We have two nest thermostats installed at work. I rotate the WiFi keys for our APs quarterly and these things are the biggest pain in the ass to reconnect to the WiFi.
The furnace turns off almost immediately after changing the WiFi key once the Nest loses connectivity. At first I thought it was coincidence but now that I rotate on a strict schedule it's a joke in our office. However, what's not a joke is what happens when the internet goes down. So does our heat.
Not surprising. My first Nest wouldn't connect to any of my 5 access points in my house.. thought it was a bug until I found it COULD connect via tethering from my iPhone.
Spent a weekend troubleshooting, Nest ultimately sent me a replacement, which I was sure wouldn't fix my issue, but it actually did! Bad chipset.
Then I had the common wire issue. Then I fixed that.
Then 6mo later I spent a few hours on the phone with support before I found out I actually had something in the furnace fail over the summer. I was amazed it was not a Nest issue.
Also, my Nest loses its internet connection when it goes into the infamous "power save" mode, which Nest insists means your access point is not 802.11 compliant, but I have the certification from Meraki that their APs are fully compliant.
It's been a fairly colossal pain in the ass, even though at least one issue was not Nest's fault.
From cruising the forums, they just break shit way too often, don't give a downgrade option, don't allow you to choose whether or not to apply software updates, and.. just generally treat an important home appliance like it's a cheap toy.
It is also a gigantic pain in the ass to change wifi settings on the Nest Protect, and it's worse because they are mounted on the ceiling so you have to get a ladder. These guys could have learned a lot about ease of use from Sonos. In fact, for the money that Google spent, I would have bought Sonos five times rather than buying Nest.
Why not (and i realise that this is a dirty horrible hack) isolate those devices to their own dedicated virtual ap and isolated network. that way you get to restrict what they can talk to, what can talk to them and the keys that everyone else uses.
this also allows you to finally get around to rolling out eap so the scourge of shared wifi keys can die out :)
Nest's wifi has always been sh*t (for lack of a better word). It's the only device that I've had to reboot the AP for.
It is by far the most fragile device from a network connectivity standpoint. I'm so happy that I won the Nest or I would be so much angrier at the whole thing.
I've had two nests at home for almost 2 years, and have never had them stop working when the wifi went out. They just stick to whatever schedule they were programmed with the last time they were on the internet.
I wouldn't buy a nest again because their API is locked down and they seem to think they own all the data that they collect in my house and won't let me access it, but they've been reliable for me and I have never had a problem with my heat going out.
"It also happened recently with Fitbit, the maker of wearable activity trackers. The company was hit with a class-action lawsuit in San Francisco asserting that the wristbands failed to “consistently and accurately record wearers’ heart rates,” which is vital for those with certain medical conditions."
Apropos of anything else - I don't think Fitbit has ever tried to market itself as a medical device.
If you watch the unhappy early adopter YouTube videos of Nest thermostats, this outcome is pretty predictable. There's a level of quality control you need to put up a web app, which won't physically affect anyone if it happens to crash for awhile. Then there's a much higher level required when you're controlling things in the real world.
This outcome was predictable from the experience of those early adopters.
EDIT: Why couldn't Nest fall back to being a dumb thermostat? Lots of smart device makers should consider having such a fallback.
Nest could fix this easily by including two fixed-temperature safety thermostats, devices which cost about $0.25 each. One is hard-wired to turn on heat below 55F. One is hard-wired to turn off heat above 80F. With that, no matter how badly they botch the software, the temperature will stay in a safe, if not totally comfortable, range.
The Nest comes in two parts - the "smart" bit with the USB charger & battery & wifi, and the Heat Link - the actual radio control for your boiler.
The Heat Link has a big button on which lets you turn the heating on and off, overriding what the Nest is telling it. That's not as economical as a regular thermostat, but it means you won't freeze: https://nest.com/uk/support/article/How-do-I-turn-the-heat-o...
> Buried deep in Nest’s 8,000-word service agreement is a section called “Disputes and Arbitration,” which prohibits customers from suing the company or joining a class-action suit.
Though I have no need for a thermostat whatsoever, I kinda like nest. However, I'd love if people went to court with a class action suit against them.
These 'no class action' and 'arbitration' clauses are becoming increasingly common, but I think they probably don't hold up in court - and nor should they, given how much power they put in the hands of the company.
They do usually hold up in court. Some judges have been ruling that the customer must be given more notice on the "contracts" they're supposedly "entering" before they can be entered, however (Nguyen v. Barnes and Noble).
I've had the Nest for 2 years. To be honest I've had zero problems. The only problem I have is that once Google bought them, there has been little to no improvements in anything. They only give 10 days worth of data which is functionally useless. Why should I care about last week for energy use? I want to compare against last year. They haven't made any significant improvements so it's just another case of an innovator getting bought and then getting the innovation sucked out of it.
The same thing happened with Dropcam. Once they were bought by Nest/Google they stopped making any real changes for the last 2 years. It's sad and infuriating as a customer.
> Although I had set the thermostat to 70 degrees overnight, my wife and I were woken by a crying baby at 4 a.m. The thermometer in his room read 64 degrees, and the Nest was off.
This seems quite strange to me. Here in Germany it's extremely common to (automatically) turn of heating all together in the night (called Nachtabsenkung). One reason is to save energy, but lower temperatures also help sleep:
Sleeping with heating on seems a waste of energy to me. At least in Spain.
I have a dumb thermostat. It doesn't even have a clock. It just has two buttons, one two increase temperature, the other to decrease it. In winter, during the day, I put it at 20C. At night, I put it at 15C or lower (which stops heating, as the house temperature decreases to about 17 or 18 degrees during the night, without heating). It works like a charm. We are not cold at night as we use pyjamas and duvet. We also have a baby. In fact, if I forget to turn off the heating at night, I can't sleep well and I often get up to turn it off.
I turn it off at night too. It bugs me any time I live with people who want it on as it seems like such a waste of money when you can just use more blankets and everyone can be a comfortable temperature for sleeping (I can't sleep when it's warm). I would normally have it turn on automatically again about 30 mins before I have to get up in the morning.
Never understood how people sleep in warm rooms. 15 C is ideal for me, hell, I usually leave my window open at night to keep the room nice and cool.
I guess it doesn't get too cold where I am (high of 9 C, low of -1 usually in winter), but my place doesn't have any insulation at all, or double glazed windows, and I use the heater for only 30 minutes a day usually in winter, because I just put on more clothes.
This offers an interesting insight into the Internet of Things. Take something simple, and tack on a bunch of new technology that is subject to failure. Don't be surprised if it fails.
To be fair, the issue isn't that there was software involved; digital thermostats have that. I think more telling was the level of complexity, which allows for a lot more to go wrong. Combined with a poor process behind update validation, this is what happens.
Keep it Simple. If you're going to use new technology, keep the old stuff around, ideally working in parallel as a failsafe.
And generally, anything you can do to distribute the failure points and allow for overlap (such as backup spaceheaters that don't normally kick on) should be considered if someone's life is on the line, or property is at risk. Stuff can always go wrong, but the more you can do to reduce risk the better. This applies to any system dependency; mechanical thermostat or nest.
Startups try to treat IoT devices as a standard arm or x86 processor with some additional GPIO pins where they read info, deal with it, and write info.
No real-time guarantee, a level of QA similar to websites or consumer software, etc.
And here is what previous companies building smart devices (say, SIEMENS) treated them like: As extended microcontrollers.
Put all the critical software on one tiny microcontroller, do static verification that that microcontroller is always acting correct. If you need Internet access, add a second chip that does that, and provides the results of that data to the first microcontroller — but don't depend on it.
There is a large divide between the Engineers designing these devices in the past, and today's crowd.
It was never great, and it's been worse and worse since Google bought them. Examples of some issues with mine:
1. It doesn't honor DHCP lease expiration [1]. It will happily keep using its IP without renewing its lease. I've had situations where it's gone long enough without a lease renewal that another device has received its old IP and caused a conflict.
2. It constantly disassociates from the AP, and decides to come back on the network when it feels like it, not when there is traffic for it. And note, this is with a constantly powered device, so there should be no power saving causing it to power down. Also, the AP is about 6 feet away and there are zero other WiFi issues. Manually kicking the device off the AP causes it to come back immediately.
3. Their backend goes down all the time, usually for 1-2 hours.
4. They had a perfectly working method for turning heating on in advance of your setpoint with the goal of reaching your desired temperature at that time rather than just turning on at that time. Then they broke it [2]. This led to nice surprises like waking up to a completely cold house. Instead of rolling back the broken code, they refused to respond on the aforementioned thread for well over a month.
It's really inexplicable. They have nice industrial design, good brand recognition, no shortage of money behind them, and they screw up at every conceivable turn.
I'm going to try out the ecobee thermostat because I very much appreciate the convenience of being able to remotely adjust the temperature.
I have a manual thermostat, no batteries required. It has worked flawlessly for over 30 years. It has a simple intuitive interface: a switch for "heat" or "cool" and a dial with a pointer to set the desired temperature.
Why make things more complicated than they need to be?
My house didn't play nicely with my Nest. I got a new Furnace and AC and had them install a Nest. It started acting weird. We replaced it with a low-tech Honeywell while trying to get it figured out. I then replaced the Nest thinking maybe it was faulty. I took a photo of the wire layout for the Honeywell and made sure I did the proper layout for the new Nest. It worked fine for a few days and then one day I came home to a 110 degree house! The Nest reported that things were 70-whatever. I then replaced it with a Wi-Fi Honeywell (not their Nest competitor) and that one has worked fine since. It was a very scary experience. I won't be trying a Nest again.
Identical experience here. Installed Honeywell RedLINK and finally my problems went away. Ditto Honeywell wireless security, also works great. There's SO MUCH crap out there, and the wave hasn't even started yet.
Wow this happened to my family. We didn't have heat for I think 5 hours. Now we are in the SF Bay so it didn't get crazy cold but I had a wife telling me to fix it and the stupid thing wouldn't come online. I chalked it up to one of the kids pulled the unit from the base plate and the battery drained.
It seems like a GIANT bug to me that the Nest won't come back online till the battery is almost fully charged.
I "fixed" it by putting our old thermostat back in then I put the nest back a few days later.
Failure for a product to perform its primary function is totally unacceptable. Let me repeat: totally unacceptable. From the comments it seems they fail if they lose network connectivity? That's got to be the stupidest thing I ever heard. Apparently some "smart" TVs suffer from similar problems. Remember, there are plenty of thermostats that have NO software - just a stupid little mercury switch - and they are more reliable than this. When any product fails at it's primary function I next it.
I had a Nest and sold it to my brother after Google bought them and it was clear they were never going to release the rumored remote sensors. I got an ecobee instead.
The ecobee is much smarter, mostly because of the remote sensors. My house is far more comfortable. It's also nice that ecobee has an API and IFTTT support. It has no issues running normally when the internet goes down. (My internet was down completely the other night and there was -25F windchill. It followed schedule just fine.)
I'm guessing ecobee coming from Canada they know the value of a functional thermostat...
Mine (Gen 2) died a month ago. I charged it up and reset it, and called Nest support. They sent me a replacement even though mine was working again, and included a prepaid return label.
First problem I had with mine, and it was a great support experience.
Anecdata and all. But combined with this story, makes me wonder if they replaced it because they knew it was likely to happen again.
This is why I purchased the Honeywell 9000 WiFi Color Touchscreen Thermostat[0] instead. The nice thing about the Honeywell is that you can use it completely offline if you so choose. It also has a REAL interface, so an app is an optional extra not a required component.
Both the Nest and Honeywell require the infamous C wire, both are similar installation, and both cost around $200.
PS - And, yes, the Nest has a theoretical setup without the C wire, but you'll lose key things like fan control, or if the boiler doesn't run enough the entire thing can die. On both it is ultimately C wire or don't waste your time.
At least among the engineers and data scientists here, are any of us really surprised? Smart devices, especially ones that learn, can certainly do better on average, but complexity adds edge cases and those worst cases can really matter. Simple things fail simply (when they fail at all).
[+] [-] atom_enger|10 years ago|reply
The furnace turns off almost immediately after changing the WiFi key once the Nest loses connectivity. At first I thought it was coincidence but now that I rotate on a strict schedule it's a joke in our office. However, what's not a joke is what happens when the internet goes down. So does our heat.
What the hell, Nest?
Relevant: https://twitter.com/internetofshit
[+] [-] rconti|10 years ago|reply
Spent a weekend troubleshooting, Nest ultimately sent me a replacement, which I was sure wouldn't fix my issue, but it actually did! Bad chipset.
Then I had the common wire issue. Then I fixed that.
Then 6mo later I spent a few hours on the phone with support before I found out I actually had something in the furnace fail over the summer. I was amazed it was not a Nest issue.
Also, my Nest loses its internet connection when it goes into the infamous "power save" mode, which Nest insists means your access point is not 802.11 compliant, but I have the certification from Meraki that their APs are fully compliant.
It's been a fairly colossal pain in the ass, even though at least one issue was not Nest's fault.
From cruising the forums, they just break shit way too often, don't give a downgrade option, don't allow you to choose whether or not to apply software updates, and.. just generally treat an important home appliance like it's a cheap toy.
[+] [-] jack-r-abbit|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thrownaway2424|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rsync|10 years ago|reply
Predictable. Avoidable. Pitiful.
[+] [-] tacticus|10 years ago|reply
this also allows you to finally get around to rolling out eap so the scourge of shared wifi keys can die out :)
[+] [-] newman314|10 years ago|reply
It is by far the most fragile device from a network connectivity standpoint. I'm so happy that I won the Nest or I would be so much angrier at the whole thing.
[+] [-] ceejayoz|10 years ago|reply
That's very odd. My Nest functions fine during Time Warner outages.
[+] [-] jedberg|10 years ago|reply
As a couple of other folks have noted, that's not normal. You might want to get on tech support with them.
My Nest just keeps running its last program when it looses internet.
[+] [-] fps|10 years ago|reply
I wouldn't buy a nest again because their API is locked down and they seem to think they own all the data that they collect in my house and won't let me access it, but they've been reliable for me and I have never had a problem with my heat going out.
[+] [-] sixothree|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swiley|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FireBeyond|10 years ago|reply
Apropos of anything else - I don't think Fitbit has ever tried to market itself as a medical device.
[+] [-] stcredzero|10 years ago|reply
This outcome was predictable from the experience of those early adopters.
EDIT: Why couldn't Nest fall back to being a dumb thermostat? Lots of smart device makers should consider having such a fallback.
[+] [-] Animats|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattbee|10 years ago|reply
The Heat Link has a big button on which lets you turn the heating on and off, overriding what the Nest is telling it. That's not as economical as a regular thermostat, but it means you won't freeze: https://nest.com/uk/support/article/How-do-I-turn-the-heat-o...
[+] [-] josinalvo|10 years ago|reply
Though I have no need for a thermostat whatsoever, I kinda like nest. However, I'd love if people went to court with a class action suit against them.
These 'no class action' and 'arbitration' clauses are becoming increasingly common, but I think they probably don't hold up in court - and nor should they, given how much power they put in the hands of the company.
[+] [-] jacobolus|10 years ago|reply
NYT has been on the case recently: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/business/dealbook/arbitrat... http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/02/business/dealbook/in-arbit... http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/business/dealbook/in-relig...
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/23/business/dealbook/sued-ove...
[+] [-] ak217|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kyrra|10 years ago|reply
The reason you see it everywhere is because it was deemed legal.
[+] [-] cookiecaper|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pfarnsworth|10 years ago|reply
The same thing happened with Dropcam. Once they were bought by Nest/Google they stopped making any real changes for the last 2 years. It's sad and infuriating as a customer.
[+] [-] gduffy|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] legulere|10 years ago|reply
This seems quite strange to me. Here in Germany it's extremely common to (automatically) turn of heating all together in the night (called Nachtabsenkung). One reason is to save energy, but lower temperatures also help sleep:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/health/04real.html
The article says between 60°F (15.5°C) to 68°F (20°) is best.
[+] [-] pqs|10 years ago|reply
I have a dumb thermostat. It doesn't even have a clock. It just has two buttons, one two increase temperature, the other to decrease it. In winter, during the day, I put it at 20C. At night, I put it at 15C or lower (which stops heating, as the house temperature decreases to about 17 or 18 degrees during the night, without heating). It works like a charm. We are not cold at night as we use pyjamas and duvet. We also have a baby. In fact, if I forget to turn off the heating at night, I can't sleep well and I often get up to turn it off.
[+] [-] k-mcgrady|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Joeri|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joezydeco|10 years ago|reply
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/07/17/lets-cool-it-in-the...
[+] [-] toomanybeersies|10 years ago|reply
I guess it doesn't get too cold where I am (high of 9 C, low of -1 usually in winter), but my place doesn't have any insulation at all, or double glazed windows, and I use the heater for only 30 minutes a day usually in winter, because I just put on more clothes.
[+] [-] Viper007Bond|10 years ago|reply
Energy costs also tend to be a LOT lower in the States.
[+] [-] hijinks|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] venomsnake|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] meesterdude|10 years ago|reply
To be fair, the issue isn't that there was software involved; digital thermostats have that. I think more telling was the level of complexity, which allows for a lot more to go wrong. Combined with a poor process behind update validation, this is what happens.
Keep it Simple. If you're going to use new technology, keep the old stuff around, ideally working in parallel as a failsafe.
And generally, anything you can do to distribute the failure points and allow for overlap (such as backup spaceheaters that don't normally kick on) should be considered if someone's life is on the line, or property is at risk. Stuff can always go wrong, but the more you can do to reduce risk the better. This applies to any system dependency; mechanical thermostat or nest.
[+] [-] kuschku|10 years ago|reply
Startups try to treat IoT devices as a standard arm or x86 processor with some additional GPIO pins where they read info, deal with it, and write info.
No real-time guarantee, a level of QA similar to websites or consumer software, etc.
And here is what previous companies building smart devices (say, SIEMENS) treated them like: As extended microcontrollers.
Put all the critical software on one tiny microcontroller, do static verification that that microcontroller is always acting correct. If you need Internet access, add a second chip that does that, and provides the results of that data to the first microcontroller — but don't depend on it.
There is a large divide between the Engineers designing these devices in the past, and today's crowd.
[+] [-] insaneirish|10 years ago|reply
1. It doesn't honor DHCP lease expiration [1]. It will happily keep using its IP without renewing its lease. I've had situations where it's gone long enough without a lease renewal that another device has received its old IP and caused a conflict.
2. It constantly disassociates from the AP, and decides to come back on the network when it feels like it, not when there is traffic for it. And note, this is with a constantly powered device, so there should be no power saving causing it to power down. Also, the AP is about 6 feet away and there are zero other WiFi issues. Manually kicking the device off the AP causes it to come back immediately.
3. Their backend goes down all the time, usually for 1-2 hours.
4. They had a perfectly working method for turning heating on in advance of your setpoint with the goal of reaching your desired temperature at that time rather than just turning on at that time. Then they broke it [2]. This led to nice surprises like waking up to a completely cold house. Instead of rolling back the broken code, they refused to respond on the aforementioned thread for well over a month.
It's really inexplicable. They have nice industrial design, good brand recognition, no shortage of money behind them, and they screw up at every conceivable turn.
I'm going to try out the ecobee thermostat because I very much appreciate the convenience of being able to remotely adjust the temperature.
[1]: https://community.nest.com/thread/10316 [2]: https://community.nest.com/thread/11438
[+] [-] ams6110|10 years ago|reply
Why make things more complicated than they need to be?
[+] [-] noneTheHacker|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tacos|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hijinks|10 years ago|reply
It seems like a GIANT bug to me that the Nest won't come back online till the battery is almost fully charged.
I "fixed" it by putting our old thermostat back in then I put the nest back a few days later.
[+] [-] pm24601|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jack000|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phkahler|10 years ago|reply
But hey it's the Internet of THINGS! woot!
[+] [-] feld|10 years ago|reply
The ecobee is much smarter, mostly because of the remote sensors. My house is far more comfortable. It's also nice that ecobee has an API and IFTTT support. It has no issues running normally when the internet goes down. (My internet was down completely the other night and there was -25F windchill. It followed schedule just fine.)
I'm guessing ecobee coming from Canada they know the value of a functional thermostat...
[+] [-] spdustin|10 years ago|reply
First problem I had with mine, and it was a great support experience.
Anecdata and all. But combined with this story, makes me wonder if they replaced it because they knew it was likely to happen again.
[+] [-] endgame|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rdtsc|10 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpsMkLaEiOY
[Warning: contains extremely annoying Nest smoke detectors beeping. So prepare to lower your volume]
Brad looks very annoyed and it was no fun for him, but on an artistic level it is really well done, it is an epic battle between human and machine.
[+] [-] UnoriginalGuy|10 years ago|reply
Both the Nest and Honeywell require the infamous C wire, both are similar installation, and both cost around $200.
[0] http://www.amazon.com/Honeywell-RTH9580WF-Touchscreen-Thermo...
PS - And, yes, the Nest has a theoretical setup without the C wire, but you'll lose key things like fan control, or if the boiler doesn't run enough the entire thing can die. On both it is ultimately C wire or don't waste your time.
[+] [-] imh|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grayje|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brudgers|10 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7019617