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Works With Nest

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21–30 of 168 posts

Re: Works With Nest

#21
post #13

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…

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 am not talking about wasting money, I am talking about the actual energy itself as money is more renewable than energy. Once it has been used, it is extremely difficult to get back.

Thanks for the insight, btw.

Re: Works With Nest

#22

Meh. Already possible with systems like TheThingSystem or Ninjablocks - there are rough edges, but there's a convergence of protocols and platforms taking place in the open source space. I predict that these sort of things may be slicker initially, but open platforms focusing on one problem (ie: nodered or Huginn for rules, Owntracks for presence, TheThingSystem or Ninjablocks for pushing a bunch of readings to an MQ…

Things that 'just work' and things like ninjablocks don't exist in the same product space.

Re: Works With Nest

#23

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 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".

Re: Works With Nest

#24

In other words, Google wants to turn Nest into a platform for the house, some kind of Android equivalent. Looking forward to seeing their next steps. If I'm right, some kind of appstore I would imagine. So far they've focused on big brands, if this fails it would be because of insufficient trust from developers, but Android shows people can look the other way if there's enough of an incentive.

To be fair, at the time we were terrified the much more closed Apple platform would win.

To be honest this time I'd rather there was a monopoly, as at least it is then completely clear the only viable competition is open source, so that's where you have to go.

Re: Works With Nest

#25
post #13

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 am not talking about wasting money, I am talking about the actual energy itself as money is more renewable than energy. Once it has been used, it is extremely difficult to get back. Thanks for the insight, btw.

[deleted]

Re: Works With Nest

#26

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".

Not to keep harping on the subject (see my comments above), but pre-warming or pre-cooling houses is actually a really great solution to solving our energy problems with algorithms. It's not strictly a "first world" problem.

Imagine a neighborhood of 100 homes where you know all 100 people will return approximately at 6pm in the winter, and they all want 72 degrees. Taking into account the insulation of each home, if you could pre-heat the homes on a rolling schedule (say, heat 25 of them to 75 degrees at 3pm, accounting for 1 degree of heat dissipation per hour, heat another 25 to 74 degrees at 4pm, etc.), you will actually in aggregate save a lot of energy and cost because of inefficiencies in the way we deliver and generate energy during peak times.

(@yitchelle - central data center)

Re: Works With Nest

#27
post #14
post #7

"Interesting" that they're avoiding supporting HomeKit. But given that the majority of Nest owners own iOS devices, it sure feels like a slap in the face. Supporting HomeKit would allow Siri integration, but I suppose Google probably wants voice control to themselves.

It was Apple that chose to make HomeKit a nonstandard, proprietary protocol for the purpose of locking people into iOS. You simply cannot fault Google for failing to fall in line with Apple's play for the market.

Hey can you guys tell me where I can get the jailbreak kit for my Nest?

Re: Works With Nest

#28

In other words, Google wants to turn Nest into a platform for the house, some kind of Android equivalent. Looking forward to seeing their next steps. If I'm right, some kind of appstore I would imagine. So far they've focused on big brands, if this fails it would be because of insufficient trust from developers, but Android shows people can look the other way if there's enough of an incentive.

With the government, every tech company and their mother tracking us 24 hours a day 7 days a week, why should we continue to add our personal data to the pool?

Re: Works With Nest

#29

In other words, Google wants to turn Nest into a platform for the house, some kind of Android equivalent. Looking forward to seeing their next steps. If I'm right, some kind of appstore I would imagine. So far they've focused on big brands, if this fails it would be because of insufficient trust from developers, but Android shows people can look the other way if there's enough of an incentive.

|| some kind of appstore I would imagine. Extrapolation != predicting the future. You can't just download an android app to fluff your pillows before you get home, it's about integrating the house with new devices. || if this fails This won't fail.

Consider: the vast majority of people who have money to spend on home automation have Apple products.

Re: Works With Nest

#30
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

|| some kind of appstore I would imagine. Extrapolation != predicting the future. You can't just download an android app to fluff your pillows before you get home, it's about integrating the house with new devices. || if this fails This won't fail.

> This won't fail. Why not?

Because home automation is not ubiquitous yet.
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