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Nest learning thermostat gets refreshed with a slimmer design
- sumone4life 14y agoCan anyone comment on whether buying one of these is worth it and if they've seen any savings?
- ssurowiec 14y agoI bought one of these at the beginning of the summer and I definitely noticed a fairly significant savings. In my case I updated from a really old, couldn't-be-programmed, thermostat right to one of these which almost certainly skews the results since any kind of programmable thermostat would have shown a savings. I live in NJ and work in NYC so during the week I'm only home for a few hours, besides sleeping, and it learned my schedule on its own. When I get home it's just kicked in and started bringing the temperature down and it goes off shortly after I leave. The only issue I had was during the first setup it mixed up the heater and air conditioning because of my settings. But I just restored and went back through and changed what I selected and all was well.
- cmicali 14y agoI haven't directly noticed any savings (although I haven't payed much attention,) but the design, remote access, and general pleasantness of it are well worth it. They have clearly paid a lot of attention to even the smallest details and if you like that kind of thing, a Nest Thermostat will make you very, very happy.
- jack-r-abbit 14y agoI like the monthly report too. Being able to adjust both the Nests from the comfort of my couch via the phone app is also a nice feature.
- meta 14y agoI bought one 3 months ago (damn!) and am very happy with it. I can't say for sure I saved X dollars but between airwave, auto-away and it's easy scheduling (compared to my old, confusing, impossible to understand thermostat) I can't imagine it hasn't saved me at least some money. But on top of that it looks good in my high traffic hallway. Being in the hallway to my bathroom it acts as a nice night-light (it turns on when I step out of my bedroom to goto the bathroom and visa-versa) and overall has been a joy to work with.
- bratsche 14y agoI bought two of these, and a guy I work with bought one. My co-worker has measured pretty significant savings in his electric bill. I have not, but it's because I just bought this house and installed the Nests pretty soon afterward so I have nothing to compare.
- ceejayoz 14y agoI got one and my bill went down by about a third. Paid for itself in four months. I even got a negative bill as my first month was billed on estimated usage. :-)
- dpark 14y agoI'm wondering if they provide any meaningful savings vs a cheap programmable thermostat. Putting your HVAC on timers so it runs less will obviously save energy, but can Nest actually do much better than a unit from Home Depot?
- jack-r-abbit 14y agoWell... the really cheap ones are just timers/thermometers. The amount of control you have over it is related to how much you can program it. I used to have one that was very simple: I could set 2 times/temps for the week and 2 for the weekend. It was easy to program but didn't have much smarts. SO on days that I worked form home, it still let it get hotter/colder for my pre-programmed "away" time frame. So I was constantly tweaking it when I was not really away. My new house had some fancier ones that gave me more times/temps to program and I think I could adjust them per day (not just "week" and "weekend") but it was actually overly complicated to program. And some of the fancier ones still cost $150-175 at HD. So at $250, the Nest is not that much more expensive than some of the fancier ones at HD. But you get some much more "smarts" with it. And you get all the cool extra stuff like remote access, monthly usage reports, habit learning, etc.
- toomuchtodo 14y agoNest has an awesome feature called AirWave. When you're running the AC, it actually learns how long it can continue to cool by just running the fan due the the lingering coolness of the coils after the compressor has been running. This causes the AC compressor to run less while you're still able to be kept cool, at significant cost savings. Your standard thermostats currently don't do this.
- ceejayoz 14y ago> I'm wondering if they provide any meaningful savings vs a cheap programmable thermostat. In my experience, yes. I left town for two weeks and forgot to turn on away mode. If I'd had a cheap one, I'd have paid for two weeks of A/C keeping my house at 72. Instead, I was able to remotely tell it to let the house get up to 85 before kicking in. Auto-away does the same thing on a smaller scale on a near-daily basis for me, as well. We've got a pretty unsettled schedule, so it's a wonderful feature.
- mschaef 14y agoMy home has separate heating and cooling systems. (The heating is done with radiators and the cooling is a conventional AC.) Does anybody happen to know if Nest works in this type of system?
- pdovy 14y agoI believe it should. If the systems have separate thermostats you'll need two nests though I think (they apparently can communicate with one another).
- schiffern 14y ago>If the systems have separate thermostats you'll need two nests though I think You shouldn't, unless you can't run the wires to the same location for some reason.
- mschaef 14y agoIt's a >70 year old house, so it's a miracle when I can get wires anywhere. What we have in our favor, though, is that the boiler is in the unfinished basement, the air handler is in the unfinished attic, and our electrician ran some pull string through a chaseway that connects the two. It may actually be possible to get both sets of wires to the same spot.
- nmcfarl 14y agoI looked at the wiring for the previous generation and at the very least it wired up to such systems. I'm fairly sure it works with them - and, in spite of all the pretty pictures, the site ( http://www.nest.com/ http://www.nest.com/ ) is quite informative.
- tocomment 14y agoWhat happened with the patent issues we heard about a few months ago?
- protomyth 14y agoNest went after the patents http://allthingsd.com/20120926/nest-takes-honeywell-patents-back-to-the-drawing-board/ http://allthingsd.com/20120926/nest-takes-honeywell-patents-...
- tocomment 14y agoWill Nest work with a dual zone system? (Also does anyone have one of these? I have questions)
- Terretta 14y agoI have it in 8 zones. They cooperate well.
- bratsche 14y agoI have two air conditioners in my house, and I put a Nest on each one. The Nests appear to cooperate together just fine.
- tocomment 14y agoHmm, I only have 1 AC but it has two thermostats and something mechanical to control which floor gets the cooling. I wonder if nest could handle that?
- maxerickson 14y agoYour current thermostats probably talk to the AC controller, which then controls the ducts. So a nest thermostat shouldn't need to make any accommodations for the duct stuff.
- joezydeco 14y agoAny updates to the software? I'd really like to see some kind of API available over the network. Radio Thermostat (http://www.radiothermostat.com/ http://www.radiothermostat.com/) makes a line that's not as pretty, but they provide a web/JSON interface that looks pretty interesting. API doc: http://www.radiothermostat.com/documents/RTCOA%20WiFI%20API%20V1_0R3.pdf http://www.radiothermostat.com/documents/RTCOA%20WiFI%20API%...
- harper 14y agoalthough not necessarily a public api, you can control the nest via rest. here is a reference implementation https://gist.github.com/3808559 https://gist.github.com/3808559
- bratsche 14y agoI'm curious to know if some of the software features of the new Nest will make it into an update for owners of the first-generation Nest.
- meta 14y agoYes, 1st gen are getting the upgrade as well. From: http://www.nest.com/blog/2012/10/02/the-next-generation-nest-thermostat/ http://www.nest.com/blog/2012/10/02/the-next-generation-nest...
- bratsche 14y agoI just got an email from Nest. Subject? Oh, just "Experience 3.0 Software and a whole new Nest". I am pleased.
- mrbill 14y agoI bought a Nest last November. The price was a little ouchy at first, but I've saved at least $100/month during the hottest months of the summer here in Houston, and it's paid for itself many times over by now. Plus, the ability to tweak the heating/cooling from my phone without getting out of bed is AWESOME. Glad to see that us "early adopters" will be getting the new software update. I see that my local electric provider is pimping the Nest as well; giving them away when you sign a contract of a certain length...
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- fourspace 14y agoI really don't think they're going after the iPhone model. I have a Nest and love it, but don't plan on upgrading each year. After all, it's the software that really matters. Given that, this new model makes some evolutionary design improvements and finally adds support for low voltage systems. That hardware compatibility change opens up Nest to a lot more potential customers, and I think that's what they were ultimately after. If they're going to release new hardware, why not make it a little bit better?
- watty 14y agoWhere did you get the idea that they want users to upgrade the hardware yearly?
- schiffern 14y ago>As far as I can tell there is a little more system compatibility but no software features. There are new software features – they're shipping 3.0 with the new hardware.[1] All applicable software features are also available for users of existing hardware (unlike Apple, I might add). [1] http://www.nest.com/blog/2012/10/02/the-next-generation-nest-thermostat/#software http://www.nest.com/blog/2012/10/02/the-next-generation-nest...
- aidenn0 14y agoNice, but I'm not spending $250 on a thermostat; I have 10 thermostats in my house.
- ssewell 14y agoSo... you're wealthy enough to own a house that requires 10 thermostats, but don't want a premium system to control it? :-)
- aidenn0 14y agoA 4 bedroom 2-story house with radiators in each room. I'm not poor, but we're not talking top 1% here.
- brown9-2 14y agoI'm not a homeowner - is it normal to have this many radiators in a house this size? My 2BR apartment has one thermostat and my parent's 4BR house has one as well.
- jack-r-abbit 14y agoIIRC, if you do not have central heat, then you have a radiator in every room you want heated. Each radiator is then going to have its own thermostat to control its heat level for that room.
- mahyarm 14y agoSome houses have central heating where one thermostat controls the entire house. My rental which was built 3 years ago has that. That is a case where I think something like nest is affordable and useful.
- schiffern 14y agoI'm hoping the Zigbee radio they quietly built in will be used for remote sensors. $2500 is unrealistic, but if they offered a $49 remote sensor it would only be $700 in your (highly unusual) case.
- kevinpo 14y agoMatt, the founder of Nest, is doing an AMA right now: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/10tpxx/i_am_matt_rogers_founder_of_nest_and_former_apple/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/10tpxx/i_am_matt_roger...