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Beautiful understated home automation designed better than any other company has designed similar products in the past. You should really take a look, I'm surpr

by cmelbye 13y ago

Beautiful understated home automation designed better than any other company has designed similar products in the past. You should really take a look, I'm surprised that it's possible to not have heard of them before.

hueving 13y ago
To clarify, it's a very small part of home automation. Just thermostat and smoke detectors (as of recently). They haven't even branched into locks/lights/etc. I'm really excited to see where they go.
- ajcarpy2005 13y ago
  They have an nice, recognizable brand name for home automation, anyway: 'nest'
hnriot 13y ago
for 99.99% of the population a simple thermostat works just fine. And nearly all of them don't even understand that the temperature setting doesn't actually change the temperature of the air, but rather the duration it remains on. NEST is pretty, but way over engineered for the task. Consumers just don't need it. I'm all for technology and am an early adopter and of course have heard of NEST, seen them etc. Like you say, it's hard to imagine some one here not having done so, but my guess is the commenter has seen them, but just didn't take it in because "home automation" has a long legacy of being utter crap. When you get past the pretty design, there's nothing really to the thing. It's just a massively over engineered pretty consumer device that very few people need. I'm pretty sure Apple didn't buy them because they could just as simply designed their own. I fail to see why the thermostat can't (if Apple were to design it) not have a UI at all but rather just be a little plugin thing, maybe "Thermoport Express" and you use your iPhone to make changes from anywhere, don't even need to get up and look at the device. Any hardware solution quickly looks old. The iPhone (to Apple) is the UI for everything.
- kashkhan 13y ago
  > the temperature setting doesn't actually change the temperature of the air, I am sorry... yes having a higher temp setting means the heat will on for longer (or ac for less) but it DOES change the temperature of the air. The thermostat measures the temperature and turns the mahcine on and off accordingly.
  - roel_v 13y ago
    Do you honestly not know what his point was?
    - kashkhan 13y ago
      I didn't argue with the rest of his point. That he said that the thermostat changes the time the burner is on is not true. A thermostat is not a timer. Time on is not the controlled variable.
      - roel_v 13y ago
        Come on, now you're taking semantic quibbling to farcical levels. Yes it is true that a thermostat is not a timer, nobody claimed that. What it (in it simplest form) does is turn on the burner until the set temperature has been reached. My point was, for any reasonable, non-autistic reader, it was perfectly clear that the GP knows how a thermostat works and that his point was that many people think the thermostat changes the temperature that the burner generates, or at least whatever is output by that burner/installation (be it water or air). Now I don't have an opinion on that matter, but I'm annoyed by your littering of the conversation over a slight sloppiness in expression in a context that doesn't call for the level of correctness you, from your high horse, are calling for.
        kashkhan 13y ago
        > many people think the thermostat changes the temperature that the burner generates, There might be many such people but that is not what he said. I apologize that my comment clashes with your aesthetic preference of what a discussion should look like.

by cmelbye 13y ago

hueving 13y ago

To clarify, it's a very small part of home automation. Just thermostat and smoke detectors (as of recently). They haven't even branched into locks/lights/etc. I'm really excited to see where they go.

ajcarpy2005 13y ago
They have an nice, recognizable brand name for home automation, anyway: 'nest'

hnriot 13y ago

for 99.99% of the population a simple thermostat works just fine. And nearly all of them don't even understand that the temperature setting doesn't actually change the temperature of the air, but rather the duration it remains on. NEST is pretty, but way over engineered for the task. Consumers just don't need it. I'm all for technology and am an early adopter and of course have heard of NEST, seen them etc. Like you say, it's hard to imagine some one here not having done so, but my guess is the commenter has seen them, but just didn't take it in because "home automation" has a long legacy of being utter crap. When you get past the pretty design, there's nothing really to the thing. It's just a massively over engineered pretty consumer device that very few people need. I'm pretty sure Apple didn't buy them because they could just as simply designed their own. I fail to see why the thermostat can't (if Apple were to design it) not have a UI at all but rather just be a little plugin thing, maybe "Thermoport Express" and you use your iPhone to make changes from anywhere, don't even need to get up and look at the device. Any hardware solution quickly looks old. The iPhone (to Apple) is the UI for everything.

kashkhan 13y ago
> the temperature setting doesn't actually change the temperature of the air, I am sorry... yes having a higher temp setting means the heat will on for longer (or ac for less) but it DOES change the temperature of the air. The thermostat measures the temperature and turns the mahcine on and off accordingly.
- roel_v 13y ago
  Do you honestly not know what his point was?
  - kashkhan 13y ago
    I didn't argue with the rest of his point. That he said that the thermostat changes the time the burner is on is not true. A thermostat is not a timer. Time on is not the controlled variable.
    - roel_v 13y ago
      Come on, now you're taking semantic quibbling to farcical levels. Yes it is true that a thermostat is not a timer, nobody claimed that. What it (in it simplest form) does is turn on the burner until the set temperature has been reached. My point was, for any reasonable, non-autistic reader, it was perfectly clear that the GP knows how a thermostat works and that his point was that many people think the thermostat changes the temperature that the burner generates, or at least whatever is output by that burner/installation (be it water or air). Now I don't have an opinion on that matter, but I'm annoyed by your littering of the conversation over a slight sloppiness in expression in a context that doesn't call for the level of correctness you, from your high horse, are calling for.
      - kashkhan 13y ago
        > many people think the thermostat changes the temperature that the burner generates, There might be many such people but that is not what he said. I apologize that my comment clashes with your aesthetic preference of what a discussion should look like.