61–70 of 168 posts
If its "Your data. Your privacy. You’re in control.". Why won't they let me self-host? The two things don't add up.
My primary concern is my house becoming part of Google's walled garden. "Oh, my garage door doesn't work anymore as it is controlled exclusively by 'Works with Nest.'"
It gets pretty interesting when you connect all the pieces Google now has. You car has build in Android device. Your home is monitored and controlled with Nest devices. On your wrist you carry Android wearable. Google Glass tracks what you see. For online activities you use Google products (Chrome, Gmail, Calendar). You consume your media via Android table or Chromecast. Google knows about your your car. It knows how…
And sell more ads to you in more places than anyone else, I guess.
Also, most boilers in Europe are of the modulating kind (not a simple on/off switch, but a more graduate gas consumption. Side note: I really don't get why they don't have this in the US. It's so much more efficient...).
So, we can't use Nest. Apple and Quirky announced they'll be working with Philips and Honeywell, two companies that do offer modulating, OpenTherm thermostats. No word on if they're actually going to integrate OpenTherm, though. I'll be following this closely!
I am a little bit unenthusiastic about Nest integration into the Mercedes Benz where it tells Nest to warm up the house prior to arrival. What a waste of energy! Is it so difficult for physical human body to endure some discomfort while the house warms up? Imagine thousands of household doing something similar. OK, there could be a use-case where the elderly is due to arrive home and needs the house to be at the righ…
This was using dumb thermostat technology. If we were back later than usual, the house still got warm. If we stayed up later than normal, the house started to get chilly. Smart thermostats that know what you're doing can help even more, but the less predictable you are, the more the gains from the thermostat being linked to other systems to monitor what you're doing. If you're home the same time every day and go to bed at the same time, the gains will be less.
BTW, I also discovered that our dishwasher warmed the kitchen by 2C. The obvious conclusion was that it was best to use its timer to start it at 4am, so the waste heat has already warmed the kitchen by the time we're up for breakfast.
I am a little bit unenthusiastic about Nest integration into the Mercedes Benz where it tells Nest to warm up the house prior to arrival. What a waste of energy! Is it so difficult for physical human body to endure some discomfort while the house warms up? Imagine thousands of household doing something similar. OK, there could be a use-case where the elderly is due to arrive home and needs the house to be at the righ…
Millions of thousands of homes today simply leave their thermostat at the same temperature all the time, failing to optimize for the large portions of the day when nobody is home because it's simpler (and they probably don't have a timed thermostat, or they can't figure out how to set it up.) Imagine thousands of households doing something smarter.
A simple, programmable thermostat will make up for the purchase within the first year of service.
Yeah I see the potential, but even though I'm a programmer, I see a lot of random shit put together, and no clear reason why I should go through the effort of building a mental model around it in order to understand their vision.
HomeKit is just a set of APIs right now, so we have yet to see if it has legs, but it centers around a versatile device I always have with me - my smartphone. It makes far more sense to make smartphones the hub, so focus it around Android, not the thermostat...
The Google-Nest relationship is a bit toxic right now and people are all scared that their data is going to leak the Google way. But we all know it's going to happen, why delay the inevitable with this forced, confusing vision of the home?
I've seen such integrations fail before. Apple had those weird wireless iTunes / iPod / Hi-Fi integrations in the early 2000s and it never caught on, because it was damn confusing (and plugging the speaker audio cable in your iPod was way simpler).
This stuff needs to seem simple and inevitable, so people say "but of course I want that". And this is not it. It looks complex and arbitrary and their own ads videos say "people might say, why are we doing this". If you anticipate people might say that, you've failed.
I am a little bit unenthusiastic about Nest integration into the Mercedes Benz where it tells Nest to warm up the house prior to arrival. What a waste of energy! Is it so difficult for physical human body to endure some discomfort while the house warms up? Imagine thousands of household doing something similar. OK, there could be a use-case where the elderly is due to arrive home and needs the house to be at the righ…
Millions of thousands of homes today simply leave their thermostat at the same temperature all the time, failing to optimize for the large portions of the day when nobody is home because it's simpler (and they probably don't have a timed thermostat, or they can't figure out how to set it up.) Imagine thousands of households doing something smarter.
I am a little bit unenthusiastic about Nest integration into the Mercedes Benz where it tells Nest to warm up the house prior to arrival. What a waste of energy! Is it so difficult for physical human body to endure some discomfort while the house warms up? Imagine thousands of household doing something similar. OK, there could be a use-case where the elderly is due to arrive home and needs the house to be at the righ…
We have a thermostat in our house that has a weekly programme: it turns the heat on in the morning, then off at 7:30 when everyone is at work/school, back on at 16:30 so that the house is heated when we get back home from work/school, and off again at 22:30 around bedtime. During weekends it heats during the day and is off during the night. There was never any question on using this system; everyone I know has this,…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wasting/saving energy is not as simple a calculation as that. When energy is at peak use (say in the winter, around 5:30/6:00 when everybody returns from work), it becomes more expensive for energy companies to procure the requisite energy needed. During these peak times, they often have to buy energy from other companies at a higher cost or find less efficient means of generating it (e.g. coal) to meet the demand. G…
I looked into the nest but I don't think it would save me any energy. And I'm wondering if that's actually true for lots of people. I have a modulating (i.e. change flame level) condensing boiler (the highest efficiency available). I programmed it to run as close to 24/7 as I could, because that way it uses the lowest flame, which is the most efficient flame. When I tried a setback thermostat when the boiler attempte…
I'm not sure that's always correct. The Coefficient of Performance (heat moved/work done, higher COP is better) of an A/C is:
COP = T_hot / (T_hot - T_cold).
T_cold is the inside temp, T_hot is outside of the heat exchanger. The narrow the temperature range, the better the COP. Thus the A/C will actually be more efficient in terms of heat moved per watt while it's cooling a warm house down than when it's already cool.
There's one other factor that applies. The rate of heat transferring into the house is proportional to the temperature difference. Once the house has warmed up, you reach equilibrium. The net heat flow stops, so the total amount of energy you need to remove later stops rising. If you run the A/C all the time, heat is transferring in all the time. So the total amount of heat you need to move back outside in a day increases significantly if you leave the A/C on.
The original Nest device is so popular among the general population because of its UX, display and colorful feedback. "Works with Nest" is amazing for us techies, who know the technical feat behind all this interoperability, but to the average consumer transparent technology and complex automation is a really hard sell. The mass market consumer still want to touch, feel and see the things they pay for. However as a '…
As interesting as they are they are priced out of the market for far too many people. Considering many homes come with programmable thermostats, in some areas new homes have to have them, this becomes close to a frivolous purchase.
If anything it should tell entrepreneurs that there is a golden opportunity for a low cost home automation solution.
Oh, its UX, colorful feedback, etc... uh I cannot recall the last time I ever cared about my thermostat. Its set and forget.