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Nest Will Now Work With Your Door Locks, Light Bulbs and More
An anonymous reader writes with news about 15 new brand partnerships Nest announced today. "When Google purchased Nest Labs – the maker of Internet-connected thermostats and smoke detectors – the search engine giant saw the potential to create a software platform for controlling the myriad everyday devices and gadgets in consumers' homes, a central hub for the so-called "Internet of things." This vision took a major step towards becoming reality Monday morning, when Nest announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that 15 new partners were joining its "Works with Nest" developer program. Soon, everything from washing machines to light bulbs will be connected with the Nest platform."
But I don't see the door lock being one of those things due to the more significant security issue.
Letting a repair people in remotely could be very convenient. That way you don't have to be at home to let them in.
At least the first generation of Nest units have Zigbee radios, but they've never been enabled as far as I can find. I have no idea whether the second generation units kept the extra radio.
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
Get murdered in your own house by -- you guessed it! -- the house itself!
Doors... Locked. Check.
Lights... Off. Check.
Nest Protect(tm) Carbon Monoxide detector... Silenced. Check.
Ventilation fans... Off. Check.
Gas stove... On. Check.
Now just wait six hours before undoing all of those, erase a few logs and then wonder how such a tragic accident could have taken place. And you didn't even need to call a SWAT team.
And for good reason. A coworker of mine bought one of these thermostats and last year around Christmas he was awakened in the middle of the night by his furnace blower running full blast. (Air conditioning mode)
Nest had pushed out an update and caused his unit to crash. It took a week for them to get things straightened out again and required replacement of the thermostat.
Over the holidays this year while he was out of town, they pushed out another update. Now his thermostat keeps going to sleep, dropping off the wifi and he can't access it from the internet anymore.
Pissed doesn't even begin to describe his attitude towards Nest.