Anyone have Nest Thermostat

[HE15MAN]

They look awesome and I want one, but was looking for real world reviews on them

[iJohnHenry]

You want everyone to search for this item? That's a lot of wasted hours.

Link please.

[DocNYz]

I was considering one too but need to know more about connectivity to the Internet and whether or not it can integrate into other systems (Crestron, ADT Pulse, Schlage etc.).

[tigres]

I have (2), what do you want to know exactly?

[HE15MAN]

Originally Posted by tigres

I have (2), what do you want to know exactly?

I think they are bad ass, just wondering if you save you any money at all. I think the fact it is beautiful, and you can control your temp from your phone or any internet connection is awesome. Let alone the airwave capability and the fact it learns your schedule makes it worth. Just kinda curious if I could expect to save any $.

Now that Lowes is selling them, I am thinking about getting their movers coupons for 10% off and buying them in store to save shipping and save 10%.

----------

Originally Posted by iJohnHenry

You want everyone to search for this item? That's a lot of wasted hours.

Link please.

http://www.nest.com/

[tigres]

Originally Posted by HE15MAN

I think they are bad ass, just wondering if you save you any money at all. I think the fact it is beautiful, and you can control your temp from your phone or any internet connection is awesome. Let alone the airwave capability and the fact it learns your schedule makes it worth. Just kinda curious if I could expect to save any $.

Now that Lowes is selling them, I am thinking about getting their movers coupons for 10% off and buying them in store to save shipping and save 10%.

Too soon to really tell to be honest. I have had them for about 2.5 months and this is the first time I can actually Visualize my usage. I have no idea how much I was using in the past, vs what I am using now. My leaf is on a lot, and I just got an email report from my NEST saying I was in the top 27% of energy savers. (not sure what this means yet).

One thing I will caution you on, and this is important.

You must put this in an area that actually gets Traffic. It senses movement, and learns from it. If you put it in an area that is not used often; it won't learn what's what.

iPhone app is a lot better now and you can turn on the unit/heat/cool from it now, as well as see the room temp.

Personally, I love it.

[jzuena]

I've had one since January. Even before the Nest, I would get reports from my natural gas company saying I was among the most efficient users in my area, and that continued with the Nest. Now that the weather has switched over and we are cooling instead of heating, the electric company tells me I'm not doing as well. Since we have greyhounds home all day, I couldn't let the temperature get too high during the day, so I knew the electric bill wouldn't be as good (it never was before, either). With the latest update there is a new AirWave feature that should help with the cooling. The Nest shuts off the air compressor when the temperature gets close to your target and keeps blowing the fan over the cooled coils to get more cool air into the house. I've seen the AirWave symbol active on the Nest, so we'll see if this next electric bill shows any savings.

I don't know if the Nest is any better, since I did have a programmable thermostat before. But the old thermostat was a hideous plastic box from Sears whose front plate was being held closed with a rubber band after one of the tabs broke off. It needed replacing for a couple of years, but nothing inspired me to actually make the replacement until the Nest. All of Honeywell's programmables looked just as bad as the Sears one (which they probably were the OEM for).

We do have smart meters for our electric, but I have no idea if they use Zigbee or some other protocol or if they will let the Nest talk to them. The Nest has a Zigbee radio in it, but I do not think it is activated yet with the current software, anyway.

Overall, I love mine as well. Even if it isn't any better than the other programmables from Honeywell, looks alone made it worth the extra one-time cost to buy instead of a regular plastic one.

[samiwas]

Originally Posted by tigres

One thing I will caution you on, and this is important.

You must put this in an area that actually gets Traffic. It senses movement, and learns from it. If you put it in an area that is not used often; it won't learn what's what.

This is what kept me from getting one. Our upstairs thermostat is in the master bedroom, which gets no traffic at all during the day, and then we come up and go to bed. So it would never see anything.

The main floor's location doesnt face the activity area, so again..might not see anything.

And the bottom floor is just me and my office, and I don't move around a lot.

I am curious about them though.

[HE15MAN]

So the AC goes into sleep mode after 4 hours of no one walking by it? I dont think I will have that problem downstairs. My upstairs unit may, but I am only up there once a day or so anyway.

[HE15MAN]

How big is the nest and does it cover the holes from other thermostats?

[DJLC]

Got mine a few weeks ago. I love it! It just learned enough to start doing auto-away, but unfortunately AirWave isn't active yet and my schedule is too unpredictable for it to learn much of anything.

To answer a few questions I saw, though...
If you have more than one Nest, they will communicate with each other over wifi. If your upstairs thermostat sees nothing and the downstairs thermostat does, neither will go into Auto-Away. I think the timeout is 2 hours, and you can always turn off the feature if it doesn't work for you. You can also manually set it to away from the device itself or the app.

The Nest is a lot smaller than my old thermostat. I elected to patch and paint my wall before installing mine. However, there are two plastic plates (one large, one small) included to cover holes or blemishes.

And as a bonus, the Nest smells just like a new Apple product when you take it out of the packaging.


Click for large view - Uploaded with Skitch


Click for large view - Uploaded with Skitch

[HE15MAN]

Originally Posted by DJLC

Got mine a few weeks ago. I love it! It just learned enough to start doing auto-away, but unfortunately AirWave isn't active yet and my schedule is too unpredictable for it to learn much of anything.

To answer a few questions I saw, though...
If you have more than one Nest, they will communicate with each other over wifi. If your upstairs thermostat sees nothing and the downstairs thermostat does, neither will go into Auto-Away. I think the timeout is 2 hours, and you can always turn off the feature if it doesn't work for you. You can also manually set it to away from the device itself or the app.

The Nest is a lot smaller than my old thermostat. I elected to patch and paint my wall before installing mine. However, there are two plastic plates (one large, one small) included to cover holes or blemishes.

And as a bonus, the Nest smells just like a new Apple product when you take it out of the packaging.

Image
Click for large view - Uploaded with Skitch

Image
Click for large view - Uploaded with Skitch

Thank you very much. That thing just looks so sexy!

Why isn't airwave active yet? Is it a setting you do? Also, do you have to do any upgrades since I know they push software updates out?

The thing with my house, we have a 2800 sq ft house and its two stories, but I go upstairs maybe once a day at most, we live downstairs for the most part. The thermostat for that is directly at the top of the stairwell. The downstairs one is between the kitchen, garage, master bedroom and laundry room, so that is a good spot.

[DJLC]

AirWave only becomes active when your home's humidity drops below a magical point. Mine has been hovering between 40%-50%, so I guess that isn't low enough.

Software updates get pushed to your Nests automatically via wifi.

[gramirez2012]

I want a Nest thermostat soo badly, but they're way too expensive at this point. If they dropped the price about 100 dollars I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

[Tomorrow]

Originally Posted by tigres

One thing I will caution you on, and this is important.

You must put this in an area that actually gets Traffic. It senses movement, and learns from it. If you put it in an area that is not used often; it won't learn what's what.

This can be a bad idea, depending on the house.

A thermostat (programmable, "smart," or otherwise) needs to be (1) where the most representative air temperature in the space is, and (2) away from windows, doors, and exterior walls. You can't just go relocating a thermostat willy-nilly and expect reasonable results.

I will say if you're using a standard manual thermostat, this thing could save you a lot of money. If you're already using a programmable thermostat, it's not likely to save you anything at all. A typical programmable stat can go for around $20-25 and save you a bunch of money.

[EricNau]

Sounds like it'd be great of you could add remote motion sensors in alternate rooms.

[HE15MAN]

Originally Posted by EricNau

Sounds like it'd be great of you could add remote motion sensors in alternate rooms.

How exactly do remote sensors work

[Tomorrow]

Originally Posted by HE15MAN

How exactly do remote sensors work

You would disable the motion sensor inside the Nest, install a motion sensor elsewhere in the room (remotely), and connect it inside the Next where the internal motion sensor was. I suspect you wouldn't want to do this yourself.

[EricNau]

Originally Posted by Tomorrow

You would disable the motion sensor inside the Nest, install a motion sensor elsewhere in the room (remotely), and connect it inside the Next where the internal motion sensor was. I suspect you wouldn't want to do this yourself.

You could do that, but I actually had something different in mind.

Since the Nest is already WiFi enabled, why not have additional motion sensors, connected by wifi, throughout the house? It would give the Nest a more accurate picture of when the residents are home, and no additional wiring needed.

[Tomorrow]

Originally Posted by EricNau

You could do that, but I actually had something different in mind.

Since the Nest is already WiFi enabled, why not have additional motion sensors, connected by wifi, throughout the house? It would give the Nest a more accurate picture of when the residents are home, and no additional wiring needed.

Is the Nest programmed with a polling option? A typical thermostat, even a "smart" one, doesn't have the capability of polling multiple sensors (temperature or motion) and adjusting accordingly. This is usually the work of a full-blown building automation system, which is overkill for a single-zone A/C unit like a house is equipped with.

[EricNau]

Originally Posted by Tomorrow

Is the Nest programmed with a polling option? A typical thermostat, even a "smart" one, doesn't have the capability of polling multiple sensors (temperature or motion) and adjusting accordingly. This is usually the work of a full-blown building automation system, which is overkill for a single-zone A/C unit like a house is equipped with.

I doubt it, and you're right: in some sense it would be overkill to "automate" a home like a large building.

But some houses are arranged in such a way that one sensor just isn't sufficient to establish whether someone is home or not. In those instances, having an additional sensor would be useful, not to adjust airflow, but just to establish if someone is home.

I suspect there are many houses where one sensor just isn't enough... no matter where Nest was put, it wouldn't have a reliable indicator of whether someone was home, which defeats its entire purpose.

[Tomorrow]

Originally Posted by EricNau

I suspect there are many houses where one sensor just isn't enough... no matter where Nest was put, it wouldn't have a reliable indicator of whether someone was home, which defeats its entire purpose.

When we moved into our house, I replaced our thermostats with programmable ones. I set them to raise the temperature to 85 degrees in summer when we aren't home, and programmed it for us to be "not home" during our work hours and all day on weekends. It's a simple matter to override this if you're actually home when it thinks you're not, but we're almost never gone when it's programmed for us to be home - so it's never trying to keep the house at 76 when we're gone. Not quite as savvy as a stat with an occupancy sensor, but every bit as effective.

[EricNau]

Originally Posted by Tomorrow

When we moved into our house, I replaced our thermostats with programmable ones. I set them to raise the temperature to 85 degrees in summer when we aren't home, and programmed it for us to be "not home" during our work hours and all day on weekends. It's a simple matter to override this if you're actually home when it thinks you're not, but we're almost never gone when it's programmed for us to be home - so it's never trying to keep the house at 76 when we're gone. Not quite as savvy as a stat with an occupancy sensor, but every bit as effective.

I agree. Which is probably why I wouldn't consider a Nest. But I think it's a step in the right direction.

Imagine a thermostat that could use the motion sensors that are also used by your security system, which are also used by your lights, hot water heater, etc. A house that really knows when you're home, and when you're not, and all of your systems acted accordingly.

[iJohnHenry]

Originally Posted by EricNau

Imagine a thermostat that could use the motion sensors that are also used by your security system, which are also used by your lights, hot water heater, etc. A house that really knows when you're home, and when you're not, and all of your systems acted accordingly.

It's upscale, and the thermostat is but one of the functions, but it already exists.

[HE15MAN]

Originally Posted by Tomorrow

When we moved into our house, I replaced our thermostats with programmable ones. I set them to raise the temperature to 85 degrees in summer when we aren't home, and programmed it for us to be "not home" during our work hours and all day on weekends. It's a simple matter to override this if you're actually home when it thinks you're not, but we're almost never gone when it's programmed for us to be home - so it's never trying to keep the house at 76 when we're gone. Not quite as savvy as a stat with an occupancy sensor, but every bit as effective.

Where do you live? 85 is nasty hot and would take at least 35 minutes to cool off down here.