turn off the unit remotely to prevent stress on the compressor and fixed the small leak well before I would have known without a internet enabled thermostat. I did A/C repair in college, fixing it early more than paid for the maybe 50 extra bucks wifi cost. The thermostat itself is on an isolated wifi network,
  - ChristianBundy 7y ago
    That doesn't answer the question: why does that require internet access?

heavyset_go 7y ago

> What does having a Nest thermostat get you? Nothing that a programmable thermostat plus a Home Assistant instance won't get you.

kelnos 7y ago
I run OpenHAB at home (and have tried HA), but setting all this up is not in the wheelhouse of the majority of people. Doing the in-home setup is difficult enough, but safely exposing it to the internet is not something I'd ever ask a non-technical person to do. Meanwhile, you just swap your old thermostat with the Nest, tell it how to get to your wifi, install an app on your phone, and you're done.
- rtkwe 7y ago
  Yeah that's what a lot of the responses in this thread don't get or dismiss. These things could be run in a much more privacy protecting way but that comes with all sorts of configuration and setup headaches that most people don't want to deal with. And being able to access the devices from anywhere is a feature most people want even if it's only useful occasionally and a central API running all interactions means if it works while you're home it will work anywhere rather than it working while you're home then not working because something something DynDNS/NAT.
- heavyset_go 7y ago
  I think you're overestimating how difficult it is to setup a smart device with something like Nabu Casa's Home Assistant Cloud.
  - maccard 7y ago
    And youre over estimating the technical literacy of the average person. This is the first time I've heard of nabu casa, I just checked out their website and they're immediately talking about yaml, I've browsed every page I can see and I can't see anything about setting it up. Another labe mentionrd docker and JWT as troubleshooting steps - that's too much for 99.99999% of people to ever use.

Mirioron 7y ago

These kinds of devices are just slightly better than the old ones, because it's possible to programmatically control them. They would be an interesting idea, because they offer slightly better convenience than the previous devices, but they are such a huge privacy violation that they aren't worth it. Take out the privacy violating parts and they could be interesting products.

mochomocha 7y ago

It gets you troubles. Just bought a house that had some installed. Had weird "lost connection" failures, and the "smartness" trying to learn what's the right temperature for you doesn't work. After two months, I still have to wake up in the middle of the night to manually reset the temperature to something reasonable.

xnyan 7y ago

I have a cheaper thermostat with wifi, a few months ago it alerted me that the temperature had been more than 5 degrees over setpoint for half an hour and something was probably broken. I was able to remotely shut off the unit and after I came home from work, sure enough the coils had iced over due to a refrigerant leak. It was only hot enough for this to happen at the peak of the heat when I was at work. I was able to catch the problem early and fix it cheaply all for the cost of a thermostat (Emerson Sensi) about $40 more than a non wifi model.

icebraining 7y ago
Is there any advantage in involving you in the loop, though? Couldn't it just shutdown upon detecting the problem and turn on a warning light for you to see when you got home?

JCBarry 7y ago

It is probably worth mentioning that the Google Nest Thermostats are one of the only Nest devices without a microphone. Source: https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9330256?hl=en https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9330256?hl=en

tareqak 7y ago
Thank you for this information 'JCBarry. I was legitimately alarmed and confused. I searched for the word “thermostat” in the article, and I didn’t find it, but I could easily be out of date with respect to Google’s Nest and IoT branding. Thanks again,
- JCBarry 7y ago
  Happy to help!

exclusiv 7y ago

A programmable keypad is nice. I have a Z-wave one which can notify my Smarthings hub which notifies me when it's locked or unlocked. The Nest thermostat allows me to control the heat remotely. These two things are great for rental properties. Guests often forget to lock the door, I have records of when guests or maintenance people are coming or going, I can adjust the heat to 55 when nobody is there which saves a lot of money and more importantly I can ensure the heat is not turned off (which could cause frozen pipes) which some guests do for some reason. Outside of a rental, these things aren't as useful. But I'd still get a programmable keypad (I've been running the Yale touchscreen ones in the mountains for years). It's very handy for friends or maintenance and with a Smartthings hub you can unlock the door remotely and give no code. Or give a code and change it later. I got the one with a key backup just in case but I haven't had the touchscreen fail yet. I do run the Nest cameras outside and they've been nice to check snow levels, bust the spa maintenance guy for not even showing up, expose a neighbor for stealing firewood and rocks, expose guests who brought an actual bus full of people, expose another guest for filming a movie, and plenty of other things that have been helpful documentation. It's kind of crazy how far the Nest cams pick up audio and how clear it is. So be cautious of these things because they are constantly recording and it makes it easy to scrub for footage (detects and quick links to voices, dogs barking, people, etc). I only listen to the audio when it's applicable (guests are doing something they shouldn't) but I'd imagine that some homeowners are watching and listening for fun.

J5892 7y ago
I'm assuming that by rental property you mean AirBNB or some other short term rentals. I would never be okay with my landlord controlling or monitoring my thermostat.
barneygale 7y ago
> The Nest thermostat allows me to control the heat remotely. On a flat you're renting out? That's insanely unethical.
- ahupp 7y ago
  The comment specifically says: "I can adjust the heat to 55 when nobody is there which saves a lot of money and more importantly I can ensure the heat is not turned off (which could cause frozen pipes) which some guests do for some reason."

gfo 7y ago

Don't forget they also have a smoke/CO2 monitor. I use that because it would be really handy to know about those being issues prior to coming home. Of course, the next question is always "How do I confirm this?" but if it means I can catch those problems sooner, regardless of whether I'm home, I'd rather do that. And yet, this article has me re-thinking it. Maybe removing the Nest alarm and getting Simplisafe's detector is the better move (but I need to look into theirs first).

nsxwolf 7y ago

They look cool and the knob has a nice feel to it.

throwawaymanbot 7y ago

Does it HAVE to record conversations? It could do all you want but be less Zuckerbergian.

marcosdumay 7y ago

Why does a thermostat integrate with cameras and microphones anyway? Do they have any internal one? Anyway, I do really want a smart home lock. Just changing the shape of the keys so that they would stop puncturing my pockets when I walk would be enough of a gain. I also want a programmable bedroom light that can slowly dim on at morning. I don't have those because the costs are much higher than the benefits. I'm sure a smart lock will lock me out of home at some point, with no way in. A smart light will also fail at the worst possible way, and I don't want to deal with it.

seandougall 7y ago
> I also want a programmable bedroom light that can slowly dim on at morning. FWIW, a lot of cheap CFL bulbs do this on their own. It's one of the reasons I hate CFLs for most uses, but I've come to appreciate that the light in my kids' room starts at about half (perceived) brightness and takes a minute or two to warm up.
- Marsymars 7y ago
  I think the key part is that the bulbs come on automatically, not necessarily the ramping up of brightness. I don't really care about brightness ramping, I just have my bedroom Hue bulbs come on at max brightness at 6500K at 5:00 every morning, switch to 2700K at noon, and 2000K (and dimmer) at 20:00.
errantspark 7y ago
> also want a programmable bedroom light that can slowly dim on at morning Oh you absolutely do, this has been by far the best (arguably only) benefit I've seen from home automation. Sunrise is now whenever is convenient. The lights slowly come on over 30 minutes and it feels like I'll wake up at some convenient time for my body during that period, rather than having my sleep interrupted by an infuriating alarm. > A smart light will also fail at the worst possible way, and I don't want to deal with it. I haven't had any problems with mine (v1 hues), they default to working like normal bulbs so the worst case scenario is you toggle the switch off and on and you get an illuminated lightbulb every time. Also (true of any LED light) they will continue to work even after you've shattered the glass by accident. > changing the shape of the keys so that they would stop puncturing my pockets when I walk Have you considered alternate solutions such as less-tight pants? ;P

balabaster 7y ago

I have an Ecobee rather than a Nest, but I had the Nest before I moved and the one thing I note is that it having access to temperatures and weather outside the house means it can choose just to run fans to circulate the air from outside to regulate the temperature inside instead of running the heating or AC. If it knows the outside temperature is the temperature you want inside, it can just shut everything off. A dumb thermostat only knows what the inside temperature is... or more specifically, when the little coil bends to connect the electrodes, it trips the heating on until the coil bends the other way and disconnects them. If the external temperature was sufficient, your thermostat could've chosen to circulate external air into the house instead of running the heating. Also, it knows when you're not home, so it can then just shut down everything until temperatures would cause other problems such as frozen pipes. Additionally, you just dial it to where you're comfortable and if you get too hot or cold, adjust it again. It learns what temperature you like it at at certain times of day, it takes a week or two to really get to know you, but once it does, it just keeps the temperature comfortable and you rarely have to touch it or even look at it after that without you needing to go through a complex programming process like you do with most other thermostats. That's pretty much what a smart thermostat gets you. Whether or not you consider that useful or a good use case for your needs is really down to your own evaluation. I like that my thermostat is smart enough to be able to regulate the temperature in my house without needing to kick on the AC or heating, which reduces my power consumption somewhat and is somewhat better for the environment, but is also better for my wallet.

_-___________-_ 7y ago
The system in my house just has an exterior temperature sensor. You don't need an Internet connection to know the temperature outside your house, and the "outside temperature" it's getting from the Internet may be quite different than the temperature of the air outside your house anyway. Knowing when you're home can also be done quite well without any Internet access - just see if your mobile device recently associated to the wifi. These things can trivially be built without the privacy concerns. The business model might be a bit harder if you can't collect the data, though...
- 7y ago

ocdtrekkie 7y ago

I live in an area where I can go from heat to cool needs in a single day, and I have pets with sensitive temperature needs. So I have a thermostat I can control via the Internet. However, it is not a Nest, and only I can control it. It's not connected to any account or cloud service. It doesn't have direct IP connectivity at all, so it can't be turned into a part of a botnet. And it works just fine without the Internet.

rch 7y ago

People managing AirBnB checkouts in cold, remote areas appreciate being able to check and adjust the thermostat remotely.

dreamcompiler 7y ago

I loved my Nest thermostat when I first bought it. I could change the set point with my phone without getting out of bed, or set the house to the right temperature before I got home. It would automatically go into energy-saving mode if nobody was home. I could track my long-term energy usage with an app on my phone. That was all very nice, but then Nest blew it. They kept forcing firmware updates to the thermostat that I had no control over. Some of them bricked the device for a period of time; some merely changed the UI so that options on the thermostat moved around or literally disappeared. I finally got fed up and reset the thing and refused to give it my wifi password. Then Google bought Nest which made me doubly sure I'll never connect the thing again. Now it just works as an ordinary dumb thermostat. A rather expensive dumb thermostat, but it does the job. The extra features that came from connectivity are not worth the company's disrespect for my right to control the devices in my home.

homero 7y ago
I got a dumb but wifi Sensi thermostat, glad i did
- rbritton 7y ago
  I replaced my Nest with a Sensi once Google took over. In doing so, I extensively researched the available options searching for an acceptable one that could be used without a cloud server somewhere, but those just don’t exist in any decent-looking package. Choosing the Sensi was a compromise on settling for a company not likely to go out of business or discontinue the device within the near future and whose core business doesn’t conflict with keeping any data private.
- dreamcompiler 7y ago
  From the Sensi website: "As existing features are enhanced and new features are released, your thermostat software is kept up-to-date automatically." No thanks. Been there, done that. With a simple device like a thermostat, I don't want the thing changing all the time. Security updates are fine but every update needs to be under my control and the device should be designed with a mechanical switch that restores the previous version of the firmware. And really even security updates should be unnecessary if the code is written in a type-safe language with good security practices.

bdcravens 7y ago

> What am I missing by not having internet connected stuff? I'd say that's a question that can be asked of anything that's Internet-connected. Phones, watches, TVs, cars, etc. They probably all create a level of convenience, typically at some cost Like all costs it's up to each person to make a decision whether that cost is too great - usually these questions are really veiled value judgments on others' cost/benefit analyses.

finestkludge 7y ago

Nothing, in my opinion, but I do have a sort of funny story about IoT thermostats. My SO's dad is a gadgets guy, and he travels constantly for work. He is also incredibly vigilant about bills. They're the kind of family that can't touch the thermostat until a certain time of year, weighs insurance costs into every decision they make, etc. Anyways, when he was traveling—even in cold months—he would see the thermostat going up on his phone and panic, turning it down. His kids, who were freezing in the house, would turn it up again because winter, and several hours later the cycle would repeat. They were basically locked in a constant battle to warm their house against their miserly dad and the cloud.

nilram 7y ago
Classic story I heard was of a landlord who locked the thermostat in a plastic air-flow case. The college roommates who lived at the residence learned to strap an ice pack to it. Hilarity ensued when the landlord would come by to check on the heating system.
techsupporter 7y ago
This was also the subject of a Judge John Hodgman episode: https://www.maximumfun.org/judge-john-hodgman/judge-john-hodgman-episode-424-barbecuties https://www.maximumfun.org/judge-john-hodgman/judge-john-hod... (He’s the “PC guy” from the Apple commercials, among many other performances, and he has a podcast where he acts as a more cerebral and empathetic Judge Wapner, hearing “cases” and making rulings. The show has quite the internal lore, complete with local court rules, standing, and binding precedent.)

ubermonkey 7y ago

IMO? Nothing. I do have some WeMo switches on some lamps in our living room. I got them instead of fiddly-dip-switch timers before a vacation several years ago, and it turns out I like having them come on an X time automatically, and turn off at 10, when we typically go to bed. We never interact with them; it's great. But the thermostat is dumb (but programmable). The locks are all regular locks. We have no smart speaker (dear god WHY?). The TV is dumb. Why? Because I've spent 30 years in software, and my watchword is "don't put firmware in shit that doesn't fucking need firmware."