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Works With Nest

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Re: Works With Nest

#151

Post by nicksergeant »

brianmcc wrote: post #102
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 really, really, wish we could skip the whole vhs/betamax stage for once :-( Not only is it tiresome, it inhibits adoption across the board, we've all been there too many times before.

I'm not so sure. Doesn't this stage allow the market to dictate which features are important to (albeit early-adopter) consumers?

Re: Works With Nest

#152

Post by pirateking »

I am getting a familiar sensation.

An unsettling feeling that Home Automation™ is not actually about making the home and its consumer electronics more integrated, easier to use, and providing more free time and control to the individual. Rather, it is about making things harder to use for the average consumer without machine or professional assistance, requiring more hardware bundles and software services to get the "total experience", and control and data slowly taken away from the individual. Of course, this play for command and control is for the innocent sake of predictable behavior that can be optimized (and the steady revenue and growth that implies).

Self optimizing systems' predilection to predictability is quite predictable (whether machine or human).

While I believe Nest and HomeKit will likely be successful due to these optimizations they can potentially bring, I consciously will take the less optimal route this time, and have fun DIY'ing my automation instead.

Re: Works With Nest

#153

Post by Mister_Snuggles »

nicksergeant wrote: post #151
brianmcc wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really, really, wish we could skip the whole vhs/betamax stage for once :-( Not only is it tiresome, it inhibits adoption across the board, we've all been there too many times before.

I'm not so sure. Doesn't this stage allow the market to dictate which features are important to (albeit early-adopter) consumers?

In a way it does, but it also hurts the early adopters that picked the wrong standard.

As a kid I was in a Betamax family. After that, I've learned to not be an early adopter when companies start pulling this garbage.

Re: Works With Nest

#154

Post by andybak »

antimagic wrote: post #80
andybak wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Choosing to install a Google app on an Apple device is a much lower barrier than there not even being an Apple app for a Google device. I'm no lover of walled gardens but one that allows you entry without buying a $700 smartphone is the lesser of two evils. I was discussing the cost of laser barcode scanners with someone the other day and the few models that are iOS certified are significantly more expensive due to M…

One requires you "buy entry" with a $700 smartphone. The other requires that you "buy entry" by giving access to your personal data to a company that has demonstrated that it doesn't care about your privacy. Neither option is objectively "less evil", it depends on the priorities of the user. I for one will only willingly hand Google the keys to my data when hell freezes over or Apple and Microsoft go bust.

I think there's a certain amount of histrionics here what with bringing up the whole 'evil' thing and your phrase "doesn't care about your privacy'.

I would have bought a more reasoned argument - getting into bed with Google demonstrably involves a tradeoff in terms of privacy - but I feel we're just a small step away from the days of 'Micro$oft' comments on Slashdot now.

Re: Works With Nest

#155

Post by justincormack »

lmm wrote: post #120
justincormack wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I have the heating on a timer and its off when I am at work. I turn it on if its cold and I working from home or its the weekend. I believe this is normal...

It's not normal. The majority of people can't be bothered switching it on or off, so they just leave it on all the time.

Every heating system I have ever used has a double timer for two on off periods a day. But this is not in the US.

Re: Works With Nest

#156

Post by tomkarlo »

yitchelle wrote: post #23
tomkarlo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 have noticed a trend among our friends, (not technical folks), who actually turns off their heating when they go out. It is as common as turning off their lights when they leave the room. I guess Nest is heading towards this direction, but pre-warming a house very "first-world".

Owning a house with central heating / AC that can be controlled by a Nest Thermostat via your household wifi from your smartphone while driving home in your Mercedes is a pretty "first-world" thing.

Especially given that this works best for second homes like a weekend house in Tahoe where it might take a full day to warm up if you left the heat off all week.

Re: Works With Nest

#157

Post by coherentpony »

mdaniel wrote: post #147
coherentpony wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You mean lockpicks, or were you thinking of a sledgehammer?

I'm talking about the electronic version of breaking and entering, which would be incredibly difficult to prove someone did. And if falsely accused, would be incredibly difficult to disprove.

Re: Works With Nest

#158

Post by brianmcc »

Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #153
nicksergeant wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure. Doesn't this stage allow the market to dictate which features are important to (albeit early-adopter) consumers?

In a way it does, but it also hurts the early adopters that picked the wrong standard. As a kid I was in a Betamax family. After that, I've learned to not be an early adopter when companies start pulling this garbage.

It's probably unavoidably a time of turmoil - with so much at stake there's a disincentive for all companies to universally "place nice".

A cambrian explosion of standards and partnerships from which most likely one or two durable standards will emerge, hopefully the "best", is natural - but painful if you're impatient to just get something done.

Re: Works With Nest

#159

Post by antimagic »

andybak wrote: post #154
antimagic wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One requires you "buy entry" with a $700 smartphone. The other requires that you "buy entry" by giving access to your personal data to a company that has demonstrated that it doesn't care about your privacy. Neither option is objectively "less evil", it depends on the priorities of the user. I for one will only willingly hand Google the keys to my data when hell freezes over or Apple and Microsoft go bust.

I think there's a certain amount of histrionics here what with bringing up the whole 'evil' thing and your phrase "doesn't care about your privacy'. I would have bought a more reasoned argument - getting into bed with Google demonstrably involves a tradeoff in terms of privacy - but I feel we're just a small step away from the days of 'Micro$oft' comments on Slashdot now.

I don't think "Google doesn't care about your privacy" is histrionics. Let me remind you of a few examples:

1) http://gizmodo.com/what-the-google-street-view-wi-fi-decisio... "Google did this to enhance the accuracy and precision of its location based services. But it also captured "payload data," or the actual data transmitted through the Wi-Fi networks, including emails, usernames, passwords and more."

2) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/17/google-wifi-passwor...

Google might have access to WiFi passwords used by every single Android user, a new report suggests. That is a whole lot of WiFi passwords -- maybe most of them in the world.

“If an Android device (phone or tablet) has ever logged on to a particular Wi-Fi network, then Google probably knows the Wi-Fi password,” Computer World's Michael Horowitz wrote last week. “Considering how many Android devices there are, it is likely that Google can access most Wi-Fi passwords worldwide.”

3) https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/google-ceo-eric-schmid... Yesterday, the web was buzzing with commentary about Google CEO Eric Schmidt's dangerous, dismissive response to concerns about search engine users' privacy. When asked during an interview for CNBC's recent "Inside the Mind of Google" special about whether users should be sharing information with Google as if it were a "trusted friend," Schmidt responded, "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

4) http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/mar/06/google-gla... Google doesn't want to discuss these issues. "We are not making any comment," says a company spokesperson. But other sources suggest that Google's chiefs know that this is a live issue, and they're watching it develop. That's part of the plan behind the "Glass Explorer" scheme, which aims to get the devices into the hands – or rather, on to the faces – of ordinary people (and which enabled one member of the trial to putatively auction their Glass).

5)http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/12/google-buzz-privacy/ "Merging something designed for public broadcasting (Buzz) with something inherently private (Gmail) was just looking for trouble."

This is a long term pattern - I've got to the point where I just expect Google to not worry about my privacy as a default position, until such times as they get significant pushback, which may be too late for some users. Call that histrionic if you like, I call that learning from experience...

Re: Works With Nest

#160

Post by robmcm »

dirktheman wrote: post #78
robmcm wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Nest in the UK, they launched a few months back.

Do you have an OpenTherm, modulating boiler (or kettle, as we call them here)? That would be awesome!

No I have a combi boiler, it doesn't store hot water. They can work with boilers though.
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