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Honeywell Lyric thermostat

lyric.honeywell.com

31–40 of 56 posts

Re: Honeywell Lyric thermostat

#31
post #28

I won't buy a NEST after the Google acquisition; nice to see other players entering this space. Laughable how long it took them -- Honeywell should have completely owned this market. Next up for disruption is home security.

> Honeywell should have completely owned this market. True, with respect to "smart" thermostats. But Honeywell already owns the thermostat market, and it's much larger than the "smart" thermostat market.

...today. Prior to Nest, there wasn't a "smart" thermostat market. Suddenly, everyone realized that the concept at least is pretty cool and Nest sold like hotcakes.

Prior to this release, Honeywell seemed to be playing Blackberry to Nest's iPhone: "we own the serious market. Only kids and geeks would want a 'smart' ${device}". And then suddenly one day everybody wanted one, and the incumbents were blindsided to realize that they didn't understand their market as well as they'd thought.

There's no reason at all that Honeywell shouldn't dominate the smart thermostat market, other than that they couldn't be bothered to. In a couple of years when no homeowner is going to want to buy a new house with a "dumb" thermostat, they'll need to have something attractive in that space. I bet more is riding on the success of this release than you'd think.

Re: Honeywell Lyric thermostat

#32
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

90% of thermostats are installed that way. Its really an enterprise business.

Source? Isn't that only true due to the fact that most people do not change thermostats in homes/apartments/condos they move into, or when they change HVAC systems?

I don't think the average populace is generally comfortable doing wiring work.

Re: Honeywell Lyric thermostat

#33

One other thing about the "Internet of Things" movement that has really bugged me: all of these Internet-enabled Things tend to rely on (oh, no, there's that word again) the "cloud." I really don't like the idea of my home reporting everything to third parties. If I want access to things on my home LAN, it should be through my own VPN and not a third party.

Requiring that someone run their own home VPN would restrict your market pretty severely. C'mon. These are mass-market consumer devices.

Re: Honeywell Lyric thermostat

#34
post #28

I won't buy a NEST after the Google acquisition; nice to see other players entering this space. Laughable how long it took them -- Honeywell should have completely owned this market. Next up for disruption is home security.

> Honeywell should have completely owned this market. True, with respect to "smart" thermostats. But Honeywell already owns the thermostat market, and it's much larger than the "smart" thermostat market.

not sure the 'smart' thermostat market will grow huge in a reasonable time frame. 'save' money by buying a 250-400$ (+ installation) thermostat when a normal one costs around 40$. This works for some people/situations, but I'd rather just turn the heat down before I go out the door. On top of it all, your thermostat can now be used against you in a court of law, and who knows what companies will do with this information.

Re: Honeywell Lyric thermostat

#35

One other thing about the "Internet of Things" movement that has really bugged me: all of these Internet-enabled Things tend to rely on (oh, no, there's that word again) the "cloud." I really don't like the idea of my home reporting everything to third parties. If I want access to things on my home LAN, it should be through my own VPN and not a third party.

[deleted]

Re: Honeywell Lyric thermostat

#37
post #30

It looks like a poor man's version of a Nest except it costs $50 more and has to be purchased through a contractor. The distinguishing feature that they are touting (the geo-fencing capability) is not something I would even want. I don't want an app on my phone sending constant updates to Honeywell on exactly where I am located. This seems like an established company trying to play catch-up to an unanticipated change…

Regarding that last sentence, yes. It's a pretty stark contrast, even, to look at the design of Lyric's website in comparison to the rest of Honeywell's site. I guess there is no harm in trying to disrupt the disrupter, but I don't think that this is going to work for them. Maybe they could have some success against Nest by playing off of some people's privacy concerns around Google.

A few years ago, I bought an internet module add on for a Honeywell alarm system and was shocked to find that the control UI communicated in plain text with no authentication to the internet module. The module broadcast its address across the entire network every few seconds.

At any location that has one of these installed on a weak WiFi network (an unfortunately likely combination), it would be feasible to crack the network and brute force disable the alarm from the outside, disabling the alarm before ever setting foot inside.

Let's just say I wont be buying any Honeywell products in the future.

Re: Honeywell Lyric thermostat

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On an interesting note, during the last CES Belkin announced that Wemo is going to integrate with appliances such as slow cookers and humidifiers. This is a disaster waiting to happen.

In all fairness to Belkin, they did correct their mistake. But still, Belkin is a company that has sold technology products for a while now, and even they couldn't get it right.

The problem with Belkin is that they have a history of selling garbage in nice packaging with decent industrial design. Unless something changes drastically in the company's culture, I doubt their product quality will really improve.
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