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Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

nytimes.com

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Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#161

Post by makomk »

quesera wrote: post #135
HillRat wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost all US central heat and air systems are "forced air" -- gas or electric heaters (furnaces) that blow conditioned air through ducting. Boiler-radiator systems wouldn't work with the standard US thermostat, not least because US thermostats use low-voltage signaling.

You must be from a warm part of the U.S. Forced hot water systems are very common in the colder parts, and they use the same thermostat wiring as forced air. Some parts of the U.S. even use diesel fuel for heat (it's called #2 heating oil, but it's really just diesel fuel with pink dye added so they can fine you for using it as a vehicle fuel...it's taxed advantageously). Also, boiler-radiator systems can absolutely…

Yeah, UK central heating systems in homes use the full 240V for all their control wiring. It's worth bearing in mind that this isn't just signalling - the thermostat and timer directly switch the power to the pump and valves.

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#162

Post by Viper007Bond »

legulere wrote: post #148

> Although I had set the thermostat to 70 degrees overnight, my wife and I were woken by a crying baby at 4 a.m. The thermometer in his room read 64 degrees, and the Nest was off. This seems quite strange to me. Here in Germany it's extremely common to (automatically) turn of heating all together in the night (called Nachtabsenkung). One reason is to save energy, but lower temperatures also help sleep: http://www.nyt…

Most people turn down their heat at night but not off. 65-68F is common with 70-72F during the day.

Energy costs also tend to be a LOT lower in the States.

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#163

Post by darkr »

post_break wrote: post #51
ams6110 wrote: post #37

I 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.

My thermostat is set to 17 degrees Celsius (62.6) Fahrenheit.

60 Fahrenheit is practically a comfortable day-long office temperature. It's a _long_ way from freezing.

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#164

Post by Joeri »

legulere wrote: post #148

> Although I had set the thermostat to 70 degrees overnight, my wife and I were woken by a crying baby at 4 a.m. The thermometer in his room read 64 degrees, and the Nest was off. This seems quite strange to me. Here in Germany it's extremely common to (automatically) turn of heating all together in the night (called Nachtabsenkung). One reason is to save energy, but lower temperatures also help sleep: http://www.nyt…

The advice given to daycare centers in my country for sleeping rooms for babies to reduce the risk of SIDS is to keep them at 18°C, which is 64°F.

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#165

Post by TeMPOraL »

kuschku wrote: post #133
jkestner wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At what point is this just a matter of complexity growing beyond its masters' capacity to manage it? Computers interacting with all sorts of analog systems are going to have a million edge cases. But it's just beginning. Give them the ability to interact with other connected objects, and your potential problems proliferate. Add a smart garage door opener, and you may not figure out how that's connected to your thermo…

But that is not the case. Any non-hip, non-fancy, non-SV thermostat control system doesn't have these bugs. Sure, those systems don't come in fancy design, but they will work offline, they will work in every edge case, and they'll cost twice of what Nest costs. Treating IoT devices as if they'd be consumer software, with updates every week and constant internet access has never worked, and probably never will.

And ironically, IoT devices could be much more reliable if not done by the SaaS startup playbook. Just don't be greedy and stop with the cloud bullshit. A lot of IoT devices are just some hobby-grade projects put in nice packaging and launched into stratosphere on investor-fuel marketing boosters.

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#166

Post by TeMPOraL »

craigching wrote: post #50
sparky_z wrote: post #34

Earlier 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.

I don't know about Fitbit per se , but there are cases where a company says one thing in it's legal interface, but does another with it's sales interface. IOW (pure speculation on my part), Fitbit could say "don't use this for such and such" and the sales people say "yeah, we say that (wink, wink), but we don't really mean it." To be clear, I am not saying Fitbit does that , but I am familiar with other companies tha…

Oh they totally do it, but even more sneakily. After the whole Internet hypes itself up, the salesmen don't have to say a word. Random blogs, newspaper articles and word-of-mouth have already done it for them.

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#167

Post by trhway »

bigchewy wrote: post #139
Animats wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nest could fix this easily by including two fixed-temperature safety thermostats, devices which cost about $0.25 each. One is hard-wired to turn on heat below 55F. One is hard-wired to turn off heat above 80F. With that, no matter how badly they botch the software, the temperature will stay in a safe, if not totally comfortable, range.

my a/c bill in AZ would be about $400-500 / mo higher in the summer if they made that move! Most people in AZ put their A/C to 87 or so if they aren't home and actually keep it in the high 70s even when home. Otherwise you're looking at $1K/mo energy bills in the summer

giving those numbers ( $400+ means like 100KWh/day or more), it sounds like properly insulating your home is the way to go. In Bay Area, my 2/2 townhouse was built in 2004, so it is very well insulated. We have a small dog and thus keep pretty much the same temp 24/7/365. My bill rarely goes higher than $100 in winter / $50 in summer.

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#168

Post by k-mcgrady »

legulere wrote: post #148

> Although I had set the thermostat to 70 degrees overnight, my wife and I were woken by a crying baby at 4 a.m. The thermometer in his room read 64 degrees, and the Nest was off. This seems quite strange to me. Here in Germany it's extremely common to (automatically) turn of heating all together in the night (called Nachtabsenkung). One reason is to save energy, but lower temperatures also help sleep: http://www.nyt…

I turn it off at night too. It bugs me any time I live with people who want it on as it seems like such a waste of money when you can just use more blankets and everyone can be a comfortable temperature for sleeping (I can't sleep when it's warm). I would normally have it turn on automatically again about 30 mins before I have to get up in the morning.

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#169

Post by TeMPOraL »

sparky_z wrote: post #125
lololomg wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you sell a device that monitors heart rates, and that device doesn't properly monitor heart rates... then you need to fix it or stop making it. I don't see why that is unfair? If I buy a desk lamp and it doesn't work reliably then you sold me a lemon and I want my money back. It doesn't matter why I need light on my desk.

For a measurement device, "accurate" and "reliable" aren't binary conditions, they're continuums. Not every sensor in the world has to be medical grade. There are plenty of applications where a less accurate sensor at a much lower price point is the right choice. Remember, I'm talking about situations where the company actually says "not for medical/diagnostic use". They're not trying to get away with selling lemons.…

That's technically fair, but everyone knows it's not what's going there. A small LED equivalent of a heart rate monitor is your optical mouse hacked into being a crude pulse oximeter. By the way, you know your mouse is also a 1-D camera / scanner, and can be used to somewhat digitize something?

They totally advertise it as a working heart rate monitor. If they have a problem with accuracy, they should not be making it. Otherwise it's like making a tape measure that has marked distances within +/- 20% of the real value (i.e. 1cm becomes anything from 0.8cm to 1.2cm), and marking it with a small caption that it's not for construction use. Oh, and having the product website say "it measures distance" and elaborate on the benefits of measurements for building stuff.

--

I'm conflicted about it. On the one hand, I feel like people should be free to build whatever trinkets their like (as long as they are safe). OTOH, I feel like they should totally not be free to sell crap tools.

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#170

Post by TeMPOraL »

kuschku wrote: post #136
meesterdude wrote: post #87

This offers an interesting insight into the Internet of Things. Take something simple, and tack on a bunch of new technology that is subject to failure. Don't be surprised if it fails. To be fair, the issue isn't that there was software involved; digital thermostats have that. I think more telling was the level of complexity, which allows for a lot more to go wrong. Combined with a poor process behind update validati…

In general, the way IoT is treated is wrong. Startups try to treat IoT devices as a standard arm or x86 processor with some additional GPIO pins where they read info, deal with it, and write info. No real-time guarantee, a level of QA similar to websites or consumer software, etc. And here is what previous companies building smart devices (say, SIEMENS) treated them like: As extended microcontrollers. Put all the cri…

Another angle to that problem is that a lot of IoT today is basically making something equivalent to a weekend hardware hack, tweaking it a bit, and then calling for investors and marketing the living shit out of the device. Popular IoT products are toys, not tools.
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