Unlike Nest, which I've always seen as a gimmick sold on false advertising, I believe this has legs. Making these kinds of air conditioning units into intelligent devices could have significant effects.
Why do think I Nest is a gimmick almost bordering on a marketing scam? Because in only works in a relatively narrow range of applications (i.e.: small one or two room apartment). In a larger family home --and particularly a two story home-- it is worthless. You could save money with a cheap programmable thermostat. In order to really save money in such settings you need a zone system with one thermostat/sensor per zone, a multiple stage compressor (or multiple condensing units), a variable speed air handler, a high efficiency HEPA filter, attic exhaust fans and, ideally, a filtered outside air bypass system to take advantage of cool night air.
I am in the middle of renovating my home and have done all the research. Nest is a waste of time and money. You'd save far more money --FAR MORE-- buying a relatively cheap whole house fan to cool the house down at night (at least in my region). But, hey, everyone believes that technology is magical. Damn the math and physics. Hence the hype and sales.
Automating window units is a different game. These are devoted mostly to cooling single rooms. So now you have the equicalent of a highly granular zone system. If you have a home or office with several of these units an intelligent control system could, depending on traffic patterns and the daily flow of people in and out of the various spaces, have a big impact. This is different.
EDIT: I see the cargo-cult HN down-voting got started right away. You can't say anything bad about Apple, Tesla, Nest and others on HN. Of course, they never back-up their downvote because it's purely emotionally driven.
So, here's the challenge: If you think I am wrong about Nest tell me why and back it up. The comparison is between Nest and a cheap programmable thermostat. People's lives are reasonably regular and heat cycles in the summer are too. If you are intent on saving money a programmable thermostat will do wonders. I've been experimenting with this for three years knowing that we would have to redo our cooling and heating system in 2014/15. I've gone two full summers without running the air conditioner but for two weeks by rigging and intelligent $200 fan (meaning, I hooked it up to a $5 timer) to exchange air out of the house when outside air was cooler than inside. That move alone represented a savings of around $500 PER MONTH. See my point?
I have a single story, three bedroom home. Currently I have a cheap programmable thermostat, and it does next to nothing for me.
Some weekends I'm away, some weekends I'm at home. Most days I'm gone between specific times because of work, but sometimes I'll fire up the laptop and work from home.
That lack of awareness in my cheap programmable thermostat means any schedule I program into it would be wrong almost as often as it is right, which makes it only as good as any other simple thermostat with an up and a down button. Since it is wrong so much, that means I'm often wasting money heating or cooling a house that I'm not in.
Or I could just install a Nest, which not only would know whether or not I'm at home but which I could remotely control with my phone to let it know when I'm headed home or when I'll be gone all weekend.
Edit: The downvotes are most likely because you took something which is an obvious step up from conventional home heating and air controlling systems and has provable benefits, then called it a marketing scam based on vague anecdotal evidence, with a rather hostile "if you disagree then you're an idiot that believes in magic and fairies" tone, to boot.
I rent a 2000 sq ft 2-story house. My wife and I have somewhat irregular schedules, and the fact that we rent means I can't make big changes like installing a whole-house fan. But I can change the thermostat.
Nest saved us on average $50-100/month vs the same months last year. I'm sure I could get far more savings with something different like you suggest, but again my options are limited. Nest paid for itself several times over, and I like the app.
Your argument is mostly right in terms of what would be required (the super-high efficiency filter is not necessary, nor are attic fans, to achieve anything interesting), but actually, you have to have multiple condensing units past a certain point.
It's simply not efficient, even with auto-closing dampers, to zone and duct a multi-zone system with single condensing units.
You'd be much better off, efficiency wise, either:
1. Using mini-splits everywhere.
2. Going geothermal. You can support multiple units off a single loop. I did this in maryland. My 4000 square foot house had all the hot water and cooling provided by GSHP. My energy bills, keeping it whatever temperature I liked, dropped from about 400 a month in the winter to about 50 bucks. The wonder of 41 EER, 5 COP. Unlike the air source heat pumps, they actually publish real efficiency curves for various temperatures, and your pump actually work at close to expected efficiency!
You mention this magical whole house fan multiple times across your responses, but how exactly would a fan help those of us living where it's 70-80 F at night? I have one and besides being obnoxiously loud, on one of the aforementioned nights, it'd simply end up blowing around that hot, humid air without actually cooling anything.
I think Nest is really aimed at builders and major renovations, where a list of features is more of a concern than $200.
(Of course there are lots of builders and major renovations where the $200 would still be considered a waste, I think they are targeting the ones that don't care about $200)
Rough numbers may a general guideline to CYA, but to your privacy and second point. What data is gathered, stored, for how long and shared with who? What are your options if the system goes offline?
I have a Nest Thermostat that I bought before Google acquired Nest, which raises another general issue of your device having an evolving T&C to use.
60 megabytes is a number that jumped out at me right away: It's about the upper bound of 1 packet per minute at the standard 1500 byte ethernet MTU.
That's about the right amount of data to do an HTTP POST home every minute with the basic temperature, humidity, what its internal IP address etc is.
Which seems completely reasonable to me. 5 megs is reasonable for your acks and occasional commands. I don't think there's anything suspicious about those numbers -- I'd probably have provided similar ones if I was designing this system.
That's a very nice idea for an Arduino project. I already have an Arduino hooked up to my home server that can sense motion/light/temperature, so it should be easy to set it up to remotely control the AC as well.
Mind you, if you look closely on their website, it works with gas heating - which most of the houses here use. I personally have a Buderus ( although fully automated - but quite inflexible) and I'd really like to try it. 300 Euro doesn't seem to much, considering that it can do savings on the same level per year.
EDIT: the central Munich is heated with the SWM's powerplants. But around Munich there is a huge amount of houses which just fit this device.
According to Thingsquare, Tado is using their firmware [1], Mist, based off of the open source Contiki [2]. This is pretty cool, as it enables a ton of features like over the air firmware updates or running your own applications. I'm especially curious how they added bluetooth and ibeacon support into this.
I was thinking about it until they decided to charge MORE for the developer edition. As there isn't a Windows (Phone or otherwise) version out there I couldn't use it.
Yes, I know, I run a Windows Phone and don't own Android or iOS devices but companies should at least give people the ability without pay walling it.
Kinda like the Occulus, which are also charging more for the DevKit. Why do you think it should be cheaper? It's not like they have an app store they want to promote.
Just for fun I once thought about using my Lego Next kit to build a bluetooth controlled robotic finger to operate my AC remote. So sorry I never got to it.
[+] [-] robomartin|12 years ago|reply
Why do think I Nest is a gimmick almost bordering on a marketing scam? Because in only works in a relatively narrow range of applications (i.e.: small one or two room apartment). In a larger family home --and particularly a two story home-- it is worthless. You could save money with a cheap programmable thermostat. In order to really save money in such settings you need a zone system with one thermostat/sensor per zone, a multiple stage compressor (or multiple condensing units), a variable speed air handler, a high efficiency HEPA filter, attic exhaust fans and, ideally, a filtered outside air bypass system to take advantage of cool night air.
I am in the middle of renovating my home and have done all the research. Nest is a waste of time and money. You'd save far more money --FAR MORE-- buying a relatively cheap whole house fan to cool the house down at night (at least in my region). But, hey, everyone believes that technology is magical. Damn the math and physics. Hence the hype and sales.
Automating window units is a different game. These are devoted mostly to cooling single rooms. So now you have the equicalent of a highly granular zone system. If you have a home or office with several of these units an intelligent control system could, depending on traffic patterns and the daily flow of people in and out of the various spaces, have a big impact. This is different.
EDIT: I see the cargo-cult HN down-voting got started right away. You can't say anything bad about Apple, Tesla, Nest and others on HN. Of course, they never back-up their downvote because it's purely emotionally driven.
So, here's the challenge: If you think I am wrong about Nest tell me why and back it up. The comparison is between Nest and a cheap programmable thermostat. People's lives are reasonably regular and heat cycles in the summer are too. If you are intent on saving money a programmable thermostat will do wonders. I've been experimenting with this for three years knowing that we would have to redo our cooling and heating system in 2014/15. I've gone two full summers without running the air conditioner but for two weeks by rigging and intelligent $200 fan (meaning, I hooked it up to a $5 timer) to exchange air out of the house when outside air was cooler than inside. That move alone represented a savings of around $500 PER MONTH. See my point?
[+] [-] Zikes|12 years ago|reply
Some weekends I'm away, some weekends I'm at home. Most days I'm gone between specific times because of work, but sometimes I'll fire up the laptop and work from home.
That lack of awareness in my cheap programmable thermostat means any schedule I program into it would be wrong almost as often as it is right, which makes it only as good as any other simple thermostat with an up and a down button. Since it is wrong so much, that means I'm often wasting money heating or cooling a house that I'm not in.
Or I could just install a Nest, which not only would know whether or not I'm at home but which I could remotely control with my phone to let it know when I'm headed home or when I'll be gone all weekend.
Edit: The downvotes are most likely because you took something which is an obvious step up from conventional home heating and air controlling systems and has provable benefits, then called it a marketing scam based on vague anecdotal evidence, with a rather hostile "if you disagree then you're an idiot that believes in magic and fairies" tone, to boot.
[+] [-] Domenic_S|12 years ago|reply
Nest saved us on average $50-100/month vs the same months last year. I'm sure I could get far more savings with something different like you suggest, but again my options are limited. Nest paid for itself several times over, and I like the app.
[+] [-] DannyBee|12 years ago|reply
It's simply not efficient, even with auto-closing dampers, to zone and duct a multi-zone system with single condensing units.
You'd be much better off, efficiency wise, either: 1. Using mini-splits everywhere. 2. Going geothermal. You can support multiple units off a single loop. I did this in maryland. My 4000 square foot house had all the hot water and cooling provided by GSHP. My energy bills, keeping it whatever temperature I liked, dropped from about 400 a month in the winter to about 50 bucks. The wonder of 41 EER, 5 COP. Unlike the air source heat pumps, they actually publish real efficiency curves for various temperatures, and your pump actually work at close to expected efficiency!
[+] [-] cauterize|12 years ago|reply
Nest allows controlling multiple thermostats from the app, I couldn't find if tado did the same.
Thus, your conclusion that Nest is a "waste of time and money" is fruitless.
However, the geolocation support does seem quite nice. The bar has been raised once again.
[+] [-] Shadow6363|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maxerickson|12 years ago|reply
(Of course there are lots of builders and major renovations where the $200 would still be considered a waste, I think they are targeting the ones that don't care about $200)
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] joosters|12 years ago|reply
1) Seems like a lot of data, what exactly is it communicating and to whom? What are the privacy policies?
2) What happens if/when the company stops running its servers? Does the device continue to work or will it become junk?
[+] [-] mey|12 years ago|reply
I have a Nest Thermostat that I bought before Google acquired Nest, which raises another general issue of your device having an evolving T&C to use.
[+] [-] mcpherrinm|12 years ago|reply
That's about the right amount of data to do an HTTP POST home every minute with the basic temperature, humidity, what its internal IP address etc is.
Which seems completely reasonable to me. 5 megs is reasonable for your acks and occasional commands. I don't think there's anything suspicious about those numbers -- I'd probably have provided similar ones if I was designing this system.
[+] [-] uptown|12 years ago|reply
http://www.coned.com/energyefficiency/residential_directload...
[+] [-] iamjs|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] StavrosK|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] legulere|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ccozan|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thelucky41|12 years ago|reply
[1] http://thingsquare.com/customers/ [2] http://www.contiki-os.org/
[+] [-] theg2|12 years ago|reply
Yes, I know, I run a Windows Phone and don't own Android or iOS devices but companies should at least give people the ability without pay walling it.
[+] [-] lmb|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chillingeffect|12 years ago|reply
It's quite similar to the name Taco, which is an 80+ year-old American HVAC company [0]. I hope they don't get in trouble in the U.S.!
Other than that, great idea!
http://www.taco-hvac.com/whoweare.html
[+] [-] macrosak|12 years ago|reply
"The name tado° is derived from the Japanese greetings 'tadaima' and 'okaeri'. Loosely translated, they mean 'I am home' and 'welcome home'."
[+] [-] dmritard96|12 years ago|reply
allows record and playback of IR codes as well as search of LIRC
also, if you are building an IR database, would you consider sharing the IR codes with the community?
after all, I'm sure Ken Sheriffs library and arduino are open tools that are likely helping you quite a lot in the early stages...
https://github.com/dandroid88/webmote
[+] [-] lesingerouge|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidcollantes|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] klinquist|12 years ago|reply