{"id":1340,"date":"2011-12-27T11:15:18","date_gmt":"2011-12-27T17:15:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/?p=1340"},"modified":"2012-01-04T19:56:57","modified_gmt":"2012-01-05T01:56:57","slug":"nest-thermostat-update-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/archives\/1340","title":{"rendered":"Nest Thermostat Review, Update #1"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a few weeks of using the Nest thermostat<\/a>, I\u2019ve got a few more comments that I\u2019d like to share. (Here\u2019s my post<\/a> about the installation).<\/p>\n

The learning feature honestly hasn\u2019t been very useful in the first few weeks. It\u2019s apparently easily confused by days that you’re home unexpectedly (for example, a holiday or vacation). If these days are early in the learning process, it makes some very poor choices as to when to activate the HVAC system. I\u2019d recommend not installing it during periods of very inconsistent schedules for this reason.<\/p>\n

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It doesn\u2019t have a \u201cI\u2019m on vacation today\u201d mode which would be extremely useful and ideally would help while it\u2019s learning (and other days).<\/p>\n

In a recent update, Nest made it significantly easier to manage the schedule of a day from the web site \u2013 by being able to copy the settings from one day to another:<\/p>\n

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I found the variations in the early learning to be not helpful as we didn\u2019t arrive home at the same time every day, so I mirrored all of the week days for now to better reflect our typical schedules. (And to be clear, the thermostats each reported that they\u2019d \u201clearned\u201d enough to start doing the work automatically before I started making manual adjustments).<\/p>\n

I had the expectation that the thermostat would begin to predict when we wanted a specific temperature and start adjusting for it. For example, if we arrive home at 6pm, we want the house to be nearly completely warmed to our preferred temperature (69F) at that time. Not start warming at 6pm. In colder winter months of southern Wisconsin, it takes about 45 minutes to increase the house\u2019s temperature by 9 degrees from the away temperature we\u2019ve set of 60F. <\/p>\n

Unfortunately, it doesn\u2019t seem like Nest performs that function. It has the right data \u2013 and a simple behavior switch is all it would take. I\u2019d love to see it added<\/strong>. The thermostat already has an estimate of how long it takes to reach a certain temperature, so it could activate the HVAC system more intelligently than traditional programmable thermostats.<\/p>\n

So for now, I\u2019ve manually adjusted the schedule to better reflect our requirements. We don\u2019t need too many temperature adjustments during an average day. In fact, most programmable thermostats can meet our needs when it comes to the basic requirement of a scheduled temperature adjustment. <\/p>\n

We\u2019ve not used the \u2018auto-away\u2019 feature yet successfully. By that I mean the thermostat can detect that you\u2019re not at home and automatically set the temperature to the \u201caway\u201d temperature. One day, it reported auto away when we were still home. I\u2019m not sure why as we\u2019ve got 3 Nest thermostats, one on each floor, and I\u2019m convinced we\u2019d walked in front of one of them very frequently during the day. <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve seen this problem more than once with the thermostats:<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s never been the same thermostat, and I\u2019m 100% confident that each of the Nest thermostats is always within a strong WiFi signal. <\/p>\n

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When I noticed the problem this morning (right as I was about to write this blog post), I took a snapshot of the screen and went down to our basement to see if the thermostat was reporting an error. It was not. I went through the settings to see when it had last connected to the \u201cNest Cloud\u201d and it claimed it had just done that. When I returned to the computer, the web site had updated and did not report any errors. I don\u2019t know what to make of that issue and will continue to watch for patterns to the problem. <\/p>\n

The mobile applications are functional. I\u2019ve forgotten we have them though and fail to take advantage of them consistently. Yesterday, we missed an opportunity to remotely adjust the temperature of the home before we arrived after being away for several days in Chicago. It would have been nice to return to a warm home. :-) <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve written Nest support once making a few suggestions about their web application \u2013 some things that were bugging me. Unfortunately, no human responded (just an automated response). I am disappointed by that. It\u2019s very low effort to paste in a \u201cthanks for your feedback\u201d type of a response and hit send. Nest as a company likely could live and be successful on their technology and devices. But, to thrive, they need awesome customers.<\/strong> Right now, they have not gotten customer service figured out. I also pinged their Twitter account asking for an RSS feed on their blog (seriously! they don\u2019t have one) and they responded they were working on it. I know how hard it is to setup a blog these \u2026 WHAT?! They should be scouring the Internet, looking for positive and negative feedback and reacting to it.<\/p>\n

I want to be excited about this type of technology. It has promise. Since heating and cooling costs so much these days, I want to be more efficient about how we spend money on heating and cooling and how we use non-renewable resources. The Nest thermostat is most certainly a new way of thinking about the user experience of a normally mundane and ignored device in the home. Having owned a (Radio Thermostat) Filtrete Touch-Screen programmable thermostat with WiFi<\/a> (on Amazon<\/a> for around $100), I can attest to the horrible user experience of some of the alternatives.<\/p>\n

However at $249 USD each, I remain neutral to negative about this product. While the geek factor is high, and the usability and user experience of the product is very well done, it\u2019s a very expensive<\/strong> thermostat for the home. The Radio Thermostat I mentioned above, while it\u2019s difficult to setup, has most of the same features and is $150 less. The Radio Thermostat<\/a> is not particularly attractive, but it would be a conversation starter in most homes. The Nest definitely would be. <\/p>\n

For less than $50US, it\u2019s easy to obtain a decent programmable thermostat. I\u2019ve bought them many times over the years for various locations, including some apartments we were living in. <\/p>\n

Final words of advice\/feedback for potential Nest owners now:<\/p>\n

If you have a decent programmable thermostat already consider whether it\u2019s worth an additional $250 to:<\/p>\n