nest thermostat

Control from an iPhone or iPad is exactly what I am looking for. Are there other candidates anyone can recommend?

Will it relay the temp of the house back to the 'Phone or 'Pad?

 

I just received the Nest and installed it in about 30 minutes total. Took longer to find a wall anchor in my stash! (it comes with a variety of screw sizes but no plastic anchors.

Very interesting design / interface. You can control it from an iPhone / iPad (also supports Android)- basically anything done on it locally can be done remotely. And to answer LAX above, it shows current temp / settings on the phone in addition to changing the settings.

 

Nice, Dennis; and thanks. Sounds great. Currently renting, but a candidate for purchase one of these days. It'll be the first improvement I make....

 

One of the 'issues' I read about the NEST is that it uses a motion sensor to determine that you're not home. It's part of the way it learns.

My thermostat is in a small hallway that is not traveled often. To get full learning functionality, be sure it's in a place that can see normal traffic. If you just end up setting it for specific times and temps you may as well save your bucks and get a standard programmable thermosat for 1/4 the price.

 

No need for a Nest or even programmable thermostat here. From June to October we leave the thermostat turned off. The rest of the year we set it at 72 daytime and turn it down a bit at night.

 

I keep mine at 64 during the day, up to ca. 68 in the evening, down to 58 at night. Still would enjoy a programmable!

 

Basic programmable thermostats are fairly cheap, easy to install, and will pay for themselves. Laxguy, even in the East Bay there are cold days. If your thermostat is set to 64 while you're at work, the heater will come on in the winter. I live in the South Bay and my programmable thermostat is set to 40 while we're at work. It's set to 66 at 3pm so the wife is comfortable when she gets home. It goes down to 60 at 11 pm and 68 at 7 am. The big saving is in the summer with air conditioning.

Granted, our gas bill is not very big, but if I saved $1 month, that would be good. I've had the thermostat for over 7 years. It's more than paid for itself.

 

They just recently updated the firmware with some new features, daily history shows graph of runtime, and AirWave(tm) - the first feature cuts the AC unit off early and runs the fan 5-10 minutes to distribute the cool air that's in the ductwork.

It's a very impressive unit compared to other programmable thermostats. (Trane has a color touch-screen unit that's almost $1000!)

 

So cool!.... or warm, depending on the season. Oooomph. Bad attempt.

Anyway, I really like the concept to be able to check the temp of house when away, to turn the heat down if one is away unexpectedly, and to turn it on an hour or so before returning from a trip, night on the town, unexpected errands, etc.

 

Has anyone seen the nest going for less then $250? I need two since I have dual zone.

 

There are a couple up for auction on ebay currently at $212 - $227 (after shipping; howeber the auctions still have from 15 hours to 5 days to go. Given the fact that both auctions say no returns I'd be scheptical to pursue that avenue with the potential of a defective unit being possible.

 

An A/C once told me programmable units do not work well with heat pumps. If they try to raise temp too quickly the coils kick in and really suck juice. At any rate we would need one with a biosensor for my wife.

 

I've been using the Nest for the past 4 months and while I've been reasonably happy with it, I am preparing to replace it with a Trane XL950 when I install a new furnace and A/C. The learning feature sounded cool at first, but I found it was easy to just use the preset schedule feature and that way I got the exact time and temperature changes that I wanted.

Things I like:
The ability to access my thermostat from anywhere with no additional charge.
It is aesthetically pleasing and gets a lot of comments from people who come over.
The schedule is easy to program from a computer and can be set to change as many times a day as you want.

Things that should be improved:
The Auto Away function works erratically - some days it triggers and some days it doesn't. It also likes to trigger on weekend mornings when I sleep in, so I wake up to a cold house. I turn my thermostat down during the day anyway so it's of little significance.
The feature that tracks energy usage tries to tell you what caused your energy usage for the day to increase or decrease, but it acts illogically at times. I rarely adjust the thermostat, but it often tells me my adjustments impacted usage. It also fails to indicate weather as the cause of decreased usage on 70 degree days where the furnace wasn't required.
At its heart, the Nest is still just a basic on/off thermostat. It can work with two stage furnaces but beyond that it won't handle more than your basic system. Other intelligent thermostats such as Ecobee can handle a much wider range of systems.

The Nest looks cool, but ultimately hasn't really made my old system any smarter than my old programmable thermostat other than allowing me to access it online. It will find a new home at my parents house, but my new system should work much better at balancing the comfort level of my home.

 

All I really need/want is a good programmable thermostat with web access. Unfortunately, most of the ones I have found require a power line from my furnace, which I don't have. The Nest does not.

 

Bumping an old thread, but they are releasing a new version of Nest. The new one has the same basic hardware, but thinner and has more support for systems. If you already have a working one, no need to replace. Worth looking into if you were interested in Nest, but have an incompatible heating/cooling system with the first version.

There's also a new version of the software, Android and Kindle tablet support etc. The software update will be available to all Nest units.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-32973_3-5...slimmer-sleeker-thermostat-smarter-than-ever/

 

New update, version 3.5 is being loaded onto units.

New features include Sun Block where it detects that a measured temperature change is due to sunlight hitting the unit. Advanced fan control to have only the fan on for certain periods. Cool to Dry will turn on the AC even if it is at the target temp if the humidity is too high. It will shut off automatically if the humidity isn't actually lowering.

They also made changes to auto away.
This update is compatible with both generations, though fan control requires a system that has a G wire to control only the fan.

http://www.nest.com/blog/2013/04/29/new-summer-software/

 

I've got a Carrier thermostat that is at least 15 years old. It auto switches between heating and cooling as needed. Most of the time Fan speed is controlled by the computer card on the air handler (furnace/ac) depending on what is being called for. A/C uses faster fan speed cause cold air is denser and the extra push gets it through the ducts easier. This stat is smart enough to ease the temp up in the morning when starting up after being set back during sleep hours. That way you don't get a big blast of hot first thing.

That is why the Nest is interesting. Very expensive and doesn't even do what my ancient stat does. Marketing makes it sound nice but it doesn't really do anything a cheap setback stat would do. OK, maybe wifi is cool, but how often to you actually touch it once it is programmed?

 

I tried a Nest for about 2 weeks in January. Since I am retired the auto programming was a pain for me. I don't have a set schedule so all my coming and going at different times had it turning up and down the heat when I didn't want it, most of the time. I replaced it with a Honeywell wifi thermostat from Home Depot that I really like:

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Honeywell-Wi-Fi-7-Day-Programmable-Thermostat-Free-App-RTH6580WF/203556922?N=c5kl#.UX7eIyuFTyc

I can control it from the iPhone and I just leave it on hold and control it as I need it. It is great for older folks with a large readout and big soft buttons for up and down.