13 ms·

iPod godfather and ex-iPhone team launch previously stealth startup

172 points by outside1234 15y ago

cpeterso 15y ago
The startup is Nest Labs. Their product is an adaptive thermostat that learns your temperature preferences and schedule. It's much cooler (ha ha) than it sounds! http://www.nest.com/living-with-nest/index.html http://www.nest.com/living-with-nest/index.html What I want to know: who are these people in their demo videos setting their thermostat to 80+ (Fahrenheit) degrees?!
- leoc 15y ago
  The elderly might want it that high, I suppose?
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- ojbyrne 15y ago
  Saving money on air conditioning when you're away?
- wmblaettler 15y ago
  During the summer we've been, year by year, increasing our temperature by a degree to save on air conditioning costs, this past summer our thermostat was at 79/80 degrees.
Lewisham 15y ago
This sounds like a perfect startup idea: take one ignored segment that has an abnormally high amount of value, disrupt it, profit! I love it. However, it cuts both ways, people don't have obvious, specific problems with their thermostat (for the most part). It's a thing, it came with the house, it turns heat on and off, whatever. Why do I need to spend $250 on it? The very first thing (or maybe second, after the picture of the Nest) on the web site should be "See how much you can save!" with some guesstimates price-savings based on the state you're in, and when it will pay for itself. Or, if it doesn't pay for itself, how much fossil fuels/CO2 it saves, and what that translates to in conceivable units ("that's like saving 30 trees a year!"). Make it a product that provides an obvious, specific solution to a problem you didn't know you had. Right now, it looks like a luxury item for luxury people, and that's not the economy we're currently in. EDIT: I found this information right at the bottom of: http://www.nest.com/living-with-nest/index.html http://www.nest.com/living-with-nest/index.html , alongside "Download our white paper!" (ugh). This is what you're selling! Put it front and center!
- alphakappa 15y ago
  This is their friendly explanation http://www.nest.com/why-we-made-it/index.html http://www.nest.com/why-we-made-it/index.html
- jxcole 15y ago
  People didn't have obvious, specific problems with their CD players either. Or their cassette tape players for that matter. Are you saying the iPod was a bad idea?
  - Lewisham 15y ago
    Actually, cassette tapes did have obvious, specific problems. They degraded. The tape kept falling out. The quality wasn't very good. Fast-forwarding and rewinding wasn't great. CDs solved that. Then people wanted to take more of their music on the go, and MP3 players solved that. Look at DVD -> Blu-Ray. Blu-Ray has not had a good adoption. For most people, they don't see the difference between digital and HD (see the number of people who incorrectly tune their TVs to not use the HD channels on their HD TV). All the pain points were solved by VHS -> DVD.
  - achompas 15y ago
    People didn't have obvious, specific problems with their CD players either. I hated carrying around a clunky CD player plus a collection of CDs that I could lose at any moment. Fidgeting too much with the player would also, you know, scratch and destroy the physical media that stored my music. There were a number of obvious problems with CD players. Thermostats...not so much.
    - qq66 15y ago
      There's an obvious problem with thermostats... your heating bill. Many people have financial trouble caused by heating costs -- Nest's challenge will be to 1) create a product that actually reduces heating costs, 2) convince people they've done that, and 3) create an easy adoption plan (dead simple installation, and financing of the cost, or making a compelling investment case)
- 15y ago
WalterBright 15y ago
You'd think a thermostat should be a trivial device. But you'd be amazed at the complexity people come up with for thermostats, including hundred page manuals, etc., and no way to turn the heat off.
- nakkali_kuere 15y ago
  I don't understand, why do we need a thermostat in house? Isn't the normal environmental temperature outside just good. Why artificially change it?
  - waitwhat 15y ago
    The "normal environmental temperature outside" hasn't been good enough since the first caveman started a fire in his cave for warmth.
  - LaGrange 15y ago
    I don't know about California, but here in Poland it looks like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Poland#Climate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Poland#Climate And those are the nice averages. Sometimes (more often than you'd guess) the temperature decides to drop to a nice −20C. In the same place, in the same year, temperature in summer can get to 30C. I can easily agree that people over regulate temperature — 25C in winter or 20C in summer is probably not that optimal (I just don't do cooling, but offices do). But a lot of people live in areas where the outside temperature is just not an option.
  - splicer 15y ago
    Come visit Ontario in January.
TamDenholm 15y ago
My first thought was "Wow, Thermostats? Thats really boring!" but after a few minutes and looking at his products, hes a genius, this is a prime example of an industry run by dinosaurs that needs disruption.
oldstrangers 15y ago
From a business standpoint, it seems like Nest Labs will be spending a lot of their time explaining the reason their product is relevant to the consumer. The market is there, but like Tony said in the video, its at a contractor level. Rarely does a consumer decide they need to purchase a thermostat on their own. So if they're honestly planning to sell to consumers directly, they'll have to basically create a marketplace out of an uninterested and uninformed client base. Seems difficult, but rather interesting nonetheless.
- absconditus 15y ago
  Have you never seen the numerous thermostats for sale at a home improvement store?
  - oldstrangers 15y ago
    Nope, because I've never even thought about a thermostat outside of my limited interaction with it. Which is my point.
- Angostura 15y ago
  "Rarely does a consumer decide they need to purchase a thermostat on their own" That may be because (until now?) there is little to differentiate thermostats.
TamDenholm 15y ago
I assume its trivial for a device as advanced as this, but has anyone spotted if it supports Celsius? Not a big deal in an American market but i'd totally buy one for my home but we silly British people use the metric system.
- kloncks 15y ago
  Considering my American thermostat supports both, I wouldn't think this will be a problem. Making sure Celsius happens is much easier than other international problems. (Say, different currencies, a problem my startup is dealing with now).
- notatoad 15y ago
  from the zip-code prompt on the intitial configuration screen, it doesn't look like they're targeting the non-american market (at least not yet)
- outside1234 15y ago
  it supports celsius
wiredfool 15y ago
I want one of these. Actually, I want 6 of these, along with an interface to the wood stove. What I have are 6 independent programmable thermostats that each control an in wall heater, and a wood stove. I'd love data logging. I'd love all the sensing and intelligence. I want a thermocouple in the stove and in the flue and sensors to tell me when the dampers are in or out. Logged with house and outside temps. I wonder if I can hack a zigbee into the current wall units.
noonespecial 15y ago
I'm wondering about the installation part. It doesn't seem to me that the average user is just doing to go grab one and get it in himself. I made my own computerized replacement for the thermostat in my house(1) and discovered that there were about 5 different possible wiring patterns depending on if you've got heat pumps, multi-stage, e-heat, gas, etc. After much research I figured out how they are wired, how my house should be wired and... burned out a fuse on the circuit board inside the furnace because the original installer had switched 2 wires and just said "screw it" and left it that way. I had to remove and trace the circuit board with my fluke meter just to get my AC back. Its one thing for rich guys building their smart-house in Tahoe to choose this, but quite another for Joe average to go grab one at Home Depot and take it home and get it going. Calling your "Nest dealer" to schedule an install just seems like a nonstarter for the added cost this will add to what already seems pretty high. As a geek though, the wifi part seems pretty cool. As long as it was sufficiently open, it could have saved me a bunch of work making my own HVAC interface.(2) (1) My philosophy was that I didn't need a "thermostat" at all. The computer that does all of the other smart-house stuff for me should control the temperature as well. (2) Proliphix makes a pretty decent openly programmable WIFI enabled thermostat but they cost around $600.
- mcmc 15y ago
  So, how do the current thermostats get installed?
  - noonespecial 15y ago
    Off hand, I'd guess that the contractor who builds the house puts in the cheapest thing he can find, it works until it breaks and the HVAC guys get called "cuz the heat's broke". If a new thermostat is required, the cycle begins again. If this is indeed the case, then its no surprise that thermostats are the most boring, user unfriendly things imaginable because they are more or less universally selected by price alone.
    - enjo 15y ago
      Home depot commits to much aisle space to programmable thermostats for them to simply be a new build or even a contractor replacement. Anecdotally I certainly know several folks who have DIY'ed programmable thermostats into their homes.
SeoxyS 15y ago
This is brilliant. This is the kind of innovation that we should idolize. I feel like we tend to get excited about things like Facebook, Foursquare, Instagram or Color, if it combines all the right buzzwords like social, mobile and photos. We tend to forget what real innovation is. Well, this is it. You're taking a boring, underserved segment of the market and revolutionizing it. And guess what, the potential for social good and the environment is much greater when you redesign the thermostat, than when you make another social mobile picture-sharing service.
- k1ngofpancakes 15y ago
  I would agree that it breathes life into a pretty neglected piece of equipment, but my concern would be that it isn't in any way entertaining, and the common element in the great innovations as of late have all catered to just that; keeping people entertained. Its defintely an exciting idea, but I just can't see anybody become truly taken with their thermostat.Perhaps its a jaded world view, but I feel that there is great demand for games and distractions, and not necessarily quality products or innovation. I can't help but consider that RIM is struggling for market share, and its largely been attributed to a lack of innovative games/apps. I do agree that this product presents a greater benefit to the earth and humanity as a whole, but my concern is that the populous may not notice. Will enough people buy in to make this economically viable? I certainly hope so....
  - CognitiveLens 15y ago
    It sounds like they are actually trying to throw in some 'entertainment'/gamification features, according to the Wired article (http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/10/nest_thermostat/ http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/10/nest_thermostat/), such as a leaf icon (achievement badge) that shows up when you've set the temp to something eco-friendly. There's also a lot of potential with the web/mobile app, where system monitoring can be done in some interesting and interactive ways. I hate to bring in the cliches, but this actually has potential to have some kind of social media integration. A significant minority of people love keeping track of the personal data of their lives, and this can be another platform for exactly that.
- 15y ago
marcamillion 15y ago
I love this...this is something I have been thinking about a lot lately. Ever since I built my first web app, although it's not a major achievement, I have looked at the world so differently. There are so many little things that I look at and say, there MUST be a better way to do this....or...why does this still look so ugly? I am glad that Tony has done this with the Thermostat, but it just dawned on me that this could be Steve Jobs legacy. It is these startups that are founded by people that spent a few years working with Jobs that are so unhappy with the status quo that they have to build something themselves. The future looks bright. Even though I don't have central cooling here in Jamaica, I can definitely understand that Thermostat problem and I feel like buying one because it looks so sexy. It solves a major problem in an elegant way, and helps control my energy bill? Plus 1!
philjr 15y ago
There's some negativity here, but I have to say I'm impressed. This is a nice bit of low hanging fruit for a segway into smarter home technology, something we've been promised for ages but which has consistently failed to deliver IMHO. Add in the green factor and I think this has the potential to be a pretty damn good business with plenty of room for future product growth.
- noamsml 15y ago
  I was thinking about that. The power of the iPod, in retrospect, was getting an entertainment device into every pocket as much as it was being a good MP3 player. It was truly the Minimum Viable Product of the current-gen iPod Touches/iPhones. Who's to say this isn't the same thing with smart homes?
wooster 15y ago
This is genius. My parents have a variety of crappy programmable thermostats, none of which they can figure out (or I, given the amount of time I've spent with them… the devices always seem to reset to factory settings eventually). I will be buying at least one of these.
forgottenpaswrd 15y ago
I think it is a fantastic idea. The world needs more people caring about this kind of problems.
rmoriz 15y ago
Home automation AND iOS devices would definitly be the next megatrend. Hopefully they will stick to already existing implementation standards (C-BUS, X10) or develop a free usable standard (beware of patents) ah, and please offer a RESTful api for the rest of us :)
notatoad 15y ago
it sounds like a pretty awesome idea, but lithium ion battery powered, with wi-fi and bright LCD? i'd rather not have to remember to change the batteries in my thermostat every couple of days.
- chrisbennet 15y ago
  A mechanical thermostat (like the round ones) is just a switch i.e. not powered. To retrofit one of these with an electronic version you need batteries because there isn't a completed circuit to run it when the heat/AC is "Off". When the heat/AC is "On" you could recharge them.
- coob 15y ago
  They're wired into the mains.
- unwind 15y ago
  Lithium/ion batteries are (very good) rechargeable cells, the expectation should be to recharge them. As others have pointed out, it seems it does this whenever it has power.
pedalpete 15y ago
Very cool. I wonder if they will one day interface with your local weather as well (or if it already does). The entire product is non-obvious, but when they've gone this far, seems they'd take the extra step to see if it is going to be 75 outside, and you like it at 70, and it is currently 68, to not turn on the heater, but use the air-conditioner to keep things cool.
- huffman 15y ago
  Their site lists all the ways that it learns and adapts here http://www.nest.com/inside-and-out/#learns http://www.nest.com/inside-and-out/#learns - one of the ways uses the weather
pyoung 15y ago
This is genius. If they can prove that the thermostat actually results in significant energy savings, there is potential to take advantage of utility sponsored rebates for the device in certain states. Also, there is the potential to hook this up to the smart grid, allowing utilities to remotely adjust thermostat settings based on the supply/demand balance on the grid. (Utilities would pay for this capability, further offsetting the costs of the device).
nakkali_kuere 15y ago
Adjust room temperature, Siri! It's a little cold in here.
- lelf 15y ago
  I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.
yread 15y ago
> He was shocked there wasn’t a single attractive thermostat on the market so he decided to build his own. This. I wish I had the balls to do the same!
- FrojoS 15y ago
  Do you also have the necessary capital behind it? Hardware companies need a lot more financial investment.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
aoporto 15y ago
Great example of taking on an existing market that needs an injection of innovation. Programmable thermostats are easy to install (I installed mine years ago) and can save you lots of money if used properly, but their UIs are terrible. Lots of buttons and inherently unintuitive. I'm surprised I remember how to reset the filter replacement alert. There is a market need certainly, but is their target market big enough to support the business? I think if you can encourage users to adopt these based on the cost savings then the odds will be better. Lots of home owners will be interested in saving money on their utility bills. Just make sure the UI and features enable users to make efficient use of their HVAC systems. There will definitely have to be a campaign to educate consumers as to why they need this product.
av500 15y ago
nice thing, but instead of (re-)heating your home all the time "to the point", it makes much more sense to keep it at (almost) constant temperature by not letting the heat escape, which means good insulation.
- ianferrel 15y ago
  Good insulation is orthogonal to a thermostat. Regardless of how good your insulation is, you will occasionally need to adjust the temperature by active means (in most climates). For that, you need a thermostat.
Steko 15y ago
I love this idea and wish Fadell and Nest the best. Also, some photorshadowing: http://img683.imageshack.us/img683/8330/galaxytherm.jpg http://img683.imageshack.us/img683/8330/galaxytherm.jpg
ethank 15y ago
If this supported the Insteon protocol life would be really really good in my house. No word on their site if it does or not. Right now I have a Venstar thermostat that is hooked into Insteon on my MacMini server.
- doublerebel 15y ago
  I really hope they support existing protocols, Insteon being my first choice as well. But, it also won't suprise me if they go Apple-style proprietary, and I won't be a customer. If they truly care about efficiency then interoperability is a must. It's wasteful when you have to buy and create new products just for compatibility.
  - ethank 15y ago
    If they add an API, you could theoretically get your Insteon controller (I use Indigo from Perceptive Automation) to pull from it, or maybe Indigo could support its protocol.
mgkimsal 15y ago
I've got 2 thermostats in the house right now - do I need two nests? Or can they come up with a way for one to control both existing systems? Or have two, but let each one control the other, so I don't have to go up/down stairs to make a change (remote automation even better).
achompas 15y ago
You don't want to be overly cynical of any ideas, but this is a non-starter for consumers. Thermostats are fine as-is: they could use a new UX, but do you really want to pay $249 (plus a $120 install fee) for that touch-up? Here's why this thing will sell like gangbusters, though: it's aesthetically appealing. Homebuilders put aesthetically-appealing items in their new homes. When you're purchasing a house for six figures, are you really nitpicking a $375 item? No--you're too worried about the flooring or the insulation or the plumbing or ceiling support or any other number of things. You'll glance at the thermostat, smile, then remember that you need to pull out some code-violating wiring. Then you're off again. I predict a hit, but not in the B2C way many people are thinking about. People will implicitly pay for this thermostat in new homes, but they won't explicitly go out of their way to upgrade old thermostats.
- atourgates 15y ago
  Like others have mentioned, you've got to focus on the energy savings to justify the cost. For some reason Nest has hidden this away in their whitepaper. But - if you take the time to read that - you find, nested (ha ha - get it) towards the end, the conclusions of their simulations. As a quick aside, let me just say, that for a company essentially selling excellent product design - they did a shit job at presenting quantifiable, easy to understand energy savings data. Anyway, they devided their simulated case studies into two main groups, people who are gone from the house 8-hours a day 5-days a week (e.g. - your average working professional), and people who aren't (e.g. people with kids at home, or who work from home). They found that the people gone from the house 9-5 will save an average of $227/yr, and people who need to keep their homes comfortable during the day will save an average of $116/yr. These savings of course go up if you take a long vacation (they estimate 4 weeks of vacation will add an additional $58-$68 of savings), or if you follow the suggestions of the thermostat to lower or raise your comfort-temp by 1° (an additional $54-$60). At my work, we do quite a bit of marketing for energy-efficiency companies. The most effective thing they can do is to go into a business or home and say, "We're going to install this energy-saving equipment. We'll pay for the install, and you can pay us back out of the energy savings. After the installation is paid off (usually 1-3 years with the companies we do work for) the savings go straight into your pocket." Now - this might not be possible with this specific device, but they could at least make the argument that the device will pay for itself in ~3 years. I may or may not want to spend $375 for a fancy thermostat, but that purchase barrier would be much easier to overcome if I could tell myself that it'd pay for itself in a few years. I'm not sure why this isn't front and center on Nest's site. There might be some liability issues since they've only run simulations, and don't have actual user data. But it seems like a miss on their part.
scottschulthess 15y ago
I don't understand why they couldnt leverage location services for iphone users and just lower the tempature whenever no one is home automatically. Of course, I have a dog so..

172 points by outside1234 15y ago

The startup is Nest Labs. Their product is an adaptive thermostat that learns your temperature preferences and schedule. It's much cooler (ha ha) than it sounds! http://www.nest.com/living-with-nest/index.html http://www.nest.com/living-with-nest/index.html What I want to know: who are these people in their demo videos setting their thermostat to 80+ (Fahrenheit) degrees?!

leoc 15y ago
The elderly might want it that high, I suppose?
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
ojbyrne 15y ago
Saving money on air conditioning when you're away?
wmblaettler 15y ago
During the summer we've been, year by year, increasing our temperature by a degree to save on air conditioning costs, this past summer our thermostat was at 79/80 degrees.

Lewisham 15y ago

This sounds like a perfect startup idea: take one ignored segment that has an abnormally high amount of value, disrupt it, profit! I love it. However, it cuts both ways, people don't have obvious, specific problems with their thermostat (for the most part). It's a thing, it came with the house, it turns heat on and off, whatever. Why do I need to spend $250 on it? The very first thing (or maybe second, after the picture of the Nest) on the web site should be "See how much you can save!" with some guesstimates price-savings based on the state you're in, and when it will pay for itself. Or, if it doesn't pay for itself, how much fossil fuels/CO2 it saves, and what that translates to in conceivable units ("that's like saving 30 trees a year!"). Make it a product that provides an obvious, specific solution to a problem you didn't know you had. Right now, it looks like a luxury item for luxury people, and that's not the economy we're currently in. EDIT: I found this information right at the bottom of: http://www.nest.com/living-with-nest/index.html http://www.nest.com/living-with-nest/index.html , alongside "Download our white paper!" (ugh). This is what you're selling! Put it front and center!

alphakappa 15y ago
This is their friendly explanation http://www.nest.com/why-we-made-it/index.html http://www.nest.com/why-we-made-it/index.html
jxcole 15y ago
People didn't have obvious, specific problems with their CD players either. Or their cassette tape players for that matter. Are you saying the iPod was a bad idea?
- Lewisham 15y ago
  Actually, cassette tapes did have obvious, specific problems. They degraded. The tape kept falling out. The quality wasn't very good. Fast-forwarding and rewinding wasn't great. CDs solved that. Then people wanted to take more of their music on the go, and MP3 players solved that. Look at DVD -> Blu-Ray. Blu-Ray has not had a good adoption. For most people, they don't see the difference between digital and HD (see the number of people who incorrectly tune their TVs to not use the HD channels on their HD TV). All the pain points were solved by VHS -> DVD.
- achompas 15y ago
  People didn't have obvious, specific problems with their CD players either. I hated carrying around a clunky CD player plus a collection of CDs that I could lose at any moment. Fidgeting too much with the player would also, you know, scratch and destroy the physical media that stored my music. There were a number of obvious problems with CD players. Thermostats...not so much.
  - qq66 15y ago
    There's an obvious problem with thermostats... your heating bill. Many people have financial trouble caused by heating costs -- Nest's challenge will be to 1) create a product that actually reduces heating costs, 2) convince people they've done that, and 3) create an easy adoption plan (dead simple installation, and financing of the cost, or making a compelling investment case)
15y ago

WalterBright 15y ago

You'd think a thermostat should be a trivial device. But you'd be amazed at the complexity people come up with for thermostats, including hundred page manuals, etc., and no way to turn the heat off.

nakkali_kuere 15y ago
I don't understand, why do we need a thermostat in house? Isn't the normal environmental temperature outside just good. Why artificially change it?
- waitwhat 15y ago
  The "normal environmental temperature outside" hasn't been good enough since the first caveman started a fire in his cave for warmth.
- LaGrange 15y ago
  I don't know about California, but here in Poland it looks like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Poland#Climate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Poland#Climate And those are the nice averages. Sometimes (more often than you'd guess) the temperature decides to drop to a nice −20C. In the same place, in the same year, temperature in summer can get to 30C. I can easily agree that people over regulate temperature — 25C in winter or 20C in summer is probably not that optimal (I just don't do cooling, but offices do). But a lot of people live in areas where the outside temperature is just not an option.
- splicer 15y ago
  Come visit Ontario in January.

TamDenholm 15y ago

My first thought was "Wow, Thermostats? Thats really boring!" but after a few minutes and looking at his products, hes a genius, this is a prime example of an industry run by dinosaurs that needs disruption.

oldstrangers 15y ago

From a business standpoint, it seems like Nest Labs will be spending a lot of their time explaining the reason their product is relevant to the consumer. The market is there, but like Tony said in the video, its at a contractor level. Rarely does a consumer decide they need to purchase a thermostat on their own. So if they're honestly planning to sell to consumers directly, they'll have to basically create a marketplace out of an uninterested and uninformed client base. Seems difficult, but rather interesting nonetheless.

absconditus 15y ago
Have you never seen the numerous thermostats for sale at a home improvement store?
- oldstrangers 15y ago
  Nope, because I've never even thought about a thermostat outside of my limited interaction with it. Which is my point.
Angostura 15y ago
"Rarely does a consumer decide they need to purchase a thermostat on their own" That may be because (until now?) there is little to differentiate thermostats.

TamDenholm 15y ago

I assume its trivial for a device as advanced as this, but has anyone spotted if it supports Celsius? Not a big deal in an American market but i'd totally buy one for my home but we silly British people use the metric system.

kloncks 15y ago
Considering my American thermostat supports both, I wouldn't think this will be a problem. Making sure Celsius happens is much easier than other international problems. (Say, different currencies, a problem my startup is dealing with now).
notatoad 15y ago
from the zip-code prompt on the intitial configuration screen, it doesn't look like they're targeting the non-american market (at least not yet)
outside1234 15y ago
it supports celsius

wiredfool 15y ago

I want one of these. Actually, I want 6 of these, along with an interface to the wood stove. What I have are 6 independent programmable thermostats that each control an in wall heater, and a wood stove. I'd love data logging. I'd love all the sensing and intelligence. I want a thermocouple in the stove and in the flue and sensors to tell me when the dampers are in or out. Logged with house and outside temps. I wonder if I can hack a zigbee into the current wall units.

noonespecial 15y ago

I'm wondering about the installation part. It doesn't seem to me that the average user is just doing to go grab one and get it in himself. I made my own computerized replacement for the thermostat in my house(1) and discovered that there were about 5 different possible wiring patterns depending on if you've got heat pumps, multi-stage, e-heat, gas, etc. After much research I figured out how they are wired, how my house should be wired and... burned out a fuse on the circuit board inside the furnace because the original installer had switched 2 wires and just said "screw it" and left it that way. I had to remove and trace the circuit board with my fluke meter just to get my AC back. Its one thing for rich guys building their smart-house in Tahoe to choose this, but quite another for Joe average to go grab one at Home Depot and take it home and get it going. Calling your "Nest dealer" to schedule an install just seems like a nonstarter for the added cost this will add to what already seems pretty high. As a geek though, the wifi part seems pretty cool. As long as it was sufficiently open, it could have saved me a bunch of work making my own HVAC interface.(2) (1) My philosophy was that I didn't need a "thermostat" at all. The computer that does all of the other smart-house stuff for me should control the temperature as well. (2) Proliphix makes a pretty decent openly programmable WIFI enabled thermostat but they cost around $600.

mcmc 15y ago
So, how do the current thermostats get installed?
- noonespecial 15y ago
  Off hand, I'd guess that the contractor who builds the house puts in the cheapest thing he can find, it works until it breaks and the HVAC guys get called "cuz the heat's broke". If a new thermostat is required, the cycle begins again. If this is indeed the case, then its no surprise that thermostats are the most boring, user unfriendly things imaginable because they are more or less universally selected by price alone.
  - enjo 15y ago
    Home depot commits to much aisle space to programmable thermostats for them to simply be a new build or even a contractor replacement. Anecdotally I certainly know several folks who have DIY'ed programmable thermostats into their homes.

SeoxyS 15y ago

This is brilliant. This is the kind of innovation that we should idolize. I feel like we tend to get excited about things like Facebook, Foursquare, Instagram or Color, if it combines all the right buzzwords like social, mobile and photos. We tend to forget what real innovation is. Well, this is it. You're taking a boring, underserved segment of the market and revolutionizing it. And guess what, the potential for social good and the environment is much greater when you redesign the thermostat, than when you make another social mobile picture-sharing service.

k1ngofpancakes 15y ago
I would agree that it breathes life into a pretty neglected piece of equipment, but my concern would be that it isn't in any way entertaining, and the common element in the great innovations as of late have all catered to just that; keeping people entertained. Its defintely an exciting idea, but I just can't see anybody become truly taken with their thermostat.Perhaps its a jaded world view, but I feel that there is great demand for games and distractions, and not necessarily quality products or innovation. I can't help but consider that RIM is struggling for market share, and its largely been attributed to a lack of innovative games/apps. I do agree that this product presents a greater benefit to the earth and humanity as a whole, but my concern is that the populous may not notice. Will enough people buy in to make this economically viable? I certainly hope so....
- CognitiveLens 15y ago
  It sounds like they are actually trying to throw in some 'entertainment'/gamification features, according to the Wired article (http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/10/nest_thermostat/ http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/10/nest_thermostat/), such as a leaf icon (achievement badge) that shows up when you've set the temp to something eco-friendly. There's also a lot of potential with the web/mobile app, where system monitoring can be done in some interesting and interactive ways. I hate to bring in the cliches, but this actually has potential to have some kind of social media integration. A significant minority of people love keeping track of the personal data of their lives, and this can be another platform for exactly that.
15y ago

marcamillion 15y ago

I love this...this is something I have been thinking about a lot lately. Ever since I built my first web app, although it's not a major achievement, I have looked at the world so differently. There are so many little things that I look at and say, there MUST be a better way to do this....or...why does this still look so ugly? I am glad that Tony has done this with the Thermostat, but it just dawned on me that this could be Steve Jobs legacy. It is these startups that are founded by people that spent a few years working with Jobs that are so unhappy with the status quo that they have to build something themselves. The future looks bright. Even though I don't have central cooling here in Jamaica, I can definitely understand that Thermostat problem and I feel like buying one because it looks so sexy. It solves a major problem in an elegant way, and helps control my energy bill? Plus 1!

philjr 15y ago

There's some negativity here, but I have to say I'm impressed. This is a nice bit of low hanging fruit for a segway into smarter home technology, something we've been promised for ages but which has consistently failed to deliver IMHO. Add in the green factor and I think this has the potential to be a pretty damn good business with plenty of room for future product growth.

noamsml 15y ago
I was thinking about that. The power of the iPod, in retrospect, was getting an entertainment device into every pocket as much as it was being a good MP3 player. It was truly the Minimum Viable Product of the current-gen iPod Touches/iPhones. Who's to say this isn't the same thing with smart homes?

wooster 15y ago

This is genius. My parents have a variety of crappy programmable thermostats, none of which they can figure out (or I, given the amount of time I've spent with them… the devices always seem to reset to factory settings eventually). I will be buying at least one of these.

forgottenpaswrd 15y ago

I think it is a fantastic idea. The world needs more people caring about this kind of problems.

rmoriz 15y ago

Home automation AND iOS devices would definitly be the next megatrend. Hopefully they will stick to already existing implementation standards (C-BUS, X10) or develop a free usable standard (beware of patents) ah, and please offer a RESTful api for the rest of us :)

notatoad 15y ago

it sounds like a pretty awesome idea, but lithium ion battery powered, with wi-fi and bright LCD? i'd rather not have to remember to change the batteries in my thermostat every couple of days.

chrisbennet 15y ago
A mechanical thermostat (like the round ones) is just a switch i.e. not powered. To retrofit one of these with an electronic version you need batteries because there isn't a completed circuit to run it when the heat/AC is "Off". When the heat/AC is "On" you could recharge them.
coob 15y ago
They're wired into the mains.
unwind 15y ago
Lithium/ion batteries are (very good) rechargeable cells, the expectation should be to recharge them. As others have pointed out, it seems it does this whenever it has power.

pedalpete 15y ago

Very cool. I wonder if they will one day interface with your local weather as well (or if it already does). The entire product is non-obvious, but when they've gone this far, seems they'd take the extra step to see if it is going to be 75 outside, and you like it at 70, and it is currently 68, to not turn on the heater, but use the air-conditioner to keep things cool.

huffman 15y ago
Their site lists all the ways that it learns and adapts here http://www.nest.com/inside-and-out/#learns http://www.nest.com/inside-and-out/#learns - one of the ways uses the weather

pyoung 15y ago

This is genius. If they can prove that the thermostat actually results in significant energy savings, there is potential to take advantage of utility sponsored rebates for the device in certain states. Also, there is the potential to hook this up to the smart grid, allowing utilities to remotely adjust thermostat settings based on the supply/demand balance on the grid. (Utilities would pay for this capability, further offsetting the costs of the device).

nakkali_kuere 15y ago

Adjust room temperature, Siri! It's a little cold in here.

lelf 15y ago
I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

yread 15y ago

> He was shocked there wasn’t a single attractive thermostat on the market so he decided to build his own. This. I wish I had the balls to do the same!

FrojoS 15y ago
Do you also have the necessary capital behind it? Hardware companies need a lot more financial investment.

deleted 15y ago

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aoporto 15y ago

Great example of taking on an existing market that needs an injection of innovation. Programmable thermostats are easy to install (I installed mine years ago) and can save you lots of money if used properly, but their UIs are terrible. Lots of buttons and inherently unintuitive. I'm surprised I remember how to reset the filter replacement alert. There is a market need certainly, but is their target market big enough to support the business? I think if you can encourage users to adopt these based on the cost savings then the odds will be better. Lots of home owners will be interested in saving money on their utility bills. Just make sure the UI and features enable users to make efficient use of their HVAC systems. There will definitely have to be a campaign to educate consumers as to why they need this product.

av500 15y ago

nice thing, but instead of (re-)heating your home all the time "to the point", it makes much more sense to keep it at (almost) constant temperature by not letting the heat escape, which means good insulation.

ianferrel 15y ago
Good insulation is orthogonal to a thermostat. Regardless of how good your insulation is, you will occasionally need to adjust the temperature by active means (in most climates). For that, you need a thermostat.

Steko 15y ago

I love this idea and wish Fadell and Nest the best. Also, some photorshadowing: http://img683.imageshack.us/img683/8330/galaxytherm.jpg http://img683.imageshack.us/img683/8330/galaxytherm.jpg

ethank 15y ago

If this supported the Insteon protocol life would be really really good in my house. No word on their site if it does or not. Right now I have a Venstar thermostat that is hooked into Insteon on my MacMini server.

doublerebel 15y ago
I really hope they support existing protocols, Insteon being my first choice as well. But, it also won't suprise me if they go Apple-style proprietary, and I won't be a customer. If they truly care about efficiency then interoperability is a must. It's wasteful when you have to buy and create new products just for compatibility.
- ethank 15y ago
  If they add an API, you could theoretically get your Insteon controller (I use Indigo from Perceptive Automation) to pull from it, or maybe Indigo could support its protocol.

mgkimsal 15y ago

I've got 2 thermostats in the house right now - do I need two nests? Or can they come up with a way for one to control both existing systems? Or have two, but let each one control the other, so I don't have to go up/down stairs to make a change (remote automation even better).

achompas 15y ago

You don't want to be overly cynical of any ideas, but this is a non-starter for consumers. Thermostats are fine as-is: they could use a new UX, but do you really want to pay $249 (plus a $120 install fee) for that touch-up? Here's why this thing will sell like gangbusters, though: it's aesthetically appealing. Homebuilders put aesthetically-appealing items in their new homes. When you're purchasing a house for six figures, are you really nitpicking a $375 item? No--you're too worried about the flooring or the insulation or the plumbing or ceiling support or any other number of things. You'll glance at the thermostat, smile, then remember that you need to pull out some code-violating wiring. Then you're off again. I predict a hit, but not in the B2C way many people are thinking about. People will implicitly pay for this thermostat in new homes, but they won't explicitly go out of their way to upgrade old thermostats.

atourgates 15y ago
Like others have mentioned, you've got to focus on the energy savings to justify the cost. For some reason Nest has hidden this away in their whitepaper. But - if you take the time to read that - you find, nested (ha ha - get it) towards the end, the conclusions of their simulations. As a quick aside, let me just say, that for a company essentially selling excellent product design - they did a shit job at presenting quantifiable, easy to understand energy savings data. Anyway, they devided their simulated case studies into two main groups, people who are gone from the house 8-hours a day 5-days a week (e.g. - your average working professional), and people who aren't (e.g. people with kids at home, or who work from home). They found that the people gone from the house 9-5 will save an average of $227/yr, and people who need to keep their homes comfortable during the day will save an average of $116/yr. These savings of course go up if you take a long vacation (they estimate 4 weeks of vacation will add an additional $58-$68 of savings), or if you follow the suggestions of the thermostat to lower or raise your comfort-temp by 1° (an additional $54-$60). At my work, we do quite a bit of marketing for energy-efficiency companies. The most effective thing they can do is to go into a business or home and say, "We're going to install this energy-saving equipment. We'll pay for the install, and you can pay us back out of the energy savings. After the installation is paid off (usually 1-3 years with the companies we do work for) the savings go straight into your pocket." Now - this might not be possible with this specific device, but they could at least make the argument that the device will pay for itself in ~3 years. I may or may not want to spend $375 for a fancy thermostat, but that purchase barrier would be much easier to overcome if I could tell myself that it'd pay for itself in a few years. I'm not sure why this isn't front and center on Nest's site. There might be some liability issues since they've only run simulations, and don't have actual user data. But it seems like a miss on their part.

scottschulthess 15y ago

I don't understand why they couldnt leverage location services for iphone users and just lower the tempature whenever no one is home automatically. Of course, I have a dog so..