Building an Open Source Nest

An anonymous reader writes "Google's recent acquisition of Nest, the maker of smart thermostats and smoke detectors, has sparked concerns of future plans for the devices, and how Google's omnipresent thirst for information will affect them. Thus, a team of engineers at Spark sat down and roughed out a prototype for an open source version of Nest. It looks surprisingly good for such a short development cycle, and they've posted their code on Github. The article has a number of short videos illustrating the technology they used, and how they used it. Quoting: 'All in, we spent about $70 on components to put this together (including $39 for the Spark Core); the wood and acrylic were free. We started working at 10am and finished at 3am, with 3.5 engineers involved (one went to bed early), and the only work we did in advance was order the electronic components. We're not saying that you can build a $3.2 billion company in a day. But we are saying that you can build a $3.2 billion company, and it's easier now than it's ever been before.'"

Comments

What?

[r.freeman]

What is the Nest. Do they mean like a natural nest build by bees or what - it is not clear form the summary, is it just me who doesn't find Nest an obvious thing like Apache or Linux that doesn't need introduction?

Re:What?

[_anomaly_]

https://nest.com/ ...and their blog post about being acquired by google: https://nest.com/blog/2014/01/13/welcome-home/

Re:What?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

https://nest.com/ ...and their blog post about being acquired by google: https://nest.com/blog/2014/01/13/welcome-home/

Let's build a NEST clone, and spy on OURSELVES!

This message was brought to you Through a Scanner, Darkly...

Re:What?

[unixisc]

I agree. From the title, I thought it was about building an Open Source incubator or something of the sort

Re:What?

[MrBigInThePants]

Why on earth is he labelled troll?!

+1 for confusing headline....

Re:What?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

and Substance D.

Re:What?

[antdude]

It's my cozy home like right now. :P

Antbot?

[spiritplumber]

OK, if this is the case, why in 2010 when we built an open source Android robot, the folks at Google literally told us that since they were trying to do the same thing, they would try to pretend we didn't exist? (They failed: It is hard to pretend something doesn't exist when it's humiliating you at Maker Faire, or making your hand bleed)

The hard part

[TheloniousToady]

The hard part isn't building a smart thermostat. The hard part is finding somebody simultaneously dumb enough and rich enough to pay $3.2 billion for a thermostat company.

Re:The hard part

[DickBreath]

The hard part isn't building a smart thermostat. The hard part is building relationships will all those energy providers.

Re:The hard part

[us7892]

Bingo!

Re:The hard part

[Lorens]

No, the hard part is writing a summary that doesn't leave the reader lost and perplexed at the third word.

Re:The hard part

[AthanasiusKircher]

The hard part isn't building a smart thermostat.

Meh. The hard part is realizing that you should NOT be trying to build a thermostat, period. Static temperature is relatively useless for comfort, which is why people end up moving the thing up and down all the time.

Our bodies don't sense temperature directly. They sense heat transfer, which involves evaporation rate of perspiration in addition to convection. This is the basis of "wind chill" (increased convection increases heat loss) and "heat index" (humidity reduces evaporation).

If there were actually a smart tech company out there designing such a thing, it would do something like keep a relatively constant dew point in the summer. The temperature is irrelevant. It can be 82 degrees and perfectly comfortable in my house, but on other days it can be 70 and unbearably stuffy. Cooling the house on hot non-humid days is stupid; having to adjust the thermostat down on cooler humid days just adds cost. (This is relevant in the winter as well. When it's really dry in the house, you often need a different temperature to maintain comfort than when humidity is at normal levels.)

It would be much more efficient to just stop the whole "thermostat" idea altogether... if we're really after "comfort" with least energy expenditure, why not program our houses to respond to what actually makes us comfortable (which is a more complicated formula taking humidity and temperature into account), rather than a scientific abstraction like temperature that has little human relevance?

Re:The hard part

[Registered Coward v2]

The hard part isn't building a smart thermostat. The hard part is building relationships will all those energy providers.

True. The real growth is not in home owners, most of whom will never replace a thermostat, let alone spend $250 for one or more replacements. The market is the installers and manufacturers to include it with a unit or as an add on sale. My AC guy gives away a $200 (retail) thermostat if you buy a multi-year service plan so it's not a stretch to see them offer a Nest unit.

Re:The hard part

[Qzukk]

1000x this. HVAC controls should be about comfort, not temperature.

I'd also love to see a "thermostat" with a "dehumidify" button: run for the next 15 minutes no matter what the temperature is. That'll fix both cool/damp and warm/muggy. And also feel great when I come in after the yardwork drenched in sweat and want to stand in front of the register with cool air coming from it.

Re:The hard part

[davids-world.com]

If you think of a thermostat as a device that closes a switch when the temperature is below or above a set point, you're certainly right. But if you had some vision, you would see a new generation of devices, "smart homes", real-life ubiquitous computing, energy sustainability, and opportunities for data-mining or even networked intelligence. That's why I have two Nests - right now it's just good-looking and convenient (remote control!), but I'm adopting technology that, in a few years, may change the way I live.

Re:The hard part

[GameMaster]

Nah, if you're talking about the situation here in the US it seems to me that it's more of a de-developing country...

Re:The hard part

[FilmedInNoir]

I'm worried of the ULC.

Re:The hard part

[TheloniousToady]

Here's my vision...I see a vision of...Larry and Sergei needing "adult supervision" again from Eric so they don't pay way too much for The Next Cool thing.

It's not about buying Nest (though you'd think Larry and Sergei could invent cool stuff themselves...) but it's about paying way too much for it.

Re:The hard part

[north.coaster]

All of this sounds good on paper, but what I would like to see is some detailed information on how to translate "comfort" into an algorithm that can be used to control a furnace and/or air conditioner. Then get the folks who developed the "open source 'nest' " to implement the algorithm.

Re:The hard part

[tgd]

The hard part isn't building a smart thermostat. The hard part is finding somebody simultaneously dumb enough and rich enough to pay $3.2 billion for a thermostat company.

Actually, it is... and even Nest can't manage to do it right. There's quite a large number of issues with the second generation Nest units failing -- and failing "on".

A thermostat should never, under any circumstances, be able to fail "on". That's a fundamental flaw.

Re:The hard part

[Bradmont]

Don't forget a "humedify" button, which is integral in colder climates. When it's below -20C for weeks on end, the dryness is unbearable...

Re:The hard part

[NewWorldDan]

I thought the hard part was convincing morons to pay $249 for a thermostat when you can buy something functionally equivalent at the hardware store for a tenth of the price.

Re:The hard part

[AthanasiusKircher]

All of this sounds good on paper, but what I would like to see is some detailed information on how to translate "comfort" into an algorithm that can be used to control a furnace and/or air conditioner.

Well, you can make it more complicated, but dew point is already a significantly better measure to correlate with comfort than temperature. For summer at least, I'd personally start there -- though you'd need a better humidity sensor than comes on most thermostats. Even something as simple as that would be a vast improvement.

Re:The hard part

[Anubis IV]

So...it sounds like you might want a Nest.

Nest has built in humidity sensors and can manage a whole-home dehumidifier/humidifier for you if you have one of those. For folks who don't, it has an optional feature called "Cool to Dry" that will run the A/C while you're gone, in order to try and lower the humidity in your home to more reasonable levels.

The future has been here for a few years. ;)

Re:The hard part

[Megane]

Yes, humidity control is good if you can get it, or even just "run the fan at least 10 minutes per hour". The problem I have is when night temperatures outside are around 65-75F, and the inside temperature stays below the set point and the AC doesn't come on, the humidity goes up and I can't sleep. My thermostat doesn't have either of those features, but I set my schedules so that both cooling and heating set it lower at night than during the day.

Re:The hard part

[Gim Tom]

Wow, I have wanted something like this since the mid 1960's when we visited my uncle in Orlando and I was amazed at how comfortable his house was all the time. He was in HVAC, mostly for commercial sites during the big AC boom in Florida in the 1950's and 1960's, and he told me that the trick was to control the humidity as well as the temperature. He had done his own system at home and I think it even had outdoor sensors for temperature and humidity even way back then to anticipate changes in the weather.

I have also thought that having one thermostat or temperature sensor in a house or on a floor was not the way to go. I have several digital thermometers scattered around the house and winter the digital thermostat always reads the highest temperature and in summer the lowest. Thermostats are mostly pretty dumb, and it is getting to where it would be economically feasible to have sensors for temperature and/or humidity in several locations around a house and the control unit for the HVAC at heating/AC equipment. I know there are zoned systems kind of like this in large homes, but I think a simple system that might be enough in a normal house.

Re:The hard part

[laird]

The Nest is already a lot smarter than a dumb thermostat. That's why it's so much more power efficient. I've saved far more than the cost of two Nests (one per zone) since buying them. For example:
- It's not a dumb on/off trigger switch, which bounces temperature up and down all day. Instead it (as far as I can tell) uses PID logic to much more efficiently maintain a level temperature.
- It controls the fans separately from AC and heat, so it does things like kick in the fans to get the air moving to equalize temperature, and only use the AC or heating when needed. Thermostats turn fan and AC/heat on at the same time.
- It knows when you're home or away, so it can let the temperature float when you're out, and bring it to comfortable range when you're back, saving power while you're out.
- It knows when you're _usually_ out and home, so it can bring the house temp into comfortable range before you're likely to be home, so you don't have to wait for the house to heat/cool.
- It knows the outside temperature, so it knows how much temperature differential to maintain.
- You can tell it (or it figures out) you're out of town for a few days, so it spends $0 on HVAC.
- You can see efficiency/cost ("leaf" for efficient) so you have a very visible encouragement to adjust the temperature to be more cost efficient.
- And I can monitor and control it remotely, from my phone, office, etc., so I can control everything if I want to. Which is rarely, but it's good occasionally, such as turning the AC on a half hour before you get home from vacation, so the house is cool when you walk in.

The result? Power bills are way, way down. Relative to the savings (my power bill was cut in half!), the cost of the Nest is an easy spend. Heck, if you only save me 5% on my power bill, it'd be a good long-term ROI.

Why did Google buy them? IMO because they're one of the few companies that figured out what "internet of things" means for normal people. So while others were making all sorts of silly things (which are fun, admittedly), Nest found a deeply intuitive way to get people to switch from a stupid thermostat to a smart one, in a way was very easy for people, but saved them money, and with a design that people really like. So you may think the Nest is an expensive thermostat, but that just means that you missed the point. Dozens of companies made bad "smart" thermostats, and nobody used the "smarts" because they were unusable, designed by the same kind of people that made VCR's blink 12:00 for decades. Nest made smart thermostats not only usable, but a pleasure. And they made it an easy ROI.

On top of that, they figured out how to support the absurd fragmented mess that is HVAC, and to set up a national network of resellers/installers that can get their devices into every home.

Then they expanded to fire detection, including alerting services.

And their competition is still awful, despite having years to copy them. Because they're thinking of "features" instead of "consumer benefit".

Now picture smart HVAC and fire detectors in every house. How much data is that? How useful is that data? Can you think of any value in knowing people's waking/sleep schedule (movement), power consumption, etc.?

Re:The hard part

[mysidia]

The hard part isn't building a smart thermostat. The hard part is finding somebody simultaneously dumb enough and rich enough to pay $3.2 billion for a thermostat company.

They make smoke detectors too. Not only do they have to build them, but they have to be certified by 3rd party laboratories.

Re:The hard part

[TheloniousToady]

Sad, isn't it? Google now feels they need to buy another company for $3.2 billion rather than scale technical and business mountains of this magnitude themselves.

That's the cynical view, anyway. The charitable view is that Larry and Sergei have a lot of cash burning a hole in their pockets, and rather than return it to shareholders via stock buybacks or dividends as good corporate stewards should, they spend it on a shiny new toy - much like the ordinary folks who had extra cash in their pockets and paid $249 for a shiny new Nest thermostat (or smoke detector).

Re:The hard part

[mysidia]

Much like the ordinary folks who had extra cash in their pockets and paid $249 for a shiny new Nest thermostat (or smoke detector).

I hope those folks have more extra cash in their pockets..... the Nest devices rely upon a cloud service to provide certain aspects of its functionality.

If Google discontinues the product.... will the app continue to work?

Or perhaps, even if they don't.... the Nest owners might in a few years -- after they're very accustomed to their new Google/Nest thermostat --- find they will need to start paying an extra monthly fee, for the rest of the life of the unit ----- perhaps slightly less than the fees all the competitors charge, to keep things working like they have used to :)

Re:The hard part

[TeknoHog]

A most insightful post I'd like to elaborate on :)

In Finland we have this thing called sauna, and when you toss water on the stove, you feel more heat, even though the temperature may even go down. A sauna thermometer is mostly useless, as you cannot compare the heat effect of two saunas by their temperatures alone. This story brought to mind an old idea, that what a sauna really needs is an enthalpy meter, or basically a measure of the energy content in air per volume. It should be fairly easy to program if you have humidity and temperature sensors, though you'll probably need a table of vapour pressure, as the sensors are usually for relative rather than absolute humidity. If you can make a standalone enthalpy meter that works in sauna conditions, it'll be awesome.

Another issue about comfort is skin vs. breathing. It's nice when your skin feels warm, but breathing air too warm feels stuffy. One solution to this is to have mostly radiative heating. I think I've had the best sleep in military camps in the winter, with freezing cold air and a red hot stove heating the tent. The modern domestic solution is surface heating from the floor, walls or ceiling. To optimize comfort you'd probably need some air conditioning too; humidity control is important, but using air to control heating is not that great. If the walls are cold, your skin will radiate off heat, and using warm air to fix it will only make it stuffy.

This is great

[rtkluttz]

I actually only heard about Nest about a month ago and was VERY interested until I found out it was cloud based. I immediately typed a complaint to them about it. I'm very happy Google is heading this way with it. Even if Googles open solution is still cloud based, it should open API's and communication documentation so that people like me who are NOT interested in giving control of my house to a cloud app under someone elses control that can sometimes override by proxy. I'm a security concious guy and I simply do not want my homes firewall open to anyone but me. My phone or tablet should connect DIRECTLY to my in home equipment or server without anyone else having to be involved.

Re:This is great

[JimNTonik]

What do you possibly have in your house that it's worth somebody's time to hack your thermostat?

Re:This is great

[operagost]

The energy lobby.

Re:This is great

[berashith]

I ask the opposite question. If the thermostat can be controlled across my wireless network with a phone or tablet, why do I have to go to the internet to do it? I like the idea, and even the remote control aspect could be useful, but I havent figured out how optional that is, or if it is an all or nothing proposition.

Re:This is great

[c0d3g33k]

What do you possibly have in your house that it's worth somebody's time to hack your thermostat?

The concern isn't necessarily about what's in the house (though putting the pets at risk due to extreme heat/cold could result from a hack). It's the information gathered by the thermostat(s) that has value. There's the usual metadata that can be added to your "profile" for purposes of advertisement. The Nest and similar devices can also reveal information about your habits, like when you are present/absent from the house, how long, time spent in each room (the Nest has a motion sensor). That could be useful for thieves, govt or law enforcement officials interested in knowing when the house is unoccupied or where you are likely to be should they wish to find you.

Re:This is great

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a security concious guy and I simply do not want my homes firewall open to anyone but me

You can run more than one network in your house. They can even have difference security configurations.

Re:This is great

[JimNTonik]

Assuming that the data is reliable in any way. I have a Nest, and I've turned off auto away because it was awful at predicting when I'd actually left the house. It could be useful in theory, but in practice it's a lot less accurate than you're giving them credit for. Is the Nest collecting data about you? Sure. Is that data likely to be useful against you in anyway, very unlikely.

Re:This is great

[Anonymous Coward]

At risk: my other computer equipment and embedded devices.

Take a look at shodanhq.com, then perform the following steps.

1) Hack my Internet-accessible thermostat. You now have a conduit onto my home network.
2) Use the thermostat to attack the other devices in my house, or for that matter anything on the Internet. This has already been done (http://internetcensus2012.bitbucket.org/paper.html).
3) Do whatever you like. Steal information you consider interesting, sell access to any systems you compromise, or whatever. purpose. you. choose.

Moral: don't assume that the value of access to your devices is based solely on their *intended* use, or that your equipment will be compromised solely based on how interesting a target *you* are.

Want to sell a wifi-enabled thermostat? I still don't think it's a good idea at this time, but go ahead. Just ensure that the default settings have the radio turned off, and that I can leave it disabled forever. Yes, most people will still make bad choices based on convenience plus ignorance of the cost and risk. But it's a start.

--klodefactor

Re:This is great

[DogDude]

. My phone or tablet should connect DIRECTLY to my in home equipment or server without anyone else having to be involved.

Hahahaha! Now what happens when some bad software gets root on the gadget you use to talk to your house?

And while we're at it, why do you need to control your house temperature with anything other than your finger pushing a button on the thermostat? Is there some level of complexity to a thermostat that I'm missing? Is your thermostat located somewhere other than inside your house? Do you have some interesting situation that would require you to remotely change the temperature of your house? If so, what is it (the situation)?

I'm a security concious guy

If that were true, you'd walk over to your thermostat on the wall and push a button.

Re:This is great

[Kardos]

> It could be useful in theory, but in practice it's a lot less accurate than you're giving them credit for.

You're fixating on the current version. Don't think it'll get better with time?

Re:This is great

[JimNTonik]

No, I don't.

Re:This is great

[braeldiil]

Since I have a Nest (and love it), here's the scoop: It doesn't have to be connected to the internet at all. It would work just fine as a standalone thermostat. Most of the functions would be harder to use (only so much you can do when you have 1 button and a wheel), but as far as I can tell they're all there. The web access provides an easier-to-use interface to the Nest. I don't use it much - it did a good job of learning my schedule, so mostly I use the web interface to turn stuff on at the airport after trips. There's some reporting and statistics, but those are mostly fluff.

Re:This is great

[EndlessNameless]

Assuming that the data is reliable in any way. I have a Nest, and I've turned off auto away because it was awful at predicting when I'd actually left the house.

First, this is likely to improve over time. Second, whatever raw data is used to determine if you're present could also be collected and stored indefinitely.

Actually, if both of those are true, they could go back and review the data with their improved algorithm and retroactively figure out whether you've been there.

The point about cloud-connected home management is that once they have data, they can do whatever they want with it. That includes the cloud provider, their sponsors, and anyone else who can access their data.

Re:This is great

[berashith]

cool, thanks. Can you actually do anything with it from an internal only connection? Say allow it an IP, but firewalled away from any internet contact. Would that be reachable and configurable from a phone on the same lan?

Re:This is great

[MikeBabcock]

Agreed, although I own a Nest -- and I wish it supported direct communications with my phone/tablet instead of needing the Internet. I'd even be okay with having to run a management service on my Linux box that it talks to as an intermediary.

Re:This is great

[MikeBabcock]

That's a poor question. The question is, how much damage could someone do to your life by taking over your home electronics via an Internet-connected black box *if* they hacked it?

Re:This is great

[KingMotley]

Probably less than the damage that someone could do by walking up to my house with a can of gasoline and a match.

Re:This is great

[CastrTroy]

Yeah, but for $300 the web interface to control it should be built into the device. Every $30 home router has a web server (and many have telnet access) so you can control the router. There's not cloud access necessary to set up my router, and it has exactly 0 buttons or knobs (ok, it has a reset button, but that's it, there's not even a power switch), and it can easily be controlled from any computer in my house. The Nest should do the same. If I want to control it from the airport, I'll open a port on my router, or have a VPN set up so I can access it my network remotely.

Re:This is great

[JimNTonik]

And the gas can and matches would take considerably less time to use too.

Re:This is great

[camperdave]

At risk: my other computer equipment and embedded devices.

Take a look at shodanhq.com, then perform the following steps.

1) Hack my Internet-accessible thermostat. You now have a conduit onto my home network. 2) Use the thermostat to attack the other devices in my house, or for that matter anything on the Internet. This has already been done (http://internetcensus2012.bitbucket.org/paper.html). 3) Do whatever you like. Steal information you consider interesting, sell access to any systems you compromise, or whatever. purpose. you. choose.

Moral: don't assume that the value of access to your devices is based solely on their *intended* use, or that your equipment will be compromised solely based on how interesting a target *you* are.

Want to sell a wifi-enabled thermostat? I still don't think it's a good idea at this time, but go ahead. Just ensure that the default settings have the radio turned off, and that I can leave it disabled forever. Yes, most people will still make bad choices based on convenience plus ignorance of the cost and risk. But it's a start.

--klodefactor

Hack my internet-accessible thermostat and you have a conduit to the thermal control subnet on my network. All you'll be able to access is my plausibly deniable torrent downloads.

Re:This is great

[Megane]

Cloud based isn't inherently bad. The problem is that if your thermostat is behind NAT, you can't talk to it when you're away without a lot of TCP/IP-fu, which no average person would want to do even if they could.

I have a Filtrete 3M50 (made by Radio Thermostat) which polls the cloud server with JSON over HTTP every 3 minutes or so, passing up the current status and pulling down any schedule changes or overrides. No firewall crap is necessary. The cloud is just the way that I can monitor/control it when I'm away. It also has a side-benefit that if my internet breaks, it shows the time that it was last working.

Re:This is great

[laird]

The Nest uses the internet for useful stuff. For example, it knows the outside temperature (from weather data) so it can optimize temperature differential. It logs data to the server for longer-term trending, etc., since it has limited internal storage. And you can control multiple Nest devices from a single UI (e.g. see the temperature of all zones in your house on one screen).

Then there are things like being able to go on vacation, and tell the Nest as you're driving away that you're out so it can turn off the AC, and then when you're driving home you can tell it to turn on the AC so that your house is cool when you get there. All rather nice. Normal people don't use their cell phone to configure their router to open a port for their HVAC controller to use for a few minutes, so instead they connect it to the internet and rely on the vendor's security to keep people from changing the temperature.

They also trust telco's to route calls, banks not to loose their money, etc. It usually works out. And really, if someone changes the temperature in your house, is that worse than getting your credit card cloned by your waiter (a risk you face every time you eat in a restaurant)? Perhaps I'm not cynical enough, but at some point you have to trust companies to be basically competent, and deal with the occasional issue in return for which you get to do all sorts of nice things most of the time. :-)

Re:This is great

[sjames]

The only reason I can imagine not to do it that way is to either capture information about the user or to extort a service fee of some sort.

I'm with you, I want any network enabled devices to work with only LAN access. No good can come from adding someone else's server to the mix.

Re:This is great

[wolrahnaes]

And while we're at it, why do you need to control your house temperature with anything other than your finger pushing a button on the thermostat? Is there some level of complexity to a thermostat that I'm missing? Is your thermostat located somewhere other than inside your house? Do you have some interesting situation that would require you to remotely change the temperature of your house? If so, what is it (the situation)?

Not much of a thinker, eh? Ever gone on vacation? Ever realized at the airport that you should have set your thermostat lower/higher to save energy while you're gone?

No?

Ever gotten back after having perfectly remembered to do the above, walked in to your house, and wished there was some way you could have fired off the A/C or heat remotely and brought it back to normal living temperature before you got home?

It's a legitimate convenience, so don't act like there's no good reason someone would want this ability.

patents ruining the day again

[StripedCow]

But we are saying that you can build a $3.2 billion company, and it's easier now than it's ever been before.

Were it not for patents...

Re:patents ruining the day again

[Anonymous Coward]

Who do I believe? The people who do it or the slackers on Slashdork who blame everyone but themselves?

Re:patents ruining the day again

[Theaetetus]

But we are saying that you can build a $3.2 billion company, and it's easier now than it's ever been before.

Were it not for patents...

When you set out to explicitly copy someone's product, it's tough to argue that they don't need patent protection.

Re:patents ruining the day again

[Areyoukiddingme]

When you set out to explicitly copy someone's product and succeed without reading any patent information, it's tough to argue that their patent is nonobvious.

And we know you didn't read their patent because first, we know their patent is not actually useful for replicating their "invention", second, because you were explicitly ordered not to read their patent because your boss thinks the treble damage rule is still in effect, and third, because you know you didn't need to. As a skilled practitioner of the art, you knew you would be able to solve any problems you encountered in the process of replicating the product.

Re:patents ruining the day again

[camperdave]

On the other hand, an internet connected, digital thermostat isn't exactly a novel idea.

Re:patents ruining the day again

[Theaetetus]

When you set out to explicitly copy someone's product and succeed without reading any patent information, it's tough to argue that their patent is nonobvious.

I think you'll have a hard time proving that the guys saying "we made an open-source version of the Nest!" have no idea what the Nest is and haven't seen any write-ups of it.

And we know you didn't read their patent because first, we know their patent is not actually useful for replicating their "invention", second, because you were explicitly ordered not to read their patent because your boss thinks the treble damage rule is still in effect, and third, because you know you didn't need to. As a skilled practitioner of the art, you knew you would be able to solve any problems you encountered in the process of replicating the product.

Nope, instead you read the white papers, read product reviews and use manuals, and read lots of other information that was made public because they had patent protection, rather than being kept hidden as a trade secret.

Re:patents ruining the day again

[Theaetetus]

On the other hand, an internet connected, digital thermostat isn't exactly a novel idea.

Nope, and if that's what they tried to claim in a patent, it would be rejected. But the specifics of the design and user interface are new, and may not be obvious.

the technical ens is not the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

"We're not saying that you can build a $3.2 billion company in a day. But we are saying that you can build a $3.2 billion company, and it's easier now than it's ever been before."

Doing the technical development is not the issue. It's the damn lawyers and patent trolls that will soak up millions and years...

What article?

[colin_faber]

Am I missing something here? Where's the link to the article referenced by Mr. AC.

Re:What article?

[brainspank]

the post is a secret poll to see who reads TFA.

Re:What article?

[tommeke100]

The GitHub link actually contains all that information.

So why didn't you do it first?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's pretty easy to build a version of most things once there's a working example in front of you - the real value is doing it first, not just copying.

Re:So why didn't you do it first?

[ceoyoyo]

Thermostats aren't exactly complicated. There have been electronic ones around for a long time and the idea of "smart" thermostats for even longer. Connecting things to smartphones is also not a new idea.

If you're saying that Nest didn't do anything all that impressive, I'm with you. Their thermostat is pretty. If it worked well it would be a reasonable offering. But I don't see how it's worth 3.2 billion dollars.

This would seem likely to be another insanely overpriced acquisition that will either end up at a fraction of it's value in a few years or get merged into the rest of the company to hide the loss.

Re:So why didn't you do it first?

[torkus]

It's worth it for a few reasons...

- home automation has been struggling along...quirky, expensive, not quite there. Yet. Nest is one of the few that's made it without turning into x11 crap from china. People are far more likely to allow home.google.com to automate their house than xyzautomagic5567.ru

- metadata is valuable. Even if it's not perfect it's still far better than none for ... so many people. Look at google's cross-platform information usage. Google knows you're married, you google christian dating and 3 weeks later herpes medicine...the following week you get adds for divorce lawyers :) I'm exaggerating a bit but if google knows your home why not display adds for seamless around dinner time? If you set an away for 2 weeks...how about house monitoring / security services?

- The reputation of the company and the inventiveness of the execs has value too. Who else could make a THERMOSTAT cool? Seriously.

- one more way google (and everyone else) can laugh at scada exploits ... or /TinHatOn/ allow the gov't to take over our houses

- on a larger scale contracting with power companies for things like optional temp adjustment on high demand days in return for reduced charges (i.e. raise AC by 2 degrees when it's 105 out and in return your days power costs 20% less...and the power co avoids having to buy expensive power from out of state or go to brown-out conditions)

etc. etc. etc.

There are many reasons if you take a long term view. Looking at just the thing on the wall? Well they still managed to sell an audrino and temp sensor for $250. That's worth something :)

Re:So why didn't you do it first?

[ceoyoyo]

1. It still is. Nest is a niche company that accounts for a tiny fraction of thermostat installs. People are going to love it when nest.google.com isn't getting the adoption Google would like and they decide to shut it down. Google's track record with hardware is... horrible. Actually, Google's track record with software is pretty bad too.

2. Bingo. That's what Google wants. More data on you so they can sell you stuff. Is it worth 3.2 billion? Maybe. Google undoubtedly knows better than I do. Either way, Google didn't buy Nest because thermostats are hard to make. It bought Nest because it wants to monitor what temperature your house is set at.

3. There are cheaper ways to hire people than paying 3.2 billion dollars for the company they work for. Google is a much bigger, better known, better respected name than Nest. If they actually want to sell thermometers, the first thing they'll do is retire the Nest name. Kinda like they're doing with Motorola Mobility.

4. Google isn't going to be laughing at SCADA exploits. They've now made themselves responsible for some of them.

5. Does Nest contract with power companies? I don't see that on their web page. Are you making stuff up now? Sure Google COULD do that in the future, but they could also do that with a Google thermostat instead of a Nest thermostat.

That's what the woodpecker recently asked me.

[vikingpower]

We met in the backyard, where he took a rest from hauling a crate of beer to his hole in the ash tree. The woodpecker said "Hey dude, you are rambling on about open source and FOSS all the time. Could you get me an open source nest, by any chance ? Us woodpeckers are rather into the proprietary model, we all have our own beak. But mine has signs of wear, and the price of new ones is too high." "Sure", I replied, "Apache Nest might be something for you. Or otherwise, check out jNest on github." Last I heard about him, he was founding a business - together with some raven from the neighbourhood - for 3d-printing spare beaks.

Re:That's what the woodpecker recently asked me.

[c0d3g33k]

What did the fox say?

Re:That's what the woodpecker recently asked me.

[vikingpower]

Abay-ba-da bum-bum bay-do

Fox language is Turing-complete, as everybody knows.

the A/C companies are stagnant

[Anonymous Coward]

The hard part is getting Lennox, Traine, or Carrier to build heaters and or air conditioners that can be controlled by USB or ethernet. That is what I want. None of this smart refrigerator crap, or Nest smart thermostat stuff.

Re:the A/C companies are stagnant

[necro81]

build heaters and or air conditioners that can be controlled by USB or ethernet

Heaters and air conditions are largely operated by a single On/Off switch, controlling a 24VAC relay. It doesn't get much simpler than that. What would you want USB or ethernet for?

Re:the A/C companies are stagnant

[AvitarX]

For better control of the stages?

For information back on how often a boiler is actually burning when "on"?

For unlimited flexibility in the HVAC system (number of devices, zones, etc, not limited by number of leads on a device)?

Those are off the top of my head.

Re:the A/C companies are stagnant

[mrchaotica]

First, newer ones can have dual-stage (or even variable-speed) compressors.

Second, it wouldn't hurt to have monitoring/instrumentation so that you can monitor the efficiency of your system and tell when things are wrong.

Re:the A/C companies are stagnant

[mspohr]

I just replaced my heating system with one from Carrier. It includes an "Infinity" thermostat which uses WiFi to connect to the Internet. I can control it over the Internet from my PC or phone as well as get notifications of status and service alerts. It has a nice display which shows the weather, also. Gives me historical energy use.
It's not as "smart" as the Nest (it's not watching me and my activity) which I think is a good thing.
Google wants the data and wants to be an intermediary with the energy companies.

Re:the A/C companies are stagnant

[necro81]

For information back on how often a boiler is actually burning when "on"

I built an Arduino-based datalogger for my 5-zone heating system for exactly this purpose. It senses the states of the 24VAC and 120VAC relays and converts them into timestamped logical On and Off. The output is a CSV files on an SD card. I didn't go the extra step of putting it on the network, although that'd be pretty easy. The tricky part is the visualization of the data: I spent almost as many hours developing scripts to (offline) post-process and display the data as I did laying out the custom shield and writing the firmware. It'd be swell if I could accomplish that on a Raspberry Pi, serving up a furnace dashboard and interactive history. But, really, I'm not interested enough to go that extra step, nor do I have the time.

So, yes, it would be neat if this functionality were already built into the HVAC equipment, but such a tiny minority of customers would be interested in it that no manufacturer would add the cost of it.

Re:the A/C companies are stagnant

[necro81]

Second, it wouldn't hurt to have monitoring/instrumentation so that you can monitor the efficiency of your system and tell when things are wrong

I can agree with that: I've personally outfit my furnace with various sensors as part of a homemade datalogging system. I couldn't find aftermarket products that did what I wanted for anything more than one or two zones. However, I don't think that the average consumer is interested in that kind of thing - not to the point of paying extra for it, anyway. I'd be very happy to be proven wrong, but when it comes to energy and efficiency I've found that most people couldn't care less.

Plus: HVAC equipment has a service life of 10-30 years. It may be that, by the time a problem does arise and the information would be useful, there isn't a computer system that knows how to talk to it. USB and Ethernet, as hardware layers, will probably still be around, but will the average computer in the future know how to talk to the furnace?

Re:the A/C companies are stagnant

[CastrTroy]

I just had my furnace fixed, and the tech repairing it said the computer board which had to be replaced, was worth about $800. Luckily I was still under full warranty, so I didn't argue about whether it actually needed replacement , or how much it's actually worth. But it seems to me that there's a lot of room for making these things more modular, using off the shelf components, and make them easier to fix. Looking at the components on that board, it seemed like most of the components were big enough to be soldered by hand, by someone with minimum skills.

Historically thermostats were on/off switches for the furnace because they couldn't directly measure temperature as a number, but rather had a mercury switch connected to a coil of metal which uncoiled and recoiled when the temperature changed. Once it coiled to a specific point, the mercury would flow due to gravity, and connect two contacts, causing the furnace to turn on.

Furnaces were built to only have an on and off functionality, because that's what was possible 50 years ago, and nobody has bothered to change it. It should be cheap enough now to actually have multiple thermostats, as well as computer controlled ducts so that individual rooms can be heated and cooled independently. This would probably save people quite a bit on heating bills, and would probably be something much better to shoot for than simply duplicating the functionality already available in "Nest".

Re:the A/C companies are stagnant

[Megane]

What would you want USB or ethernet for?

For when you're out of town and there's an unexpected freeze warning? I've had a 3M50 thermostat for a couple of years now. Last month I found another one cheap at a thrift store. Then a couple of weeks ago my mom was in a panic about freezing weather at her house while she was out of town. Not only could it have let the temperature be changed remotely, but it also has a mode to automatically switch from heat to cool (kind of important in Texas where it can be freezing one night then 80F a couple of days later). So it's getting installed the next time I'm down there, but I have to do something about that flaky WAP too.

Re:the A/C companies are stagnant

[AvitarX]

Aside from the fact that my boiler visualization is shaky at best (on the Nest) because it assumes when it is telling the boiler to heat, it is heating, but my water temperature is set quite low, so it frequently is circulating without heating, unfortunately I can't measure the inconvenience of longer time to heat vs gas usage as easily as if it could record it.

Since boilers work most efficiently at the coldest water temperature that maintains the house temperature, a smarter boiler with a water temp thermostat that could be controlled by the house thermostat would be a use for beyond a simple ON/OFF. Now that the self-learning tech is in place, this is the type of thing that could lead to efficiency, if we were to have data access to the HVAC equipment rather than binary ON/OFF, or trinarey Stage1/Stage2/OFF systems.

Obviously this is only useful if everybody comes up with a standard they agree on, but I can definitely see a benefit to actual communication with appliances (not as great a benefit if I had a boiler built in the last 50 years in general though...).

I'm a happy owner of a Nest, purchased solely for their "true radiant" feature, but have found the remote turn-on / off useful, as my house takes hours to heat up.

The fact that the thermostat knows when to turn on hours early, then cut off 4 degrees cooler than set temperature has been well worth it for quality of life (I'm looking forward to it using AC to dehumidify the house in the summer if I get around to installing AC too). The auto-schedule and auto-away features are the ones I find least useful.

Re:the A/C companies are stagnant

[sjames]

If the furnace speaks a decent simple language, perhaps with simple formatting documentation included, it should be no problem.

OTOH, if it speaks some odd binary crap like too many proprietary products want to these days, it could be quite a problem.

Re:the A/C companies are stagnant

[AvitarX]

So I guess the answer to necro81's question is to save 20% on the heating bill.

Been there done that

[WaffleMonster]

Throughout the years I have seen instances of precisely this kind of arrogance in various forms.

Everything always "seems easy" at first glance on the surface. This is more often than not a reflection of gaps in ones understanding or failure to consider the problem space with sufficient detail.

The other major issue is failure to understand the sometimes monumental difference between building something that "works for me" vs "works for everyone".

Anyone can hack together an arduino that flips a relay when temperature sensor reads outside of a certain threshold and package it up to look like a cheap version of the nest. This proves precisely NOTHING in my estimation.

Re:Been there done that

[timeOday]

Maybe Nest should reproduce google in a few hours: wget -r -O -http:/ /yahoo.com | grep boobies

Re:Been there done that

[AmiMoJo]

Quite. Nest is internet connected, and that means security. What are the chances this thing isn't easily hackable? Keep in mind that someone with no clue about security needs to be able to install and operate it. Where is the smartphone app to go with it?

Re:Been there done that

[phantomfive]

Quite. Nest is internet connected, and that means security. What are the chances this thing isn't easily hackable?

Honestly, what are the chances the Nest isn't easily hackable?

Re:Been there done that

[MikeBabcock]

The most important bit here is the server-side. The actual thermostat is well-manufactured hardware (and I've never been as impressed with someone's packaging and included documentation as I am with Nest's) and worth more than average -- but the real cost to Nest.com is building and administering the servers on the back-end.

It's easy

[DerekLyons]

From TFS: It looks surprisingly good for such a short development cycle

It's trivially easy to *look* good - being functional is somewhat harder.

And building a 3.5 billion dollar company is just a *little* bit harder than writing a few scraps of code and soldering some bits together.

Re:It's easy

[Random2]

Soldering the bits together? Isn't that what Monster Cables do to get them there faster?

That seems to be worth a lot of money....

All you need now...

[slapout]

...is an open source bird to live in it.

Re:All you need now...

[unixisc]

That lays open source eggs

Typical Open Source Fan post

[OzPeter]

Yes .. the raw materials cost $70.

But how much of the CNC machine, the laser cutter, their time and also the time needed to come up to speed to know how to combine these items into one product? (and thats not even allowing for the design and marketing time that should be credited to Nest of actually coming up with a concept that sells)

If anything I'd say the real cost of this prototype is in the range of $20k at the very least.

Re:Typical Open Source Fan post

[kwalker]

Or, you know, use hand tools...

They're not saying they could build Nest for $70 in parts, they're saying they built a nest-clone device in less than 24 hours for about $70 in parts. Their time was theirs to spend, and they're not "marketing" this.

Re:Typical Open Source Fan post

[ceoyoyo]

So what? The cost of the raw materials is more indicative of what it would cost to get a final product manufactured than the prototype price, including everything. It actually seems to me their cost is a little high, probably because they've built a local thermostat instead of a cloud one.

Re:Typical Open Source Fan post

[OzPeter]

Or, you know, use hand tools...

They're not saying they could build Nest for $70 in parts, they're saying they built a nest-clone device in less than 24 hours for about $70 in parts. Their time was theirs to spend, and they're not "marketing" this.

Which is like saying that if you live in NYC that its cheap to buy takeout food for $70 from a hip restaurant in LA .. but not mentioning the private jet you used to fly you there.

Re:Typical Open Source Fan post

[ceoyoyo]

That sounds about right. You could trim a few more dollars off by buying a microcontroller and burning your own Arduino OS onto it. You could save a lot by not using their $39 spark core, which looks like a great embedded wifi development board but not like something you'd use in a finished product. In particular, there's no reason for your thermostat to have two microcontrollers (three, actually, the TI wifi module has an integrated one). Especially not when one of them is a 72 mHz ARM. The TI module is available for about $13-$15, rather than $39 for the spark unit. If you built a pure cloud device you could probably drop the Arduino entirely.

Re:Typical Open Source Fan post

[kwalker]

It's more like "You can make about the same food as that hip restaurant in LA at your home in NYC, if you've got the time and inclination and a few raw materials..Here's a few recipes..."

Re:Typical Open Source Fan post

[OzPeter]

It's more like "You can make about the same food as that hip restaurant in LA at your home in NYC, if you've got the time and inclination and a few raw materials..Here's a few recipes..."

But note that to make it look and taste exactly like our example .. you'll need to use a smoking gun, and immersion heater and a blast chiller.

Re:Typical Open Source Fan post

[laird]

It seems quite common to have the "extra Arduino" in the mix, because it's a great little processor for managing lots of I/O lines. And you can put the faster CPU asleep until something interesting happens. It probably only costs $3 for the Arduino chip by itself.

But I agree that for large scale production you'd want a custom PCB, rather than their board, because you don't want to waste the space on two stacked cards with pins between them, when you can put the chips on one PCB that's easier to manufacture, cheaper, etc.

Re:Typical Open Source Fan post

[ceoyoyo]

You can get an ATMega for less than $3. It's getting someone else to put the OS on it that makes it expensive. Still, you don't just throw an extra micro controller into a product you're planning for manufacturing. It's great for prototyping, but not so good for a finished product. It's not exactly hard to run IO natively on whatever uC you happen to be using.

I don't understand the draw

[sideslash]

I love the idea of home automation, and have been involved in a couple significant DIY projects involving my own scripting (no custom electronics design, that's not my skill). I've focused on things like multi room audio and intelligent video surveillance. If somebody offered me a $250 thermostat (yes, I saw that they did it for $70 here), my response is "really? Isn't that kind of... boring?"
Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that they're innovating in the thermostat space. But I want much, much more than that.

Re:I don't understand the draw

[kwalker]

Not everything in HA is hip or sexy. Most of the stuff I want to do in my own DIY home automation project is boring, turning lights on and off remotely, opening and closing window blinds, zoned HVAC, automated porch light with motion detection. Stuff that's not hip or sexy but makes the house more intelligent and less energy-wasting.

Re:I don't understand the draw

[sideslash]

turning lights on and off remotely, opening and closing window blinds, zoned HVAC, automated porch light with motion detection.

I don't see those as boring; I'd like to do the same things (eventually). And even a smart thermostat is a little bit exciting to me, just not $250-exciting, or billion-dollar-business-exciting, at least not by itself.

Re:I don't understand the draw

[rhsanborn]

The idea of the Nest is that it's going to do something that most people aren't good at doing, which is programming their thermostats. Tech geeks aren't the target market. We already programmed our thermostats and for the most part they work relatively efficiently. It's for my crazy aunt who doesn't have a programmed thermostat and can recoup that $250 by letting some silly device do it for her. There are also smart added benefits like being able to check on the house remotely when you're out of town to make sure the furnace hasn't failed and your pipes are frozen, etc.

Cold zones

[unixcorn]

I just bought a new thermostat. I really wanted a Nest because of it's cool factor however, I ended up buying a Honeywell. First, the Nest isn't as advanced; for example, the Honeywell has some features that allow me to run the fan periodically throughout the cycles. It also allows me to add an additional "slave" thermostat and average the temperature between my upper and lower levels. While the Nest allows you to view multiple thermostats in a single interface each stat required separate HVAC systems. The Honeywell also comes with a remote control that sense the temperature where you are sitting and will adjust the set point to make you comfortable. The bottom line is that sometimes new and cool isn't as good as tried and true when you actually do some research.

Re:Cold zones

[Jaruzel]

Mind sharing which Honeywell it was that you bought?

I've recently swapped out an old rotary one for a DT90E, and I'm really not happy with it - it keeps flicking the boiler on/off too often :(

Thanks.

Re:Cold zones

[adisakp]

I just bought a new thermostat. I really wanted a Nest because of it's cool factor however, I ended up buying a Honeywell. First, the Nest isn't as advanced; for example, the Honeywell has some features that allow me to run the fan periodically throughout the cycles.

Nest has fan cycling, the ability to run the fan after heating or cooling have completed (to get the rest of the warmth / cold more efficiency), and the ability to run the fan on demand for a user specified amount of time. You can also tell your Nest to run the fan for X minutes every hour (say 15 minutes per hour) to keep the air circulated in the house and to avoid heating / cooling differentials. All controllable from your iPhone or iOS or Android device.

Re:Cold zones

[Jaruzel]

Aha thanks. Good reading on that link. I now understand much better what's going on.

To avoid the need to wire...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't see much use for USB, but Wifi would make a lot of sense. You could move your thermostat, or perhaps install an additional one, without having to run another low-voltage line down to the basement. It would also allow more sophisticated communication than ON and OFF.

Re:To avoid the need to wire...

[skids]

Once you add security and reliability to a wifi receiver, you are talking a good more silicon per unit. Which is why cheezy consumer-grade WiFi toys are so often completely insecure and unreliable. Those of us that don't mind running the cable would do so to escape having a cheezy, unreliable, insecure system controlling our environmental systems.

Re:To avoid the need to wire...

[shaitand]

Hack for what purpose? You have to consider the value of the target and the value of your thermostat is virtually none. I mean, if you hacked ALL of them you might have enough compute power to add up to a single GPU mining bitcoin and that'd pull a hacker a cool $20-$30 a month (halved each week as difficulty increases).

Re:To avoid the need to wire...

[tgd]

Running wires is easy, and there's virtually nothing to go wrong.

When you're dealing with HVAC, simple is king.

Re:To avoid the need to wire...

[wolrahnaes]

Well for the obvious one, hack to control the temperature in your building. That could be done for a variety of reasons; an employee who finds the officially set temperature inappropriate, a prankster, or with malicious intent there are plenty of situations where out-of-control climate control could cause damage and/or put people in danger.

One way or another, as with any networked device security is important and we've all seen how little the vendors care when skipping security lets them get a cheaper product on the market sooner.

Re:To avoid the need to wire...

[davester666]

Yeah, it's -30 C outside, and oops, you can't turn on your furnace anymore.

Or you are on vacation and return to find out your pipes have burst.

For $250, I should get a thermostat that I can control [yes, even remotely], can easily set a on/off schedule like the Nest has, but that doesn't upload my personal data to a computer not directly under my control.

Just like all the rest all these new widgets. There isn't any reason or added value to me personally, to upload whatever to the device manufacturers server.

Re:To avoid the need to wire...

[plover]

https://krebsonsecurity.com/20...
That's an article about the value a hacked device can deliver to a bad guy. Most of those things won't apply, but a botherder could use your thermostat to send spam. He could also open a reverse command shell to act as a staging point to dig into your internal network from inside your router's firewall, and use it to launch an attack on your banking PC, perhaps.

In case you doubt this could happen, it just did. http://www.businessinsider.com...

Arduino

[Tokolosh]

Arduino-based thermostat projects have been around for some time, and some are networked. Easy to DIY and can be done for under $100. Google around.

BTW, I have had my Proliphix network thermostat for more than 5 years now and still very happy with it.

Pretty Sure Nest Does This

[AvitarX]

In the summer you can use the AC to dehumidify, also, it handles humidifier/dehumidifier.

It's a fucking thermostat

[Anonymous Coward]

You set it. It controls the heater. Jesus fucking christ already, this is where we're at in 2014?

WTF is an acquisitiona

[Hognoxious]

Acquisitiona? Isn't that Portuguese for credit note or something?

is that the play?

[globaljustin]

so is that what Google is thinking w/ their 3.2 Billion?

they get energy companies and local installers to push these things and that's how they make a return on their investment?

it seems to me the profitability horizon is farther than the point at which the competition will be able to...um...compete.

energy companies have been at this for a long time, they are like IBM or AT&T in that they manage to stick around using old-school capitialism US big-biz style...google is an ad serving company known for its search and email

i'm saying energy companies, like my local PGE will develop their own more sensitive monitoring along side this

not that i'm criticizing google either...i'd love for them to buy one of my companies for a billion dollars

Re:is that the play?

[Fnord666]

they get energy companies and local installers to push these things and that's how they make a return on their investment?

No. Google did not spend $3.2 billion on a company that makes thermostats. They paid $3.2 billion for a company that makes data acquisition devices that pose as thermostats. The amount of data that they can acquire is staggering. Wait until they offer enhancements like plugging in your current electric rate and provider so it can display the dollar savings.

Re:is that the play?

[pepty]

They paid $3.2 billion for a company that makes data acquisition devices that pose as thermostats. The amount of data that they can acquire is staggering.

Plus consider the demographics for Nest customers: homeowners with disposable cash who really want to tie everything to their phones. The data they will acquire will be very profitable.

First sentence is incorrect...

[ilikenwf]

What's with the run on, incomplete sentence?

Soulskill, you suck

[wonkey_monkey]

Why do we call the people who put Slashdot stories up "editors"?

Google's recent acquisitiona

Four words in and you've already a word.

they've posted their code on Github. The article...

What article would that be? Oh, if only there was a way of providing easy access to it via some kind of clickable "link"!

Re:Replacing the software on the Nest

[chaim79]

I am ready to look into that, I have a nest (1st gen) and experience and tools in embedded development, looking at the mainboard (reverse side) for the nest there are plenty of touchpoints and even a set of contacts, how much you want to bet the JTAG interface for the Microprocessor is exposed letting someone (like me) install my own software?

Right now I'm looking around to see if anyone else has started this effort, no takers thus far but maybe that's just my search-fu being weak.

The weird part

[ThatsNotPudding]

About ten years ago, even evil Honeywell offered programmable thermostats in the classic round form. Now? Can't find one. I'd like to replace the current thermostat, but it's mounted on a large, round escutcheon and placing a rectangular box in the center of that would look too stupid to tolerate.

Umm

[Anonymous Coward]

True. The real growth is not in home owners, most of whom will never replace a thermostat, let alone spend $250 for one or more replacements. The market is the installers and manufacturers to include it with a unit or as an add on sale.

Before 2006 (and well in to 2007 in many cases) there were a lot of businesses running on the belief that most cell phone users would never buy an $850 MSRP cellphone and that the "real" market is the carriers to include a phone with service plans.

Apple's made a whale of a profit out of proving those assumptions wrong.

Re:Umm

[Anonymous Coward]

Before 2006 (and well in to 2007 in many cases) there were a lot of businesses running on the belief that most cell phone users would never buy an $850 MSRP cellphone and that the "real" market is the carriers to include a phone with service plans.

Apple's made a whale of a profit out of proving those assumptions wrong.

To be fair, the cell phones of the time would not have been popular if they weren't cheap. I certainly wouldn't have paid $850 for a cell phone before Apple showed how cell phones should work.

Even now, people wouldn't pay so much money for Windows Phone. Microsoft is taking a loss on every Lumia, just to get them to sell. The profit is in the carriers' service plans.

Apple's iPhone was inferior in almost every way to the flagship Sony Erriccson phones at the time and they actually did retail for 500 bucks or so. Apple put a touchscreen (that froze an awful lot) and a better API and certification process in place. I'm not saying that accomplishment is worthless, it's clearly worthwhile, but let's not pretend the first iPhone was very good (it wasn't, in fact, it was incredibly inferior to phones that cost a lot less) or that it jumped up the price of flagship phones much, if at all (they were already really expensive).

Re:Umm

[tlhIngan]

To be fair, the cell phones of the time would not have been popular if they weren't cheap. I certainly wouldn't have paid $850 for a cell phone before Apple showed how cell phones should work.

Even now, people wouldn't pay so much money for Windows Phone. Microsoft is taking a loss on every Lumia, just to get them to sell. The profit is in the carriers' service plans.

Android too. Very few people buy the flagship phones if they weren't $99 on contract (or these days, you can get an S4 or other flagship like an HTC One for FREE).

Even with Samsung's sales (177M phones in a quarter), the vast, vast, vast majority of those are what carriers give away or free phones. Heck, I saw ads for the Samsung Galaxy Ace, running ICS (not Jellybean!) free on contract.

So Android's main sales strength is in the low end where they're shoveling them out the door (I use Samsung as they have around 90% marketshare of Android , but under 10% of which is their current flagship phone, so the other phones make up the rest of the sales).

Only Apple actually gets people to spend $850 on a phone. Hell, only Apple makes it easy to get an unlocked phone, at that. Go to a Samsung store or a Microsoft store and say you want to buy the phones, and the employees won't sell you a phone. Instead you have to go to a carrier. Or order it online. Apple though, will happily sell you one.

How to do this right, or out-doing the Nest

[Animats]

There's some very good HVAC control technology that hasn't yet made it to the home. Here's a way to build a product that does that.

The basic kit consists of the cool-looking "thermostat" controller, and a window fan. The window fan unit has sensors and an RF link to the controller. The sensors include inside and outside temperature, humidity, CO2 level, noise level, and light level. The controller has the same set of sensors. The controller can turn on heat, A/C, or HVAC only, and has full control over the window fan unit.

Now we're ready to apply some smarts to HVAC control. The basic idea is to use outside air and recirculation when possible. Big building systems have done this automatically for decades, but somehow it never made it to the home. The problem isn't component cost - it's the difficulty of configuring such systems. That has to be fully automatic for the home.

So the controller spends the first few days of its operating life learning the thermodynamics of the house. When heat or A/C is started, how long does it take for the effects to show up at the thermostat? What's the rate of rise and fall? If it starts the fan blowing air inward when it's colder or hotter outside, how long does it take before the effect shows up at the controller's sensors? In a few days, the controller should have all that calibrated.

Why all the sensors? The outside temperature sensor tells the controller what the fans will do to inside temperature. The CO2 sensor tells the system how crowded the house is. When CO2 is higher than normal inside, but not outside, it's time to crank up the fans in exhaust mode. When CO2 is very low, the house is nearly empty and air can be recirculated. The noise level sensor is used to decide how high the fans can go before they become annoying. If someone is having a loud party and the CO2 level is up, the fans can be run at max. The outside temperature sensor tells the controller what the fans will do to inside temperature. The outside light level sensor is used to figure out the day/night cycle and length of day. After some time, the system will know the approximate date and latitude.

That's the base system. Add-ons include more fans, controls for built-in fans such as attic fans, humidifiers, and so forth. For larger houses, multiple controllers can be used, and will coordinate their operation. (Coordination is essential in multiple-zone HVAC, or you spend money cooling air you just heated, or vice versa.) For new houses, more of this could be built in, but the base unit plus a window fan is enough to get going. So it can be sold as a consumer product.

Note that this doesn't need to connect to the "cloud". It doesn't need to "phone home". It doesn't need your ZIP code so it can connect to some place and get outside air temp. (It might offer a WiFi interface so you can talk to it via a browser, but that's not essential.) It has a lot more smarts tha the "Nest", and will make a house more comfortable.

Re:How to do this right, or out-doing the Nest

[Areyoukiddingme]

I see only one problem with your scheme: that window fan is one giant draft in the winter and one giant sauna in the summer. A whole-house fan mounted in the ceiling in the center of the house is closer to being useful, if you could find one with a PWM motor. They come with metal louvers that open when the fan is on and close when it's off. But they're still pretty damn leaky. Even if you use a fan that isn't a travesty, when the outdoor temperature is in no way comfortable at any time during the day or night, the fan is of very limited utility.

Such systems work on large commercial structures because they're conditioning the air in a very large space, far larger than most homes. A little bit of systemic leakage is unnoticeable in contrast to a house system where even a very small leak is a substantial contributor to the inefficiency of the system.

Re:How to do this right, or out-doing the Nest

[Megane]

This is why making a good thermostat is hard. Because everyone is used to the weather where they live, and most people can't conceive of the things that someone living elsewhere on the planet might need. Hot, cold, rainy, etc., or all of the above, single- or multi-stage, oil or gas or electric heat, not to mention people who need to monitor and control temperature remotely, like a summer house or a rental.

So some guy says "Do this, it works great!" and someone who lives 1000 miles way thinks "What a fucking idiot."

Re:How to do this right, or out-doing the Nest

[Animats]

Right, you need a fan with vent louvers, so when the fan isn't running, no air flows.

What this summary needs

[Fnord666]

What this summary needs is a good old fashioned link to at least one article about the project.

Other internet connected thermostats are available

[raburton]

My dad has the non-wifi version, and having just got my own place I'm planning on ordering the wifi version soon.
http://www.heatmisershop.co.uk/room-thermostats-c1/wifi-thermostats-c12

Not really sure how it compares to the Nest model, but it isn't cloud based so the NSA won't know how warm your house is. There are various related projects on github for alternate interfaces to it as well.