Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Works With Nest

nest.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 168 posts

Re: Works With Nest

#121

Post by mannkind »

eddieroger wrote: post #94
chaz wrote: post #58

Google's Nest seems to be setting out a home automation standard, partnering with Whirlpool, Mercedes-Benz, Jawbone, LIFX, IFTTT, Logitech, and Chamberlain. Over the weekend, Quirky announced its $79 Wink hub, partnering with Home Depot, Honeywell, GE, Rachio, and Philips. The two announcements were obviously timed against each other. It's hard to tell who is reacting to whom, but my bet is that Quirky is hurriedly r…

I'm glad you mentioned HomeKit, because at this point, I'm really starting to fight my desire to go out and hook all of these things up to make sure they work with HomeKit. Apple doesn't exactly have a history of really releasing the standards they say they will (looking at you, iMessage), but I'm all for the idea of standardized home automation.

When did they ever say iMessage would be an standard? I recall them stating FaceTime would be, but didn't some patent nonsense get in the way?

Re: Works With Nest

#122

Post by bsimpson »

eddieroger wrote: post #94
chaz wrote: post #58

Google's Nest seems to be setting out a home automation standard, partnering with Whirlpool, Mercedes-Benz, Jawbone, LIFX, IFTTT, Logitech, and Chamberlain. Over the weekend, Quirky announced its $79 Wink hub, partnering with Home Depot, Honeywell, GE, Rachio, and Philips. The two announcements were obviously timed against each other. It's hard to tell who is reacting to whom, but my bet is that Quirky is hurriedly r…

I'm glad you mentioned HomeKit, because at this point, I'm really starting to fight my desire to go out and hook all of these things up to make sure they work with HomeKit. Apple doesn't exactly have a history of really releasing the standards they say they will (looking at you, iMessage), but I'm all for the idea of standardized home automation.

Remember when Steve said he was going to the standards boards the next day with the spec for FaceTime?

I checked intermittently for about a year afterwards: never saw any activity to substantiate that claim.

Re: Works With Nest

#123

Post by ProAm »

plg wrote: post #89

"your thermostat will start to heat up or cool down your home before you even step out of bed." umm in my house, in the winter, that would mean lying in bed awake for 30 min waiting for my house to heat up

Nest will automatically adjusted your snooze button time duration so you will not be awoken until it deems your house properly warmed.

Re: Works With Nest

#124

Post by potatolicious »

notatoad wrote: post #117
tmuir wrote: post #114

Yet another hammer looking for a nail. There is no killer app in home automation. Hackers like this stuff, because we like technology for technology's sake. But everyone else has a higher standard for adopting new gadgetry. It has to actually solve a problem, or otherwise provide value. Even the best use cases are largely novelties that will get about two days use. Turning on lights remotely? How often do you need to…

I'm optimistic about nest - they seem to understand this, their thermostat is a great user experience. You hook it up and use it just like you would use a normal thermostat, and it uses that info to make intelligent decisions to do actually useful things - like override the schedule and turn the heat up when you take a day off work, or turn the heat down when nobody is home, all with no user interaction. Remote contr…

> "like override the schedule and turn the heat up when you take a day off work, or turn the heat down when nobody is home, all with no user interaction."

Useful sure, but is it that useful? Which is to say, will people choose it over walking over and twisting a knob?

The same argument can be made for motorized blinds. Sure, yeah, it'd be kind of cool for your blinds to raise and lower themselves with the day/night cycle. Or I can just yank that cord over there.

Ditto the garage door thing. It'd be nice to have a system that just closes the door for me, but I'd call my neighbor, what, once a year to check on my garage? Worth a $100 system + installation + integration into some larger, overarching home automation network?

That's the problem with home automation, it's a bunch of janky, expensive, high-maintenance tech that solves a "problem" that nobody was really that bothered by. It's an incredibly minor incremental improvement that solves a pain that was never actually painful, and it has historically required a lot of infrastructure/installation in the home.

The new stuff is lowering a lot of the installation/infrastructure pain, but it's still relatively expensive, and for the most part their improvements are so minor, and the original problem so inconsequential, that I don't think they'll see mainstream market success. IMO none of this will take off until they find the "Killer App", the one that solves a problem that really bothers people.

Re: Works With Nest

#125

Post by VLM »

hyperbovine wrote: post #112
VLM wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"announced its $79 Wink hub" I've been in this hobby for a long time (like since X-10 in the 80s, more Insteon now) and one unwanted trend I see is exploding prices. Inflation has pushed your stereotypical X-10 appliance module from $10 to currently $20. I've been mostly Insteon for a decade or so now, but the venerable X-10 appliance module is a good canary as its been around for decades unchanged. Anyway its off to…

Otoh, home automation might finally go from being a hobby to something normal people actually can use to make their lives easier. I also dabbled with X10 in the 90s and personally I can't wait for apple to come along and do it right. Needless to say, I completely disagree with your final observation.

"normal people actually can use to make their lives easier"

Normal people don't like capital investment of any sort either monetary or time, and newer technology seems not to change the total investment at all, beyond a modest increase, but only adjust the ratio between the two categories.

There is also the stereotypical UI tradeoff that has existed for decades in computers of "make simple things easy" which is almost always in direct opposition to "make difficult things possible". The tradeoff in the new wave of HA products is dangerous because there is the risk of not gaining traction with the noobs because simple things do not help much, while losing all the experts by making the really productive yet difficult stuff impossible.

From a "do it right" perspective, X-10 done the right way is the decade or so old Insteon system, reliable, 2way, giant address space, fast (or, faster than X-10)... "Home Automation" done the right way seems an undefined problem, and that has to be done before the solution can begin.

Re: Works With Nest

#126

Post by loganu »

chrisdevereux wrote: post #91
AVTizzle wrote: post #18

Looking at the Nest lineup, I was reminded of that adage: "Google is getting better at design faster than Apple is getting better at web services." Those products look damn good.

good design != looking good

True, but in this case the design is actually really good as well. Nest has the best unboxing and set-up experience I've ever seen. I was blown away by how much thought they'd put into it, and how easy they made everything. It's also really well designed from an on-going experience perspective... but I never really have to touch it now that it's installed and programmed.

Re: Works With Nest

#127

Post by notatoad »

potatolicious wrote: post #124
notatoad wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm optimistic about nest - they seem to understand this, their thermostat is a great user experience. You hook it up and use it just like you would use a normal thermostat, and it uses that info to make intelligent decisions to do actually useful things - like override the schedule and turn the heat up when you take a day off work, or turn the heat down when nobody is home, all with no user interaction. Remote contr…

> "like override the schedule and turn the heat up when you take a day off work, or turn the heat down when nobody is home, all with no user interaction." Useful sure, but is it that useful? Which is to say, will people choose it over walking over and twisting a knob? The same argument can be made for motorized blinds. Sure, yeah, it'd be kind of cool for your blinds to raise and lower themselves with the day/night c…

I don't know how everybody else gets their nests, but I pay flat rate for power and my power company gives them out for free because it works out cheaper for them in the long run. So no, I probably wouldn't pay extra for a nest thermostat and the small amount of convenience it offers, but I like having it.

Re: Works With Nest

#128

Post by jghn »

tmuir wrote: post #114

Yet another hammer looking for a nail. There is no killer app in home automation. Hackers like this stuff, because we like technology for technology's sake. But everyone else has a higher standard for adopting new gadgetry. It has to actually solve a problem, or otherwise provide value. Even the best use cases are largely novelties that will get about two days use. Turning on lights remotely? How often do you need to…

I've had a Nest thermo for about a year. For me the #1 thing about it was the smartphone app - in particular the ability to tell it to turn on the heat if we were coming home earlier than normal (or the opposite). Our radiators take a while to warm up the house and this allowed me to keep the house fairly cold when we weren't there w/o any discomfort when we came home.

That said I was disappointed with its learning capabilities in terms of our schedule. Sure, it picked up on trends but it just started slapping temperature change event on the schedule instead of adjusting things. So what happened was that it would get a couple of pinch points where it'd set to 65 at 10, 67 at 10:02, 66 at 10:05, 68 at 10:10, etc and I ended up cleaning it all out by hand anyways. It'd have been nice if it recognized we probably wanted it around 66-67 around 10:05 for instance.

Re: Works With Nest

#130

Post by coherentpony »

chaz wrote: post #58

Google's Nest seems to be setting out a home automation standard, partnering with Whirlpool, Mercedes-Benz, Jawbone, LIFX, IFTTT, Logitech, and Chamberlain. Over the weekend, Quirky announced its $79 Wink hub, partnering with Home Depot, Honeywell, GE, Rachio, and Philips. The two announcements were obviously timed against each other. It's hard to tell who is reacting to whom, but my bet is that Quirky is hurriedly r…

I'd be really worried about an exploit allowing someone to unlock my front doors and walk into my house.
Post reply on HN