You joined for this? Informative post but you gotta be a Nest shill.
yup, i joined for this. typically i just stalk the forums, but on this i had an opinion i felt like sharing.
shill? well that could be taken a few ways. from the literal, "An accomplice of a hawker, gambler, or swindler who acts as an enthusiastic customer to entice or encourage others" - no, i'm not a shill. I have no relationship with the company, they don't know i exist, and i don't really care whether anyone buys one or not.
from the perspective of a person who really likes the idea of this device and is something of a fanboy of the concept? sure, that describes me pretty well.
i don't really care about this particular implementation of this concept though, so i don't care about the company making it. i really like the concept.
i'm a computer engineer - i design microprocessors and peripherals for a living. typically, the peripherals i design are interfaces for connecting sensors - like temp, humidity, etc. i don't make the sensors (or know that much about them, really) but since i'm dealing with that stuff all the time, i'm always dreaming of the things i could build with them.
for a few years now, one of those dreams has been a very fancy thermostat - something much more feature rich than the nest. i've got the tools and knowledge to do it, just not the time. the feature list i laid out were just some of the features i have dreamed up for my own implementation.
the nest isn't perfect - but the concept implemented here is fantastic. when someone dismisses its features as worthless, i take it a little personally if only because i've been dreaming of these (and more) features for years. there are definite benefits to using something like this. doesn't have to be this particular one though.
i still plan to make my own, when i've got the time. it will likely cost me more money and be far bigger and fairly ugly, but it'll have significantly more features. some other features i'm looking forward to implementing for myself:
- fuel optimization: in a multi-fuel system i'd like my thermostat to favor burning the less expensive fuel. pellets, for example, over propane.
- fuel level awareness: but if i'm starting to run out of pellets, i might want the system to favor propane for a few days until i've found a new supplier able to ship another pallet of pellets to me.
- house fan: i'd like it to also be able to operate a house fan to suck the heat out of a house BEFORE starting the A/C. i'd want it to learn over time just how effective the fan is based on the external environment, humidity, etc so as to get the biggest bang for the buck - no use spinning that fan for 3 hours when 1 hour gets you 80% of the overall cooling effect.
- environmental awareness: if the humidity is high, but it's going to rain in 2 hours, then i don't need to run the dehumidifier right now, i can wait until after nature helps out a bit.
- control of ceiling fans: heat distribution can be helped by ceiling fans, but if i'm asleep or only guests are at the house (or i'm feeling lazy) i'd like the system to automatically determine that there is a large heat differential between various parts of he house and to fire up the ceiling fans when appropriate, and to turn them off again later.
the list goes on and on.
i doubt much if any of these will ever be in the nest; if some other company comes out with a more feature filled variant of this concept, i'll helpilly shell out $250 for their version. and i would still likely want to build my own so as to be able to add the rest of these features myself (and more as they come to me).
am i a shill? that really depends on what you meant by it.
