3 years ago I installed an Internet thermostat called Radio Thermostat I received as a gift. It has worked like a champ for me up until about 3 months ago when the wifi module died. I don't know how it's feature set compares to the Nest because I was happy with it and didn't need to look around for a replacement. I don't know exactly how much money it has saved me - but it had to be a ton!
i live alone and travel 4-days a week for business. Sometimes, after a trip starts, it gets extended to 8, 9 or even 11 days. I don't need to be heating or cooling the house when I'm not going to be in it. Prior to getting the wifi thermostat, I would try to remember to adjust the thermostat before I left for the airport - but ended up forgetting to do so more than 50% of the time. But when I *Did* remember, I would have to re-adjust it manually when I returned home and for the next 8-12 hours I was either way too hot or way too cold - or - I wasn't able to adjust it as far away from "comfort" or it would be too uncomfortable upon my return home. But since installing the wifi thermostat, I am able to make extreme adjustments before I leave - and set it back to comfortable a day before i return which saves much more than doing things manually - and results in a more comfortable home when I return. It also now gives me the ability to adjust it Mid-trip if I had forgotten to do so at the start of the trip.
A lot of people on this thread have been claiming that these devices are useless and not necessary. My use cases helps illustrate that these people are speaking from a very narrow view of the world where everybody lives exactly as they do. In reality, there are significant portions of the population that live more like I do - and there are portions of the population that live differently from them or from me but still have their own valid use cases for this type of automation - so please take any comments from them with a grain of salt. Perhaps their opinions will be worth more once they learn to look at the world with wider eyes.
"This is the latest in a string of problems for Nest in the years since Tony Fadell sold the firm to Google."
That explains everything doesn't Boom !!!
This is my first post on AppleInsider. I have been lurking for years. Been a Mac user since 1984. I have 3 Macs, 3 iPhones, an iPad, and an apple TV. So take all that with a grain of salt.
I'm semi-retired now from the construction business; I was a custom home-builder for 40 years. I've built some incredible homes, which included some really complex heating/cooling systems and, complex electrical and lighting systems. I was also deeply involved in energy conservation within the home.
What I have learned is: keep your winter-time thermostat at 68º and your summertime at 75º. We used Honeywell's programmable thermostats, but they don't really save you money. The best thing is to leave your thermostat alone at a set temperature; 68 in winter and 74-76 in the summer. When you turn your thermostat down at night in the winter, and then program it to ramp back up at 5:00 AM, you're not saving anything. There is a lot of mass within a house...furniture, interior wall, floors, etc. When that programmable thermostat sets back the temps for the night or while your gone for the day, it has to expend an inordinate amount of energy to reheat the air plus the mass within your house. No reason for any type of smart thermostat. It takes less time to manually reset your thermostat than it does to pull out your iPhone or tablet to regulate your home's temperature. Sheesh!
Now the same goes for lights. A properly wired house has two switches for a hallway; one switch at either end (that's called a 3-way because of the way it's wired, 3 switches controlling the same lights is called a 4-way). So what is so hard about when you enter or exit a room or hallway to just flip the fuckin' switches. It takes less effort than grabbing you iPhone.
We are turning into a bunch of techno couch potatoes, without even realizing we would expend less energy by manually turning lights off or on and manually adjusting the thermostat. Home automation is a joke!
The only place I use any automation is for my home theater/listening room. I can click one button and my system turns on and then after a few seconds, the lights will dim or turn off.
I can program any of this stuff, but I still think it's a joke.
Can not agree with that statement more, this is the part that most people do not understand, they need to take a thermodynamic class or do to understand this. It take less energy to maintain the internal temp of your home than it take to keep reheating each day. Now if you going to be gone for a while going to lower temp does save energy over that people of time.
I would like to see the thermodynamics proving your statement. Which isn't true, by the way.
Comments
i live alone and travel 4-days a week for business. Sometimes, after a trip starts, it gets extended to 8, 9 or even 11 days. I don't need to be heating or cooling the house when I'm not going to be in it. Prior to getting the wifi thermostat, I would try to remember to adjust the thermostat before I left for the airport - but ended up forgetting to do so more than 50% of the time. But when I *Did* remember, I would have to re-adjust it manually when I returned home and for the next 8-12 hours I was either way too hot or way too cold - or - I wasn't able to adjust it as far away from "comfort" or it would be too uncomfortable upon my return home. But since installing the wifi thermostat, I am able to make extreme adjustments before I leave - and set it back to comfortable a day before i return which saves much more than doing things manually - and results in a more comfortable home when I return. It also now gives me the ability to adjust it Mid-trip if I had forgotten to do so at the start of the trip.
A lot of people on this thread have been claiming that these devices are useless and not necessary. My use cases helps illustrate that these people are speaking from a very narrow view of the world where everybody lives exactly as they do. In reality, there are significant portions of the population that live more like I do - and there are portions of the population that live differently from them or from me but still have their own valid use cases for this type of automation - so please take any comments from them with a grain of salt. Perhaps their opinions will be worth more once they learn to look at the world with wider eyes.
Which isn't true, by the way.