3 ms·
Nest thermostats seem to be around $250. If you want thermostats that you can control with Applescript, Perl, mobile apps, etc., check out these Insteon-based o
by declan 13y ago
Nest thermostats seem to be around $250. If you want thermostats that you can control with Applescript, Perl, mobile apps, etc., check out these Insteon-based ones for $150:
http://www.smarthome.com/2441TH/INSTEON-Thermostat/p.aspx http://www.smarthome.com/2441TH/INSTEON-Thermostat/p.aspx
One problem with the Nest is that if your thermostat is in a poor location (more of a problem with central heating), the motion sensor won't see you. With the ones I suggested above, you can programmatically link those to ~$40 motion sensors installed in the correct locations that will actually work.
- VLM 13y agoI have one of those; it works pretty well. Before the Insteon was released I had a X10 thermostat which was somewhat cheaper. I worked around the "X10 is only 95% reliable" problem by having misterhouse set the temp every 5 minutes or whatever it was. The financial payback time is unfortunately infinite but it was interesting. One advantage of programming an insteon thermostat is its just plain old off the shelf technology to all end users including repair guys, although how its temp is set is magic and done by computer. Most of the software work is already done by the misterhouse system, its not like you have to write your own insteon drivers or write your own sensor drivers or whatever. Misterhouse's support for Insteon has varied a bit over the decades. Last time I had to mess with anything it was a little fuzzy. I would imagine things have advanced considerably in the last half decade or so. I do not currently have misterhouse controlling the insteon thermostat mostly out of lazyness, I'll eventually re-enable it.