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Works With Nest

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Re: Works With Nest

#81

Post by koyote »

pauly wrote: post #67
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.

Not sure this is so common in the uk. My heating is almost always off, and if it gets cold we have a timer and a thermostat, so it comes on for an hour in the morning and a couple of hours in the evening.

That's how I have it working here in the UK as well and I think most people do.

A couple of hours after 6pm and a couple of hours just before you wake up. All controlled from a simple timer.

Yes, Nest would be a fancier solution, but I don't really see much benefit a part from the 'coolness' factor.

Re: Works With Nest

#82

Post by ceejayoz »

yitchelle wrote: post #33
vnorby wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That is an interest way of distributing loading of the peak heating requirements. Does Nest have a ability to interact with the other Nest in the neighborhood? Or is it all controlled from a central server?

Not (yet) with other Nests that I'm aware of, but they're making deals with the power companies. Users can get discounts on their bill for allowing the power company to bump energy use down a degree or two during peak times.

Re: Works With Nest

#83

Post by Udo »

dirktheman wrote: post #63

I'm really curious how this will pan out. In Europe (or at least here in The Netherlands, not 100% sure about the other countries) we can't use the Nest thermostat because our central heating boilers and thermostats use the OpenTherm protocol. ( http://www.opentherm.eu/ ) Also, most boilers in Europe are of the modulating kind (not a simple on/off switch, but a more graduate gas consumption. Side note: I really don't…

I'm curious as well. It's very nice that the Mercedes integration is in theory just an app, but like you I don't have a house that's compatible with Nest.

It would be really nice though if there was an open protocol for this stuff. I'd like my car/phone to tell my house that I'm on my way, even if I'm not using anything Nest-like.

Sadly, a sense of realism tells me open protocols aren't really what any manufacturers have in mind. So far it's all tightly integrated walled gardens.

Re: Works With Nest

#84

Post by rlpb »

warcode wrote: post #31

If its "Your data. Your privacy. You’re in control.". Why won't they let me self-host? The two things don't add up.

There's a huge support cost in providing self-host, together with an impact on image (ease of use, etc). With the tiny proportion of people who actually would self-host, I don't think it makes any business sense.

I want a self-host, and generally resist on any technology unless I can, but at the same time I don't expect any company looking to sell products to actually do it.

So self-host generally only goes hand-in-hand with non-commercial projects.

Re: Works With Nest

#85

Post by parley »

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…

> A single, open, interoperable standard is coming

Do you have some more info about that, or is it a gut feeling prediction?

Re: Works With Nest

#86

Post by rlpb »

ars wrote: post #56
vnorby wrote: 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 looked into the nest but I don't think it would save me any energy. And I'm wondering if that's actually true for lots of people. I have a modulating (i.e. change flame level) condensing boiler (the highest efficiency available). I programmed it to run as close to 24/7 as I could, because that way it uses the lowest flame, which is the most efficient flame. When I tried a setback thermostat when the boiler attempte…

> I programmed it to run as close to 24/7 as I could, because that way it uses the lowest flame, which is the most efficient flame.

The energy loss from your home increases as the differential between inside and outside increases, right? So at night or when you're out, if your house were kept colder, then you'd lose less energy to the outside.

So by keeping your heating running 24/7, you're wasting some energy in the extra energy loss when you're out, right?

How does this compare to the efficiency gain by running your more efficient flame? Have you calculated or measured that you actually save energy overall?

Re: Works With Nest

#87

Post by VLM »

asmithmd1 wrote: post #75
dirktheman wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When your house is not insulated properly and you live in a cold climate, it's actually better to not turn the heat off completely. It takes more energy to warm a stone cold house than to keep it at approx. 62 degrees. A simple, programmable thermostat will make up for the purchase within the first year of service.

This is not true. It might seem that way because of how long it takes your house to warm up. There is no momentum or stiction with heat transfer. When the inside of your house is warmer than the outside you are losing some amount of heat to the outside proportional to the difference. Any heat you add to maintain that difference when you are not home is wasted. As long as you can tolerate a stone cold house when you r…

It seems intuitive that heat exchanger eff increases with decreased flow rate. Also air handling is always best done as slowly as possible, because you're trying to move air, not make noise and turbulence. There doesn't seem to be any intuitive reason to think eff would be higher at low rates unless its doing something insane like varying fuel/air ratios to get a desired heat flow or some kind of slow PWM with repeated ignition losses. Real furnaces don't work like that, so...

My otherwise boring furnace is variable speed and the longer its on, the faster it runs. It's really roaring after about 30 minutes. Its more than a decade old, this is pretty old COTS tech. My first zillion BTU cost me somewhat less than my last zillion BTU in any heating cycle.

I live in a cold northern climate with great insulation and low heating bills and a variable speed furnace and the house is basically never empty (spouse and I work at home often enough, etc). The whole "nest" idea doesn't work financially for me although it is interesting to watch.

Re: Works With Nest

#88

Post by VLM »

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…

"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 the races with the new breed, hundreds of bucks for a mere thermostat, etc. The days of your linux box turning your aquarium tank lights on and off in a cron job for $30 total are pretty much coming to an end, although it'll still be possible, much slower and harder to automate and it'll cost $750 and have a phone app that demands access to your contact list, but it'll still sorta work.

Another interesting trend in home automation is abandonment of all legacy tech. Ask someone what came before the arduino in microcontrollers, "uh, nothing, they were the first ever". Ditto the new wave of home automation, the zillionth competitor still positions themselves as the "first". Not too impressed with this trend either. If I'm making fun of this marketing scheme, I'm probably not the only guy in the target market making fun of the trend.

A final interesting industry trend is the conspicuous consumption aspect. Nobody seriously tried to claim an early 80s era X-10 wall wart was a designed thing of beauty to show off to your friends, any more than a circuit breaker or a gas shutoff valve. The new wave is all about the bling as the highest priority. Does look pretty nice.

So that's the four trends I've seen in HA, your observation of extensive partnering agreements, the cost is exploding, every copycat is the first product ever, and appearance is the #1 priority. None of the trends could have been extrapolated from the earliest days in the 80s to 2010 or so.

I suspect interoperability is NOT going to turn out any better for HA than it has for home stereo-TV-dvd-xbox remote controls, or kitchen appliances (try swapping egg beaters between competing portable mixers for a good time, if you have a deep pocketbook)

Re: Works With Nest

#89

Post by plg »

"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

Re: Works With Nest

#90

Post by jpalomaki »

cbeach wrote: post #41
jpalomaki wrote: post #34

It gets pretty interesting when you connect all the pieces Google now has. You car has build in Android device. Your home is monitored and controlled with Nest devices. On your wrist you carry Android wearable. Google Glass tracks what you see. For online activities you use Google products (Chrome, Gmail, Calendar). You consume your media via Android table or Chromecast. Google knows about your your car. It knows how…

Given Google's fondness for shutting down APIs and services, I'd be very disappointed if they monopolised all of these markets. They'll be the Microsoft of home automation. Using it to trap people in their monolith (and Android is just a vehicle for them to deliver ads, folks), and then letting it stagnate or shutting it down if the ad delivery doesn't prove lucrative. I've been burnt so many times by Google I've los…

Maybe they are looking new revenue sources and don't want to be just in the ad business anymore. With the Nest line or products I could easily imagine them extracting over $1000 from a household that goes all-in with their their product offering (thermostat, few smoke detectors, few Dropcam devices). And there's also good potential for selling add-on services for a monthly fee.

Something completely new business might be available on the "smart grid" side. If you are controlling the heating and air conditioning you have pretty strong influence on the amount of electricity the household is using at a given time.

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