It's one thing when your thermostat has trouble. But would you trust a Nest Smoke Alarm? http://www.amazon.com/Nest-Protect-Carbon-Monoxide-Battery/d...
Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold
101–110 of 234 posts
Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold
#102This is why I purchased the Honeywell 9000 WiFi Color Touchscreen Thermostat[0] instead. The nice thing about the Honeywell is that you can use it completely offline if you so choose. It also has a REAL interface, so an app is an optional extra not a required component.
Both the Nest and Honeywell require the infamous C wire, both are similar installation, and both cost around $200.
[0] http://www.amazon.com/Honeywell-RTH9580WF-Touchscreen-Thermo...
PS - And, yes, the Nest has a theoretical setup without the C wire, but you'll lose key things like fan control, or if the boiler doesn't run enough the entire thing can die. On both it is ultimately C wire or don't waste your time.
Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold
#103I have a manual thermostat, no batteries required. It has worked flawlessly for over 30 years. It has a simple intuitive interface: a switch for "heat" or "cool" and a dial with a pointer to set the desired temperature. Why make things more complicated than they need to be?
Because when you forget to change the setting to heat and wake up to a 60 degree house you rush around hoping the pipes didn't freeze. Or when you set the AC to 70 because you were warm and leave to go to work and forget to set it back.
If your house is 60 degrees. It didn't freeze.
Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold
#104We have two nest thermostats installed at work. I rotate the WiFi keys for our APs quarterly and these things are the biggest pain in the ass to reconnect to the WiFi. The furnace turns off almost immediately after changing the WiFi key once the Nest loses connectivity. At first I thought it was coincidence but now that I rotate on a strict schedule it's a joke in our office. However, what's not a joke is what happen…
Not surprising. My first Nest wouldn't connect to any of my 5 access points in my house.. thought it was a bug until I found it COULD connect via tethering from my iPhone.
Spent a weekend troubleshooting, Nest ultimately sent me a replacement, which I was sure wouldn't fix my issue, but it actually did! Bad chipset.
Then I had the common wire issue. Then I fixed that.
Then 6mo later I spent a few hours on the phone with support before I found out I actually had something in the furnace fail over the summer. I was amazed it was not a Nest issue.
Also, my Nest loses its internet connection when it goes into the infamous "power save" mode, which Nest insists means your access point is not 802.11 compliant, but I have the certification from Meraki that their APs are fully compliant.
It's been a fairly colossal pain in the ass, even though at least one issue was not Nest's fault.
From cruising the forums, they just break shit way too often, don't give a downgrade option, don't allow you to choose whether or not to apply software updates, and.. just generally treat an important home appliance like it's a cheap toy.
Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold
#105This is why I purchased the Honeywell 9000 WiFi Color Touchscreen Thermostat[0] instead. The nice thing about the Honeywell is that you can use it completely offline if you so choose. It also has a REAL interface, so an app is an optional extra not a required component. Both the Nest and Honeywell require the infamous C wire, both are similar installation, and both cost around $200. [0] http://www.amazon.com/Honeywel…
100% on the same page as you. I didn't get the Honeywell, I actually got a relatively cheap z-wave thermostat that acts like a regular ol' dumb programmable thermostat that can also be controlled by ANY z-wave compatible home automation hub (I use the Wink hub, to my sometimes chagrin).
Pretty sure my thermostat was sub $75 on Amazon.
Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold
#106I had been thinking of buying a Nest, now I think I'll attempt to build my own using a Raspberry Pi. There are some very inexpensive bluetooth beacons that support temperature measurement... Does anyone have ideas for cool hardware or algorithms for something like this?
Digi-Key is your friend. Build yourself a daughter card with a bunch of relay driver IC's and 24VAC relays. Bare minimum is three, but there are several different arragements for home HVAC, and more doesn't hurt. Some high-SEER rating HVAC units also have multiple speeds. Say, 6-8 relays for some flexibility. Check behind your existing thermostat and see how many wires it gets to be sure. Most units just use bang-ban…
The Ecobee3 can be programmed to run the fans for a configurable amount of time every hour.
Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold
#107I have a manual thermostat, no batteries required. It has worked flawlessly for over 30 years. It has a simple intuitive interface: a switch for "heat" or "cool" and a dial with a pointer to set the desired temperature. Why make things more complicated than they need to be?
Important household functions--HVAC, refrigeration--depending on internet connectivity to function properly...?
Doesn't make sense, unless you're willing to live with the potential failure of those functions...
Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
It shouldn't matter. It says it can read your heart rate. That's what it advertises as. It should be able to do so. I'm curious if there are legal precedents on how accurate a thing must be to advertise as a being a measurement device.
This is a bullshit argument. They do read your heart rate. But they explicitly say that it isn't up to a medical or diagnostic level of reliability. Everything has some level of quality or tolerance expected. Car parts break all the time, it is just a normal part of owning a car. You don't get to sue a car company when your battery dies and you need a jump. You only get to do it when there is a significant or dangero…
Maybe your experience is different from mine then. My device was inaccurate enough to be useless. Further there doesn't seem to be any allegation that people are expecting it to have a medical or diagnostic level of reliability. That seemed to be a throwaway line in OP's article, not something core to the lawsuit. As far as I can tell from other news sources, they are suing because it can't read heart rate for crap.
Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
That doesn't seem fair. What's a company supposed to do in that situation? Just close up shop? Makes me wonder if it would be possible to intentionally drive a company out of business by convincing a bunch of people to use their products incorrectly.
This is where legal concepts (in the US) such as 'reasonable person' come into play. Courts usually hold that any use of a product that a 'reasonable person' would do is an acceptable use (regardless of what the instructions say - a reasonable person, it would seem, doesn't read the instructions :P). However, a company doesn't need to be held responsible for an un-reasonable use. In this case, would courts find that…
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Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold
#110If the software fails this often, they really should have some sort of reversion mode with multiple watchdogs that runs on a tiny microcontroller and just keeps the temperature at 70 degrees. If they can't get that right, maybe just a hard switch that wires in a calibrated bimetalic strip to keep the wheels on until the software is fixed.