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

Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 234 posts

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#181

Post by unclebucknasty »

Nest is arrogant and obnoxious as a product. It is overrated and unnecessary. So ridiculous when you stop and think about it. If you ever scroll through the settings, it's completely laughable that this is all for a thermostat.

And all for some supposed improvement that is marginal at best. At worst, it simply doesn't work; taking over and setting some uncomfortable temperature that you never requested. My old thermostat worked just fine. Set it on exactly what I liked, so there was no need for it to "learn". I literally gave it a specific number. Don't really get the concept of wanting it to second guess me.

When I Googled and found others with similar issues, they seemed to be largely insulted on forums, as if the users were somehow unworthy of the wonderful Nest. They just hadn't invested enough time in understanding what the Nest wants.

The whole thing seems like a hoax--an elaborate parody of the times.

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#182

Post by watty »

rconti wrote: post #104
atom_enger wrote: post #31

We 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 w…

Just to provide a counter point of view, I owned a Nest 1st gen for 2 years (before selling my house) and didn't have a single issue.

I worked at home which means the smart scheduling was useless but the aesthetics and ease of use were great. Not to mention turning it on/off while away from the house was nice (I know, not limited to Nest).

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#183

Post by jerf »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #170
kuschku wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Call me a curmudgeon, but I'm yet to see a coherent explanation of what IoT is supposed to do for me as a homeowner. I think "all the household IoT stuff is toys" is rather directly connected to the fact that I just don't have massive problems I need solved with the Internet in my house. Of course the resulting market is nothing but toys; there doesn't appear to be any space for non-toys.

(I see the commercial and civil IoT possibilities, but an awful lot of them involve being able to monitor and somewhat control things that are physically very dispersed out in the real world. I don't have a house that big.)

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#184

Post by osi »

pqs wrote: post #151
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…

Sleeping with heating on seems a waste of energy to me. At least in Spain. I have a dumb thermostat. It doesn't even have a clock. It just has two buttons, one two increase temperature, the other to decrease it. In winter, during the day, I put it at 20C. At night, I put it at 15C or lower (which stops heating, as the house temperature decreases to about 17 or 18 degrees during the night, without heating). It works l…

You should get a simple programmable thermostat that just lets you put temperature at given times. Will automate away what you forget to do.

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#185

Post by AlisdairO »

Viper007Bond wrote: post #162
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.

House insulation is on average not as good, also.

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#186

Post by rlpb »

Perhaps we need to start looking at arbitration clauses the same as we see doing business with some company is some distant country. Fine when everything goes smoothly, but expect to lose your money if it doesn't.

The way to look at it is that a company with an arbitration clause might as well not be in the US.

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#187

Post by Joeri »

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…

To be fair, you can still buy traditional building/home automation products. If you go through the list of vendors on the KNX website you see that pretty much every hip IoT device has a standards-based equivalent from those traditional vendors. Learning thermostats, IP-based video doorbells, smart lights, etc...

The difference is one of market strategy. The IoT devices are deliberately low-threshold purchases (cheap, easy to install) because they want to build a customer relationship that leads to extra sales. Nest cam, ring subscription, etc... Traditional home automation products instead are targeted towards a one-time sale of a larger system, so they focus more on ability to design the system how you want, with more standards support and more ability to integrate with other products, but also a much higher purchase threshold and a much more involved installation process.

In the end, you have to choose what you want. Do you want a single gadget or do you want a whole smart home system?

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#188

Post by Aleman360 »

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…

That's how a lot of actual medical devices work.

I worked on an anesthesia machine where the control systems were implemented with micro controllers and RTOS. The UI was Windows Embedded running on a separate x86 board and the whole thing would still safely operate even if the UI subsystem crashed. There were completely mechanical backup controls too.

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#189

Post by jarek »

jerf wrote: post #183
TeMPOraL wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Call me a curmudgeon, but I'm yet to see a coherent explanation of what IoT is supposed to do for me as a homeowner. I think "all the household IoT stuff is toys" is rather directly connected to the fact that I just don't have massive problems I need solved with the Internet in my house. Of course the resulting market is nothing but toys; there doesn't appear to be any space for non-toys. (I see the commercial and ci…

Eh... there's some value, it's just really badly implemented currently.

A selling idea of the Nest is that it keeps your house warm when you're there, and not-frozen when you're not, and it will do so efficiently, so that the house is warm when you arrive home but not long before.

Now of course you can just turn up the heating as you walk in the door wait a few minutes to heat up, it won't hurt. But if technology can do it reliably, there's clearly some value. Compare, for instance, lighting a candle when you get home with just flicking the switch for those newfangled electric lights. The candle works but the technology is more convenient.

Of course, electricity doesn't give you failwhales these days, and there's a bit more engineering involved than "move fast and break things."

Re: Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

#190

Post by freehunter »

bpchaps wrote: post #147
zippergz wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://yourhome.honeywell.com/en/contact-us

I'm at a complete loss of words at why you think that's even in the same class of support...

Why? He said tech support, the link given has a number for tech support. Seems pretty similar. Honeywell also has a wifi smart thermostat that is controlled by an iPhone app and competes with the Nest.

Seems pretty damn similar.

Post reply on HN