RE: Anyone else fallen in love with the Nest thermostat.

["White, Peter" <peter.white@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Yup, I installed 2 of them (one for each floor) a few weeks ago.
However....

I was controlling HVAC via Homeseer, and some z-wave thermostats.  I spent
hours setting up all sorts of conditional events, so that, basically, I
wasn't burning too much energy when the house was empty, or full of
sleeping people that would never know the difference.  And on the whole,
that worked pretty well, except, z-wave is not a perfect technology, and
nor is Windows XP, the O/S that my aging Homeseer server happens to run
(and nor is Homeseer, for that matter).  Lately, HS has been crashing,
perhaps once a week, which not only means the house is a bit dark when
people get home, but it means it cold, which SWMBO will not allow, and
makes me pay for it by turning everything up to the max.  I'm in Texas, and
yes, the energy wastage over here is horrible for someone that's be
conditioned to be frugal with it!

So, enter Nest, which I noticed a few months ago, and registered for a
couple of just before Christmas.  They installed very easily, the only
issue being that my stats were in a very low traffic area, so repositioned
them to somewhere more relevant.  They're great to look at though (compared
to all my other fairly typical texan-style 'wall furniture') they're stick
out a bit, both literally, and figuratively, as they're obviously fairly
modern.  Anyway, they do work as advertised most of the time, any of the
family can get to them from a PC or phone, and it seems to have learned our
schedules fairly well.  Checking now on my iPhone, both floors are set to
auto-away, which means I'm not heating an empty house (it's forced-air
heating, so not terribly efficient, but it is very quick when compared to
radiators or UFH, so in my case it is not more efficient to maintain a
constant temp).

Overall, I'm a fan.  I wish they'd also bring out a house alarm and even
some power sockets.  I'm all but done with z-wave, it needs as much TLC as
X-10, and it was never meant to be that way.  I'm not particularly an Apple
fan, but, I am a fan of stuff that 'just works'.  In that category I
include iPods/pads/phones, Sonos and now Nest.

The only slight hiccup occurred a couple of weeks ago, where it would
appear Nest pushed out an update, that mysteriously caused the stat's to
try to reach a server that was unreachable, eventually draining the battery
(even though it receives 24v power from the HVAC).  You can read all about
it on their Facebook page, depending on your point of view this is either
scary and Big-Brotherish (not my pov), or a daft mistake made by a young
but rapidly growing company (my pov).  Either way, they fessed up, and it's
all been good since.

Essentially it's now doing almost exactly what my Homeseer/Z-Wave stats
were doing, except it took about 10 mins to set up (rather than 10 hours),
it looks cool, and it appears reliable.

Pete

From: ukha_d@xxxxxxx [mailto:ukha_d@xxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
davidcfromtheuk
Sent: Wednesday, February 08, 2012 11:58 AM
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Subject: [ukha_d] Anyone else fallen in love with the Nest thermostat.



I've been teased by a friend in the States about it (after years of ribbing
him about the way they waste energy !) Website is nest dot com. It's
designed by ex Apple engineers !


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