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Making a Learning Thermostat
OzPeter writes "As reported in WA Today, Tony Fadell of iPod fame has been using Nest Labs to design and build a thermostat that learns how you live in your house by following how you manually change the temperature. Once you have taught it how to behave, it then can schedule temperature changes that suit your lifestyle, and help you cut down on energy costs."
Don't let women use this thing. It will only learn two settings: the maximum temperature setting and the lowest temperature setting. At least that's how the females in my life use them.
Better known as 318230.
Most thermostats will learn stupid conflicted behavior. Cold person irrationally turns thermostat up to 80. Angry frugal person retaliates by turning down to 50. Repeat 20x/day. Leave it alone at random during nice weather.
I like thermostats that are more even-tempered. My programmable one has a nice feature that if overridden will resume at the next programmed temperature interval, so someone cranking the heat or AC will only be able to influence the next few hours at most.
Man, you really need that seminar!
At last a article that isn't about Apple or Steve Jobs!
I live in the South and have a 19 SEER variable speed AC/Heat Pump and this can't control it yet.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
This assumes only one person is adjusting the thermostat which, in most families, is not the case.
I leave mine set at 20C / 68F. When the girls turn it up, I set it to 19C. Pretty soon it stays at 20 all the time.
Sounds overly complicated. With my current thermostat, I set it to make the temperature to 70 degrees at 6:55am (just before my alarm goes off). It learns how fast the house heats up, so the house really is at the right temperature when I want it to be and it does a pretty good job of that, even on unusually cold days.
If I have to manually adjust the temperature to help it learn, then it's going to lag my preferred time by 5 or 10 minutes (the time it takes me to get out of bed and go down to the thermostat and reset it). Or does it learn how long it takes me to get dressed and walk from the bedroom to the thermostat? And if it uses motion sensors to decide whether or not I'm home, it's either going to think I'm never home since I don't go past the thermostat much in my day-to-day activities, or it's going to think I'm always home when it senses the dog going to her food dish.
I'd much rather have a thermostat with an easy to use UI than something that tries to be smart. Maybe if I had a true smart-home with sensors in every room, it could automatically figure out what time I wake up and when I leave the house, but I don't see how a thermostat on a wall can do a good job.
There are a fair number of people who don't pay for their utilities when they rent apartments. This is especially true in buildings that have minimal individual temp control. I don't need to pay for my utilities. I'm pretty sure that in general I'm less careful about say not leaving windows open than I would be if I had to pay for using heat dumping as a way of cooling my apartment when the heat is too high. I feel guilty about that doing that but hey. In a similar vein, I suspect that lots of people who do control the temperatures would keep them down if the thermostat instead of displaying just the temperature displayed the actual cost accumulating. That's probably a lot technically simpler than trainable AI.
Oh no! Save us from the evil of accurately targeted advertisements! What chance would we have if someone showed us adverts for products that might actually interest us!
Do it with Linux.
Seriously, I know what temperature I want the house, and the 'smart' thermostat can only guess. Given that we start and leave work at various different and largely random times during the week it has no chance in hell of getting its guesses right except by luck.
Why does everyone think we want to deal with hardware that does seemingly random things based on its conception of what I want it to do, rather than doing what I want it to do? This is even more of an abomination than Google's 'smart' searches which routinely give me everything it can find other than the words I actually asked it to search for.
It not only learns your behavior, but reports that behavior to the government if it suspects you might be running a business.
Actually the correct link is here, and should read: It not only learns your behavior, but reports that behavior to the government if it suspects you might be running a business.
I just want a thermostat that can simulate tropical dawns. Combining this with automatically dimmed lights, mmmmm
You guys still get advertisements on the internet? Come on, it isn't the 1990s anymore.
The only people that still get adverts either want them or don't know how to turn the adverts off.
Same goes for Anonymous Coward posts. Normally I have them turned off, but today I'm feeling feisty and so I want 'em.
What they need to make is a thermostat that will smack the hand of anyone who thinks that turning the thermostat up to 95 will heat the house up faster than just setting it to the desired temperature.
This is the single most stupid idea ever. Humans are fickle about "comfort" and if you have more than 1 person there they will never be equal. the BEST way to save energy is to buy a setback thermostat that also has an outside temperature sensor so it can make smart decisions based on outside conditions and energy loss factor of the home. a better one will also have a windspeed measurement as a home will lose heat faster when the winter winds are blowing.
Want to know what saved me a LOT of cash? I removed the real thermostat and replaced it with temp sensors in each room and put a dummy one up that the wife can play with.
The house can now adjust heat properly based on energy saving curves AND my wife has something she can change to make her feel better.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I have a programmable thermostat, but the thing is ancient and looks like a VCR from the '70s.
I just went out and got e replacement for it, in part because this one's not SUPER flexible, and in part to help myself not be tempted to get a $250 thermostat, no matter how pretty it is.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
What a loon!
55* is enough to keep the pipes from freezing. I don't have the money to justify a cozy 68*-72*. Want it warmer? That's why they make clothes and blankets.
Problem Exists Between Thermostat and Floor?
Like my darling bf who turn the heating on full and then keeps the door to the balcony open because "He needs fresh air" but "He does not want to sleep in the cold"?
Who got to use our old fridge with the broken door to keep his beer in, turned down to minimum because the door was nowhere near tight. Instead of keeping the stock there and moving what he needs to our new low-energy fridge he turned it on full tilt and I did not notice because I do not use the beer fridge.
Right now he has poured the old marmalade from the fridge through the kitchen drain and is whining because it's clogged again..."I did not do anything". I hope the mix of drain cleaner, hot water and vinegar he poured in afterwards doesn't eat through the drain. I'm not allowed to touch the mess and you should hear him if I drop so much as a small bread crumb in the drain.
In short - it's not always the women who refuse to learn how things work.
-- Put crudely, the world is an extremely large problem instance. (Russel/Norvig Artificial Intelligence)
I have a heat pump, and would like a reasonably priced smart heat pump thermostat. I can't use a standard programmable thermostat since if I tell it to go down to go down to 60 at night, then 68 shortly before I get up it will flip into Auxiliary Mode (actually more likely bump all the way up to Emergency Mode) and use the MUCH less efficient electrical backup systems. Heat pumps alone can be pretty efficient but often MUCH more gradual, needing a fair bit of lead time.
A smart heat pump thermostat would probably need external sensors for the outdoor temperature, and maybe even add things like wind speed, ambient heat from direct sunlight vs overcast, etc to determine when to start up the heat pump and stay only in the most efficient heat pump mode yet still get to the desired temperature at the desired time. It would learn over time how differing outdoor conditions altered its efficiency and adjust accordingly.
I grew up with a gas furnace and we had a fairly inexpensive thermostat that could be programmed for 6 changes a day, with the ability to customize all 7 days individually if desired, or have one setting for M-F and another for Sat and one for Sun. You could manually make an adjustment and have it kick back into the programmed settings at the next programmed interval. I don't see much need for going beyond that for non-heat pump systems.
Dis dude did it first: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0389860/
Perhaps I'm trolling, perhaps I'm not.
Maybe they should ask Whirpool. We purchased an electric water heater by them about 5 years ago that learns your water usage pattern and then runs the heater accordingly.
How can a really simple computer, that costs next to nothing to produce, end up selling for $250..00?
The sad part is, people will pay that for an admittedly cool device.
Lazy people will not ever again need to turn the temperature control when going out or coming home. One more step in increasing laziness and reducing intellect in our society. Add to that rubbish like McDonalds and frozen dinners so you don’t need to think what to eat and progress into the next millennia has given a huge step forward! This is equivalent to having an automatic gear box in your car. Those were designed initially to give freedom to drive to the disabled and today every intellectually challenged person that has problems synchronising the acts of pressing the clutch pedal and moving the gear stick wants one. I guess one day soon we will no longer appreciate the real beauty of life. The sound of a violin will disappear because nobody will bother to slide the left hand while pushing and pulling the bow with the right one! That is why people go to restaurants, because they are to lazy to cook and they go to brothels because they are too lazy to be creative and court a woman. Civilization is really coming to an end one silly invention at a time!
I have a fancy programmable thermostat, and it actually does allow you to specify in the setup menu how much you want it to "lie", and in which direction.
My second stage kicks in if the thermostat is set 2 degrees more than the current temperature (or if the furnace runs for a certain amount of time and the temperature hasn't reached the set-point).
If you have any skill at all you should be able to put something together for less than $250 that'll do exactly what you need.
So as I understand it, this is aimed at 1) people too dumb to program a programmable thermostat, and 2) people smart enough to give a shit.
That market, traditionally, is government activists.
Therefore, I should wait until it is free.
Gently reply
So, will Nest chop and haul wood for me too? I'd be all down with that.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Really, I was surprised, but I have one on my A/C. So my A/C is a dual stage unit. Basically it has a bypass so that when it doesn't need to put out so much cooling, it can work the compressor less, spin down the fans, and so on. When needed, it can use full capacity. It is a 4 ton unit that effectively has about a 2.5 ton mode. Good for saving energy. Most days all you need is the first stage, even in the desert.
Well the thing is, the stage use is determined by two degree bands, temperature deltas. The first you set between 1 and 6 degrees. This is how much the temperature can swing before the unit engages. So if the degree band is 3 and the thermostat is 75, the A/C will come on at 78 (or the heat at 72 if in heat mode). The second one is another two degrees fixed. When the temperature is more than the first band plus the second, the thermostat engages the second stage of the A/C. So if set at 75 with a 3 degree band, the second stage engages at 80 degrees.
Needless to say the thing cools a hell of a lot more when fully spun up. So you really can make it cool down faster by setting the temperature lower.
In fact, I have to when it is really hot. When it is very hot, like 105 or above out, the low stage is really only enough to maintain the temperature. It cools as fast as heat leaks in (that is the design idea more or less). So to actually get it to cool, I have to kick in the 2nd stage. Means if I want 75, I set the temperature lower, until it hits 75, then set it to 74 and the A/C will continually run until the outdoor temperature cools off enough.
And yes, it is more efficient to run continuously in the low stage than cycle on and off in the high stage.
Nest's fatal flaw is that one tends to adjust the thermostat in a reactionary manner, *after* you realize that you're too hot or cold. What's actually needed is an anticipatory algorithm. A case in point: the programmable thermostat in our house lets the temperature drop four degrees Celsius every night in the winter. It warms the house up again about half an hour before we get up. If I had a Nest, I would end up teaching it incorrectly -- it would assume that the time to heat the house was when I got out of bed and turned up the heat, when the reality is that we need the house warmed *before* getting up or returning home from work.
It might be a waste of energy to keep the temperature controlled when one is out (ex. at work). So if there was a button to toggle between away and home, then it could also work out when to not care about the temperature and when to switch the temperature control on again.
It'll be interesting to see if these take off. I work in the energy efficiency / DSM business, and most utilities have given up on pushing programmable thermostats as energy savers, because most consumers can't figure out how to use them. They almost always end up bypassed, or programmed to always be at 70, or some other non-helpful mode. If this is simple enough for Grandma to use, but functional enough to actually cut heat bills, it'll be a big improvement.
Intelligent HVAC systems are common. But this is doing it wrong.
First, you need a return air duct temperature/humidity/carbon dioxide sensor. You need a similar sensor outside, to tell your control system what the outside weather is like. Then you need the ability to run the heating/AC fans without running the heating or compressor. That's the minimum. You'd also like to have a damper which can either take outside air or recirculate inside air, and a spray humidifier in the heating/cooling air duct.
Now you're ready to control the internal environment efficiently. The carbon dioxide sensor tells you the level of house occupancy. With nobody home, it will drop to the ambient atmospheric level, and air movement can be cut to a minimum. If CO2 starts to climb, there are people at home, and you can tell roughly how many. You crank up the fans even if heat isn't needed. Normal CO2 concentration is about 0.04%. Near 0.10%, people start to get headaches. Getting this under control is important if you have a modern near-airtight house.
Whether you recirculate or take in make-up air from outside depends on the difference between inside and outside conditions. If you have automatic control over make-up air, you tend to use far less air conditioning.
This will make everyone far more comfortable than messing with a thermostat.
...to get back the resources needed to produce it in energy? Electronics is horribly expensive to make, resource-wise. And this particular piece seems like it wasn't made to last.
This is garbage. Thermostats should not respond to whims but to realities.
My mother works a different shift each week (she's in retail). She doesn't want something that tries to guess when she's home (or asleep). If some enterprising Slashdotter wanted a neat project - it would be nice if there was a thermostat that works with your wireless network (wireless router) in your house that you could program via a simple internet page. You put your next 2 weeks work schedule in and voila - instant energy savings! Bonus if there is a switch to physically disable wireless access so as to help avoid hacking. Double bonus for an Android app. Then again - someone has probably already patented it... sigh.
None of the thermostats I've seen (not that I've looked that hard) have the one feature I want: a button that raises the set temperature by 2 degrees C for 30 minutes and then lowers is back to normal over the next hour. It would please the ladies who want an instant blast of heat while not annoying the chaps who don't want the house heated to tropical levels all day when it doesn't get turned back to normal.
I like that the US still uses Fahrenheit. If gives me great pleasure to type "105 f in c" in to Google to get the conversion.
I don't mind if you don't get that. U F in C.
Simply because it still requires you to tell it which mode it is in, heating or cooling. The motion sensor is a gimmick as many will not have these items in areas where the traffic is during the day. I certainly have not seen a house with one in the kitchen, breakfast area, office, or bedroom outside of the master, so how useful is that? Let alone, do you have pets? How will it know a bird in a cage is there (I don't have one, but a motion sensor won't pick it up either)
Comfort range should be independent of the season, meaning I can accept certain lows at specific times of the day and likewise certain highs. I could care less what the season is though psychologically seventies in the winter do feel warmer than seventies in the summer.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Am I the only person that thought this looked a bit like the SAL 9000 (From 2010)? Anyway, my curiosity is whether this thermostat takes humidity into account. The same temperature will feel different based on a few factors, and even if you attempt to perfect a basic thermostat, it's not going to make you comfortable half the time because the actual conditions don't reflect the temperature that is sensed.
I live in an older Montreal Duplex)constructed in the 1960's when oil was really cheap. Two years ago I converted from oil to electricity (really relatively cheap in Montreal). The furnace for the circulating water system was replaced by electric boilers. The water temperature in circulation is proportional to the outdoor temperature below 15degrees Celcius. As it gets colder outside, the circulating water temperature is allowed to climb. The boiler has a small controller that a) checks outdoor temperature (from 15C (End October) to -30C in end January) and controls circulating water temperature, No heat is required from May to Mid October.
We don't need overkill for a temp controller.
I think that what is required is an electronic "bang-bang" thermostat with two sets of contacts. In winter, the first set controls the desired room upper temperature the 2nd set determines if extra heat is required to bring the home up to that temperature for the desired time.
In summer for AC the roles are reversed.
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Coupled with this thermostat which operates in programmable setback mode would be information, about the rate of temperature recovery versus outdoor temperature. The shorter the recovery time, the greater the spread between the main and secondary settings. Also, when the demand is made to return the home to normal temperature, then the longer it takes to arrive at the desired set point, controller logic should raise the temperature of the circulating water until the 2nd set of contacts signals "oh we are close to the setpoint, reduce the circulating water temp to arrive at the room settings and provide sufficient heat to sustain heat loss.
I guess it could be done with a thermostat having two setpoints and the outdoor temperature detector.
My building's heating bill is $7000 per year. With oil it was $10,000 per year. I am happier using electricity, Gas heat was more expensive than electricity., but would like to try to find a programmable thermostat that can do what I want. I would gain house comfort, and possibly no increase in savings.
The logic for AC is a mirror of the logic to use for heating. Any comments are welcome.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
X is too cold, Y is too warm. Good compromise temperature is between X and Y.
You aren't married are you?
Honestly, it looks a little too HAL-like for me. Especially when the display is RED. And it senses when I'm there or not. Hopefully it won't lock me out of my house when it gets smart enough to do that...