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#349113 - 15/11/2011 18:05 Re: Nest Thermostat [Re: canuckInOR]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31594
Loc: Seattle, WA
Originally Posted By: canuckInOR
That's the "pretty good white north" zone. If you want "great", you have to cross the border. wink


LOL. I just had to tweet that just now.
_________________________
Tony Fabris

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#349145 - 18/11/2011 13:55 Re: Nest Thermostat [Re: wfaulk]
RobotCaleb
pooh-bah

Registered: 15/01/2002
Posts: 1866
Loc: Austin
Originally Posted By: wfaulk
It's kinda more efficient to keep the house at the same temperature all the time in order to avoid that situation.


/r/askscience is tackling this question.
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/mgwj4/which_is_more_efficient_keeping_my_house_at_a/

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#349281 - 01/12/2011 08:32 Re: Nest Thermostat [Re: hybrid8]
adavidw
addict

Registered: 10/11/2000
Posts: 497
Loc: Utah, USA
Here's a teardown of the thermostat for those that are into circuit pr0n:

http://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/334
_________________________
-Aaron

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#349287 - 01/12/2011 15:21 Re: Nest Thermostat [Re: adavidw]
DWallach
carpal tunnel

Registered: 30/04/2000
Posts: 3810
Mine have arrived. Installation will be this weekend, when I've got time to clean, prep, and paint the wall around the thermostat.

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#349293 - 01/12/2011 23:18 Re: Nest Thermostat [Re: adavidw]
altman
carpal tunnel

Registered: 19/05/1999
Posts: 3457
Loc: Palo Alto, CA
Yeah, not a teardown by someone with much of an eye for detail (no chips looked up for example) but nice pics nonetheless.

The strange optical thing facing backwards is an optical mouse sensor, used to pick up the rotation of the dial. That idea came to me when I was trying to work out how to make a standard IR quadrature encoder lower power...

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#349295 - 01/12/2011 23:35 Re: Nest Thermostat [Re: altman]
DWallach
carpal tunnel

Registered: 30/04/2000
Posts: 3810
Cute. The author claims there's Zigbee in there. We've got a "smart meter" on our house that speaks Zigbee, and I've got a not terribly clever battery-powered display that gives me data reported by the meter. Can my Nest (eventually) patch into this?

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#349297 - 01/12/2011 23:37 Re: Nest Thermostat [Re: DWallach]
altman
carpal tunnel

Registered: 19/05/1999
Posts: 3457
Loc: Palo Alto, CA
Originally Posted By: DWallach
Cute. The author claims there's Zigbee in there. We've got a "smart meter" on our house that speaks Zigbee, and I've got a not terribly clever battery-powered display that gives me data reported by the meter. Can my Nest (eventually) patch into this?


Can't really comment on that, apart from saying that Zigbee is a standards nightmare. Everyone appears to be running different layer2's over it...

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#349301 - 02/12/2011 04:36 Re: Nest Thermostat [Re: altman]
sn00p
addict

Registered: 24/07/2002
Posts: 618
Loc: South London
Originally Posted By: altman

Can't really comment on that, apart from saying that Zigbee is a standards nightmare. Everyone appears to be running different layer2's over it...


This, and the licensing issues for an "open" standard map it even more irritating.

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#349304 - 02/12/2011 11:41 Re: Nest Thermostat [Re: altman]
peter
carpal tunnel

Registered: 13/07/2000
Posts: 4180
Loc: Cambridge, England
Originally Posted By: altman
The strange optical thing facing backwards is an optical mouse sensor, used to pick up the rotation of the dial. That idea came to me when I was trying to work out how to make a standard IR quadrature encoder lower power...

Woah. Though I can't help wondering whether it still comes out ahead if you factor in the carbon footprint of making an optical mouse sensor in the first place...

Peter

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#349308 - 02/12/2011 14:13 Re: Nest Thermostat [Re: peter]
DWallach
carpal tunnel

Registered: 30/04/2000
Posts: 3810
If you're trying to factor in components' carbon footprint, I imagine the energy saved over the lifetime of using the Nest (relative to a dumb thermostat) blows away the cost of the extra components.

Also, I imagine that Hugo's design will never fail during the service lifetime of a Nest thermostat. There are plenty of other things more likely to fail first, like the battery.

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#349313 - 02/12/2011 16:47 Re: Nest Thermostat [Re: DWallach]
Cris
pooh-bah

Registered: 06/02/2002
Posts: 1904
Loc: Leeds, UK
So has anyone got one working on a UK system yet ???

Cheers

Cris

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#349319 - 03/12/2011 03:41 Re: Nest Thermostat [Re: Cris]
DWallach
carpal tunnel

Registered: 30/04/2000
Posts: 3810
Initial thoughts after installation:

- Of all the different cans of paint in the garage, none of them are the shade of green on the wall where the downstairs thermostat goes. This after I made a trip to Home Depot to get all the assorted bits and parts to fix up the paint job.

- So screw it, I mounted the Nests using the supplied mounting plate. Despite the videos to the contrary, it helps to have your own tools, particularly a needle-nose pliers and a proper screwdriver. For the upstairs thermostat, where there's wood behind the drywall, none of the included screws did the job, so I ended up having to use the longer screws that held in the original thermostat. (The non-Nest screws I used have larger screwheads than the proper Nest screws. This made it more difficult for the thermostat to fit onto its mounting plate. I had to push uncomfortably hard on it to get it to seat properly.)

- My wife **hates** the look of the Nest. Unlike the original white Honeywell box, the silvery Nest thing is quite obtrusive (to her); she feels like it's watching her. (It does remind me a bit of HAL 9000.)

- Setup is straightforward, but the WiFi support seems a bit wonky. I have my DrayTek base station upstairs and an Asus AP downstairs. For the Nest closer to my Asus, I typed my WiFi password twice and it never worked. I unplugged the Asus, forcing it to sync up with the DrayTek and it worked and appears to be continuing to work. It's the same password, so I don't know what's going on there. All our other devices seem to roam happily from one to the other. Only the Nest thermostat has had any issues.

- Pairing the thermostat with your account at nest.com is easy. The thermostat displays a code that you type into your browser. But... the first one never required me to type this in. Instead, nest.com's page, on my laptop, said something like "hey, I see a thermostat nearby!" and foomp, all paired up. How did that work? I have no idea. Maybe both were emerging to the Internet sharing the same IP address via my router and nest.com noticed this. I'm not entirely sure. Somebody clearly tried to be very clever here.

- The thermostats seem to be keen to save power by going to sleep and not phoning home. Maybe. Screen shot below.



- Check my network settings? Sure. Touching the thermostat causes it to check in and it's back online again. Otherwise, it's offline and there's no way (yet?) to queue a command for the thermostat when it comes back. Also, there's no way in the network settings to know which base station the thermostat's paired itself with. It would be nice for it to display the MAC address of the base station it's paired with so I can attempt to debug this.

- Programming the thermostat via the web interface is surprisingly klunky. They clearly want you to let the thing learn by itself.

- The feature I'm already missing from my $40 Honeywell thermostats is the ability to have it heat and cool without bugging me to switch modes. On the Honeywell, you can effectively program ranges that change over the day. So far as I can tell, the only range support for the Nest thermostat disables the learning / scheduling business altogether. If I could make one feature request, it would be to fix this. (This time of year, in Houston, temperatures swing from the 40's to the 80's, Farenheit, over the course of any given week, so it would be deeply annoying to be constantly flipping the thermostat back and forth from heat to cool to heat.) Never mind I'm probably one of three people in the world who actually figured out how to have my Honeywell actually do this and the Honeywell UI is totally garbage. At least it did the job.

- iPhone application, available today. Android application? Sorry, that will be out "in December". I'd be curious to know whether these apps speak directly to the thermostats or whether they're just pretty versions of the web page, where all communication between you and your thermostats is going through nest.com.

- This also raises something of a privacy concern, since Nest Incorporated clearly knows your schedule. I've read over their privacy statement, and it's pretty good. The only glaring flaw is that they claim they store my WiFi password on their servers. That's bad. My WiFi password should never physically leave my house. (It's different from every other password in my life, so the compromise of it wouldn't be particularly catastrophic for me, but it might be for others.)


Anyway, give me a few weeks and we'll see how well the learning works and whether the lack of auto-switching from heat to cool is a serious issue or not.

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#349320 - 03/12/2011 05:09 Re: Nest Thermostat [Re: DWallach]
drakino
carpal tunnel

Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
Thanks for the initial feedback. It's a bit disappointing to hear that there may be an issue with having to flip it between heat and cool modes. This is one of the primary reasons I wanted one.

At least it has the ability to be updated software wise to improve over time.

Looking forward to your further insights and thoughts about the Nest.

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#349322 - 03/12/2011 11:35 Re: Nest Thermostat [Re: drakino]
JBjorgen
carpal tunnel

Registered: 19/01/2002
Posts: 3584
Loc: Columbus, OH
Sounds like a version 1 product. Most of the kinks will likely eventually get worked out if they ever make it to version 2
_________________________
~ John

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#349323 - 03/12/2011 13:07 Re: Nest Thermostat [Re: JBjorgen]
DWallach
carpal tunnel

Registered: 30/04/2000
Posts: 3810
Incidentally, now that it's daytime, I'm not having these online/offline problems. Perhaps the thermostats were assuming "it's late, so I'll go to sleep and recharge my battery".

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#349324 - 03/12/2011 13:22 Re: Nest Thermostat [Re: DWallach]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14491
Loc: Canada
Or maybe.. "I'm new, my battery is low, I'll just sit and charge for a spell." ?

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#349328 - 03/12/2011 21:33 Re: Nest Thermostat [Re: mlord]
DWallach
carpal tunnel

Registered: 30/04/2000
Posts: 3810
Curiosity: I've got my thermostats set to "turn on when approached", presumably leveraging the motion sensor. They only turn on, however, when I click them. Could there be a faulty motion sensor? How could I tell?

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#349329 - 03/12/2011 23:57 Re: Nest Thermostat [Re: DWallach]
gbeer
carpal tunnel

Registered: 17/12/2000
Posts: 2665
Loc: Manteca, California
Originally Posted By: DWallach


- This also raises something of a privacy concern, since Nest Incorporated clearly knows your schedule. I've read over their privacy statement, and it's pretty good. The only glaring flaw is that they claim they store my WiFi password on their servers. That's bad. My WiFi password should never physically leave my house. (It's different from every other password in my life, so the compromise of it wouldn't be particularly catastrophic for me, but.......


I read that part of the privacy statement differently. Its pretty specific that it's the thermostat itself that is storing the key.

Quote:
To access and program the Nest Learning Thermostat over the Internet from your computer or mobile device, you will need to connect it to a wireless network. During setup, the Nest Learning Thermostat will ask for your Wi-Fi network name (SSID) and encryption key to connect to your home network. It will save this information on the device so that it can check for commands you send from your mobile devices or computer, check for Nest messages, and look for updates.
_________________________
Glenn

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#349332 - 04/12/2011 04:18 Re: Nest Thermostat [Re: peter]
altman
carpal tunnel

Registered: 19/05/1999
Posts: 3457
Loc: Palo Alto, CA
The lower power objectives weren't for green reasons (pretty much the whole thing is "green" in that respect; a typical HVAC relay's pull-in current is at least double what the thermostat takes). It has to be low power because the whole thing runs from batteries.

Optical mouse chips are cheap, because they're made in such volume. They're pretty much 128x128 CMOS cameras with very cheap lenses smile


Edited by altman (04/12/2011 04:19)

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#349333 - 04/12/2011 04:22 Re: Nest Thermostat [Re: mlord]
altman
carpal tunnel

Registered: 19/05/1999
Posts: 3457
Loc: Palo Alto, CA
Originally Posted By: mlord
Or maybe.. "I'm new, my battery is low, I'll just sit and charge for a spell." ?


Likely bingo smile (though I don't know for sure)

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#349334 - 04/12/2011 04:23 Re: Nest Thermostat [Re: DWallach]
altman
carpal tunnel

Registered: 19/05/1999
Posts: 3457
Loc: Palo Alto, CA
Originally Posted By: DWallach
Curiosity: I've got my thermostats set to "turn on when approached", presumably leveraging the motion sensor. They only turn on, however, when I click them. Could there be a faulty motion sensor? How could I tell?


That uses the short-range proximity sensor vs the PIR. Mine sometimes doesn't turn on either, but I've not worked out what the reason is. I suspect software updates will fix the glitches over time...

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#349338 - 04/12/2011 14:55 Re: Nest Thermostat [Re: altman]
DWallach
carpal tunnel

Registered: 30/04/2000
Posts: 3810
Here's the full WiFi language:
Quote:

What information do you store and how do you keep my data safe?

To provide the Nest service, we store your account information, the answers to the initial questions used to set up the device, your Wifi Password, and three-weeks worth of sensor readings and schedule. All data is password protected and cannot easily be accessed. You can delete the information on the Nest device by resetting it to the factory settings.

We also store PII about your use of the product, including sensor data and your inputs from mobile and other devices on our cloud servers. We use industry-standard methods to keep this data safe and secure while transmitted over your home network and through the Internet to our servers.

I'd say the text is somewhat ambiguous on *where* this stuff is being stored. Given that it's all "password protected", that would tend to imply they're talking about the server side, since there are no passwords in the thermostat.

As to the proximity sensor, I've discovered mine works, but only if I wave my hand a few inches in front of it. At 12 inches or more, it never wakes up.

As to the charging and network unavailability, I've noticed a pattern that they're unavailable at night and available during the day. I hope that the learning process can figure out that I'm more likely to want to dork with my thermostats at night, after my kid's in bed.

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#349350 - 05/12/2011 15:07 Re: Nest Thermostat [Re: Cris]
andym
carpal tunnel

Registered: 17/01/2002
Posts: 3996
Loc: Manchester UK
Originally Posted By: Cris
So has anyone got one working on a UK system yet ???

With a heating only, radiator based system, even if it does work on an electrical level, would it actually do anything that my bog standard 'stat doesn't?

We've only just turned our central heating on, it's been off since April. Even then, it's on for 2 hours in the morning and 4 in the evening.
_________________________
Cheers,

Andy M

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#349368 - 05/12/2011 22:59 Re: Nest Thermostat [Re: andym]
DWallach
carpal tunnel

Registered: 30/04/2000
Posts: 3810
Amusement du jour: got home at the Nest had an announcement on the screen that it had detected insufficient movement over the past few days to be able to confidently run its "auto-away" algorithm. (It's positioned in a central location. If it has roughly the same hardware as a standard security system motion sensor, it should be able to figure out when we're around.)

At this point, the #1 missing feature, so far as I can tell, are nerdy things. I'd like the display to be able to show me the various sensors as they're working. I'd also like the web interface to be able to graph things over time, like temperature or humidity. I assume the data is in there, somewhere.

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#349398 - 07/12/2011 04:48 Re: Nest Thermostat [Re: DWallach]
altman
carpal tunnel

Registered: 19/05/1999
Posts: 3457
Loc: Palo Alto, CA
Pretty sure the technical info screen will show you ALS, prox and PIR sensor readings (scroll waaaaaaay down). It used to, at any rate.

Yeah, I'd like humidity, temperature, etc logs too. I remember very early on (the office was a garage) building an arduino-based wifi temp/humidity/light/pressure monitor and loving seeing the humidity drop when the AC came on, etc.

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#349408 - 07/12/2011 14:31 Re: Nest Thermostat [Re: altman]
Daria
carpal tunnel

Registered: 24/01/2002
Posts: 3937
Loc: Providence, RI
The sensors I want are definitely nerdy: i still want a bluetooth prox sensor, because honestly, my or my wife's cellphone being there are the only triggers that really matter. Too bad leaving bluetooth enabled on the iPhone has an actual battery impact.

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#349409 - 07/12/2011 16:06 Re: Nest Thermostat [Re: altman]
DWallach
carpal tunnel

Registered: 30/04/2000
Posts: 3810
Originally Posted By: altman
Pretty sure the technical info screen will show you ALS, prox and PIR sensor readings (scroll waaaaaaay down). It used to, at any rate.

Yes, now that I know it's in there, I want to be able to get it out and graph it.

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#349411 - 07/12/2011 20:55 Re: Nest Thermostat [Re: Daria]
altman
carpal tunnel

Registered: 19/05/1999
Posts: 3457
Loc: Palo Alto, CA
Originally Posted By: dbrashear
The sensors I want are definitely nerdy: i still want a bluetooth prox sensor, because honestly, my or my wife's cellphone being there are the only triggers that really matter. Too bad leaving bluetooth enabled on the iPhone has an actual battery impact.


Seriously, it's so little power that it's in the noise. Leave it on, along with wifi. WiFi used to sleep at sub 1mA when associated to an access point, I believe Bluetooth was about 0.25mA.

If you assume that you have 100 hours standby with both wifi and bluetooth off, you'd have about 92 hours with both of them on. In the real world, where you do leave your house (hence wifi will be lower power) it's even less impact.

Really though, you should be using geofences to determine whether you're at home or not...

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#349420 - 08/12/2011 04:42 Re: Nest Thermostat [Re: altman]
Daria
carpal tunnel

Registered: 24/01/2002
Posts: 3937
Loc: Providence, RI
using geofences assumes something running on the devices and actively pushing info. i haven't put iOS 5 on either of our iPhones yet and am still waiting on an untethered jailbreak (or a different dam to burst first)

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#349422 - 08/12/2011 05:32 Re: Nest Thermostat [Re: Daria]
altman
carpal tunnel

Registered: 19/05/1999
Posts: 3457
Loc: Palo Alto, CA
Yes, it needs something on the device, but it doesn't need to be running.

Even iOS4 apps could be woken by the OS when geofences were crossed. Pick the right level of granularity and it didn't even need to use GPS - it just got woken by the baseband when the local cells list (which is updated every ~2.5 seconds when the baseband wakes up to check for pages)... ie, basically zero extra power over standby.

Not that I've seen any geofencing app that works properly apart from reminders on iOS5, though... and that uses GPS frown

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