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Hidden tech of the Nest Thermostat
- Jzush 4y agoIt’s literally a color coded plate you mount to the wall and click the unit in to. Took me less time to install then my doorbell.
- jacquesm 4y agoThis is how pretty much every wall mounted thermostat works. Not exactly a differentiating feature.
- NotYourLawyer 4y agoMine was pretty non-trivial to install (some weird heat pump system). The standard installation instructions didn’t apply and told me to get on the chat with google. The chat experience was really shockingly good, and I expected it to be pretty bad. There was no wait, the person was knowledgeable, and at the end they emailed me a picture of how to do the wiring.
- bmitc 4y agoOnly easy if your wires are colored and labeled correctly.
- symlinkk 4y agoSort of off topic, please let me know if this isn’t allowed, but does anyone have any strong opinions on heat pumps vs gas furnaces? And on single stage AC vs dual stage vs variable stage?
- bmitc 4y agoIf I ever redid the AC in my house, I would go with a mini-split system so that each individual area could be precisely controlled, and thus it would be more efficient.
- vitruvius 4y agoThe wiring base is the coolest part of this IMO. In the video Tony talks about how the leaf spring connectors physically reconfigure the circuitry when a wire is plugged in.
- jmole 4y agoThey don't really reconfigure the circuitry, they are themselves reconfigured when a wire is plugged in. What he's talking about is similar to technology that's been in 1/8" jacks for years and years: plug detection. If you look at this datasheet for example, pins 10 and 11 in the schematic can be used to detect insertion of the jack: https://www.switchcraft.com/assets/1/6/35RASMT8CHNTRX_CD.pdf https://www.switchcraft.com/assets/1/6/35RASMT8CHNTRX_CD.pdf
- jacquesm 4y agoAnd in almost every headphone connector since the 60's or so... That's how it used to switch the sound from the speakers to the headphones when you just plugged them in.
- gertlex 4y agoCool, had wondered how old that feature was. Side note; Not sure I've heard 3.5mm connectors called 1/8" connectors before, though I have heard of the larger 1/4" connectors.
- OJFord 4y agoAs 'scrolljacking' goes, this is excellent, I actually really like the design - showing multiple angles/layers without taking up so much vertical space with multiple images, since it changes (instead of moving) as you scroll.
- jabroni_salad 4y agoThat is because it does not actually take control away from you with any sticky/magnetic spots. A lot of scrolljack presentations have a really laggy pagination that is somehow about as precise as fast rewinding your DVR was back in 2011.
- OJFord 4y agoYes, that's a sure way to make it bad. I don't think it's given (as a sibling comment to yours suggests) that simply not doing that is sufficient for any other scroll manipulation being fine though. The intention's always good, I think, it just rarely is as nice as the author felt it would be.
- breakfastduck 4y agobig difference between scrolljacking and just using the scroll position for something. This is a legit good use of it, because the actual scroll behaves exactly the same as any other page.
- mFixman 4y agoI just wish it didn't have the giant useless light/dark mode button covering a chunk of the screen.
- Spare_account 4y agoI'm about to switch to desktop to see this, because I was just browsing on Firefox (on Android) and it was a complete mess
- adolph 4y agoThe video of Tony Fadell talking about the design and history and thought that went into the interior parts was very entertaining.
- odysseus 4y agoFor more like this, check out Fadell's interview with Lex Fridman: https://lexfridman.com/tony-fadell/ https://lexfridman.com/tony-fadell/
- last_responder 4y ago"Up to this point, installation was so complicated that it required a professional. " Not even remotely true. The Nest wires the same as any other thermostat. Prior to the Nest there were plenty of inexpensive to high end devices with simple instructions included .
- mmastrac 4y agoAnd funny enough, it probably caused more issues because installations without a common wire would trigger short-cycling of the HVAC as it tried to draw power from the furnace wires.
- crmd 4y agoCan you elaborate? I installed my nest years ago without a common wire and it…seems to work but I have horrendous gas bills and the system cycles often, but I attributed both of these to the poor insulation of my 120 year old building.
- roperj 4y agoIf you have no common wire you have no return path for current so that you can power a consuming device. Original thermostats were entirely electromechanical switches with no power requirements. The Nest gets around the common requirement by cheating - it charges a rechargeable battery by leeching current into the signal wires. If the endpoint is a coil on a relay or solenoid, this usually causes no problem, it often causes no problem if the relay is solid state, but on some equipment that return current will switch on the equipment when it tries to charge its own battery. In other cases it won’t charge at all. Usually it’s quite clear if this happening as the equipment will be cycling even with no call for heat.
- jacquesm 4y agoYes, what happens is that the power draw is large enough to cause the heater to see that as a demand for heat. There are little converters for this that ensure that the thermostat has enough power to run and the heater only sees a potential free switch when there is actual demand. Google 'Nest Thermostat C-wire adapter'. This is especially convenient if you'd otherwise have to run new wiring which can require a lot of work.
- mfer 4y agoAn interesting element to this is knowledge and ability to do work on ones own house. In the US it used to be required that men take shop class. It shifted into being offered for both boys and girls for many years. Then it was phased out by in large. Those who took hands on classes like these could read the simple instructions with a traditional thermostat or even a Nest and easily install it. They were comfortable with a handful of low voltage wires, some screws, and a simple diagram. I wonder how the lack of hands on practical teaching in schools has impacted folks comfort with handling these fairly simple tasks.
- greesil 4y agoWe watch YouTube videos now for this. /shrug
- mfer 4y agoI’ve talked to a lot of people who aren’t comfortable trying even simple things. Even with YouTube videos.
- j-bos 4y agoThis would be a great study/survey to do! What percentage of how to watchers go on to practice the skills? How often? How well? Many people in my previous social circle would regularly take on personal car repair, plumbing, electrical, pest control, etc jobs based on youtube. Others including myself upskilled or got entirely new jobs with no experience beyond a youtube "apprenticeship".
- kevin_nisbet 4y agoI live in a high rise, and we've had several people do their own plumbing and do many thousands of dollars in damage. So I try to discourage people who don't have any idea what they're doing from trying to follow a youtube video.
- vineyardmike 4y ago
- MichaelZuo 4y agoI'm surprised the 3rd gen still has so much discrete circuity. Miniaturization and consolidation of components into a few larger chips seems to have worked elsewhere.
- AlbertCory 4y agoWhen I was in Google Patent Litigation, I volunteered to work on Nest because it sounded cool. So I spent a couple days over there (they weren't on the Mountain View campus) and sat in on some deposition preps. They were being sued by a Texas company called Allure, which was not a troll; they actually had a product that, at one time, you could have found on the Home Depot web site. I'm not going to reveal any legal secrets here, sorry. I did a ton of research on this space, and dove into their source code. Literally all over the world, companies have been working on this problem for decades. How you know when someone is coming home so you can turn on the heat or A/C, or how the utility company can do it for you: all that is very, very well covered. I don't think there's anything fundamentally new about the Nest, and I don't have one in my house. I actually stayed in someone's house that had two, so it's not as though it's completely foreign to me. I don't think that web-ifying your whole house is ever a good idea and I'm never going to do it. YMMV.
- alsodumb 4y agoYou think there’s nothing fundamentally new about the Nest, but it arguably changed the home smart thermostat industry and people love it. People loved it even before Google acquired them so you can’t even argue it’s because of cost or marketing. They define do have something fundamentally new. I think it was exactly what was described in the video - easy installation, intuitive design, and right timing.
- AlbertCory 4y agoI think you are looking at only what's available in the Home Depot. Connecting to your HVAC system is "fundamentally" simple and lots of companies have done it. "Home automation" is also not a new concept. X10 came out in 1975: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_automation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_automation What Nest had is consumer-friendliness, which I give them full credit for. Not surprising for Tony Fadell, who came out of Apple. Oh look, now he's into crypto: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/man-behind-the-ipod-launches-new-cryptocurrency-wallet/ar-AA14YWVa https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/man-behind-the-ipo... Maybe he'll bring his magic to that, too.
- jcims 4y agoI just checked my Amazon order history and I bought my Nest thermostat 10 years ago this past October. I’ve got some beef with the original design, for example there’s no good reason why they don’t support a local thermocouple versus Wi-Fi local weather, but overall I have to say it’s been a welcome addition to that household. The installation was painless and with a propane furnace I’m certain that it has saved me thousands of dollars over the years.
- TheRealPomax 4y ago> The Nest Learning Thermostat created the smart home as we know it today when it launched in 2011 Get off your skyhigh horse there, dude.
- pmcjones 4y agoThe only Nest I've used was at a vacation rental we stayed in once a year for a number of years. That thermostat was horribly confused by the new guests with different behavior every few days. And after a years' absence I always had to search the Internet for instructions on how to use its "intuitive" UI.
- eloisius 4y agoNah, that’s just how it works. I had my own Nest that no one else messed with and it was still a constant battle. It was always trending towards power savings and making the house uncomfortable. The only useful part of it is that you can remote control it from your phone.
- bmitc 4y agoWe have started replacing our Nests with the dumber and cheaper (and better looking) ones because the more expensive Nests' UI locks up constantly and we turn off all "smart" features.
- Gordonjcp 4y agoIs there a readable version of the website where you don't have scroll for four pages per line?
- nmeofthestate 4y agoI have one - the clever features are switched off because they didn't work (didn't heat up the place to the temperature I wanted). I just have a set schedule instead. It has a nice phone based UI and looks very classy. The thermostat can start to read too high (possibly due to the device itself generating heat) so it can get colder than the temperature that you've set.
- MohammadAZ 4y agohuh, I have never heard of Nest Thermostat before?
- mrweasel 4y agoI think that often depends on where you live. The Nest makes no sense where I live, so basically no one knows about it. Our homes simple aren't wire/configured in a way that a Nest Thermostat is of any use.
- alliao 4y agoI think whatever Tesla is doing with their heatpumps can be readily applied to residential.. it works pretty well. it'd direct heat from either outside or cabin to heat the battery or shift heat from battery to cabin depending on some sort of built in scenario, it all works rather well... at the end of the day people just want the indoor to be within band of hospitable temperature and relative humidity...
- SpelingBeeChamp 4y agoMaybe I’m weird, but I want very precise control over the temperature inside my house.
- actionfromafar 4y agoThe Tesla heatpump does what all heatpumps do. Increase efficiency vs space heaters by about 3 times, depending on outside temperature. It is tiny and light-weight though, I'll give them that.