How long until it gets it's own App store...?

After thinking about it for a bit, I'm sold. Signed up to be notified when I can buy one, looks like the response was way higher then expected.

The trigger has been the highly erratic rain weather over the past few days. The change has caused my system to need to switch from the occasional AC usage, to the occasional heater usage. Current free thermostat from the apartments sucks, with no way to have both a heat and cold schedule. It's one or the other, and my heat schedule was so messed up, it was trying to heat the apartment up to 76 when it ticked over to 10am.

Our Honeywell thermostats (which appear to be an older variant on this design) have an "auto" mode where they will do both heating and cooling, based on the schedule you programmed in. Not that I had any idea for the first two years we lived here until somebody told me about it and I had to dig up the user manual online.

So... if all you want is a hard-to-program thermostat that can deal with a/c and heat automatically, you only need to spend $38 on this Honeywell.

(N.B.: if you really and truly want this feature, make sure you root through the whole Honeywell line to make sure the one you get actually does have this feature. The link above may or may not actually have it...)

Yep, that would be a far cheaper way to avoid one annoyance, but enough of the Nest concept appeals to me that I still want to get one. Things like the WiFi connection allowing remote control is a first step I can take towards home automation.

I figure the initial investment will be worth it long term. If I move, I can just take it with me. And by buying in now, I can help vote with my wallet that this concept is what I want to see more of. I'm really adopting the idea lately that technology hasn't done a great job of serving us humans like it should. Any concept that blends high tech with ease of use and making the tech disappear is something I want to support. I also don't want to be tech support for my friends and family, I want their tech to just work for them. Depending on how well the Nest works out for me, it may also turn into christmas presents for people like my grandparents. One little piece of tech to help them save money on their heating and cooling needs, and in turn assisting them to stretch their retirement dollars out.

Plus, this helps keep people like Hugo employed, leading to fun and new toys for us tech geeks to lust over

...also very much the reason I tend to support stuff I think is promising. eg, we have a Prius even though we don't drive enough to make it at all financially beneficial; the chances are one of the subsequent owners *will*, and it's a vote of support towards the people developing these things.

If everyone just said "meh" towards the early versions of products because they weren't quite "there" yet, there wouldn't be followups...

I do hope I can count on your support for my current project

Just let us know more - hint hint :-)

I was just looking at this — I've been meaning to get one of these for ages — and it turns out that despite the fact that the Honeywell web site claims that the RTH6350D model has this feature ("Auto change from heat to cool"), it does not.

Maybe you want the RTH6450D? Still pretty cheap on Amazon. (FYI, this appears to be pretty much the same as what we've got, but with a different plastic bezel.)

Yeah, it is. I was just pointing out that the documentation on their web site is wrong. (Apparently the 6350 and 6450 share a manual and the autoswitch exists only on the 6450.)

Amusement: I count 52 different thermostats on Honeywell's web site. I suspect they could pare things down quite a bit from that.

Yeah, that was one of the first impressions I had of their site, too. It seems like they thought "we need to have thermostats at every price level between $20-400, in $5-10 increments."

My fear is that Nest will gain some modest amount of success and will promptly be purchased by Honeywell, being thus folded into the above lineup and made to offer ten versions at slightly different price points.

Amusement: I ordered my Nest gear via BestBuy.com because Nest's own web site had melted down shortly after they went live. I just got the following email:



Needless to say, I'm confident I don't need help installing these things, but it might be entertaining to have somebody out to help. Frankly, the hardest part of the installation is that I'm going to want to paint the wall under the mounting plates of our original thermostats. The Nest gear is much smaller and I want it mounted without their big base plate.

"Hi, Mr. Installer Guy. Here's a brush and some paint. Get to work!"

(More seriously, I suppose I really should do the prep and paintwork in advance of installing the new thermostats, but that requires detaching the original thermostats and leaving them off for a day while the paint dries. And when exactly are we going to have a day when the weather is so absolutely perfect that we need neither heating nor cooling for a day? Should I just hope there's some slack wire in the wall, pull everything out, and let the thermostat dangle from the wires?)

It's just 24V DC. Hook up some speaker cable as an extension.

This is generally sufficient. At least, it is in my house.

Why yes, yes I am in the middle of painting.

Or just use the trim panel until a suitable day does come along, then you repaint and reinstall without the trim panel.

Confession: I am still using my trim panel, despite there having been an entire summer where radiant heating wasn't really useful

I haven't used the AC or heater for about three weeks now (but I was out of town last week). Yay Phoenix in the fall

Weirdly, here in VA we haven't used ours for the last month either! Our place retains heat really well, though, so mostly it just gets heated up by every day stuff like cooking (especially the crock pot) and laundry. Then when it gets too hot we crack a window. Usually I hate the temperature control in our house, but it's been wonderful this past month!

And we haven't used ours in the last two years. Oh, wait. We don't have AC or heat in our house.

The average daily high temperature, from coldest month to hottest month, ranges from 76 to 86 degrees F (24--30 C). In the coldest months it will drop down into the mid-60's at night. Mid November, 7am as I write this, it's 67 degrees outside. Our rainy season ended late this year (mid-October) and we will not see another drop of rain until next June. It's a tough gig, but somehow I persevere.

It's funny to see the locals outside when the temperature drops below 70 degrees, bundled up in hoodies and coats, with their dogs wearing fleece jackets. They look at me in disbelief when I tell them I used to walk my little miniature poodle at forty degrees below zero with no coverings at all, and he was fine with it, was willing to stay out longer than I was.

I am seriously considering [I have it in the budget] adding AC this Spring because while it might be 85 degrees outside, inside the house it will get up into the mid to high 90s some days because three of the four outside walls of the house are glass floor to ceiling. We would only need to use it for two months out of the year, for at most six hours per day. Those two months will double my annual electric bill, from $146 to $277 per year. Just as [more?] important as the cooling is the unit I am looking at claims to have highly efficient air filtration, which will help my wife's allergies. The claimed SEER factor of 21 is also appealing.

tanstaafl.

You need a Jeep. Totally impractical and tons of fun.

Well, that's not all that impressive then, is it?

Here, in the last month, it's ranged from 30F at night to 80F in the day.

So...ha!

It's kinda weird how the humans and other mammals adapt to different climates. I grew up in Colorado and generally disliked the heat in the summer, but it was never too uncomfortable. When it was cold, much like you I could be out in pretty low temperatures without a ton of layers on.

Five years in Austin, including during one of their record breaking summers, my body adjusted to the warmer climate. Every year when I went back home for the holidays, I noticed the cold bothered me more and more.

Now out here in California where the average is lower then Austin, I still find myself wearing a coat when others don't find it necessary, while also dealing with the "too hot" 80F occasional summer heat waves just fine. I'd come home and hear everyone else's AC units on, while I was opening windows.

Same here in Italy. Also, thermostats will turn of and on the main heater based on the temperature detected where the sensor is, that is, typically, the thermostat itself. Water temperature runnign into radiators is usually 55 Celsius degrees, here, but that is adjustable on the heater and never changed for the entire life of the system. So, yes, in such systems that is a "dumb statement". Temp you set on the thermostat will not affect how quickly heat is tranferred to the air in the house.

I've recently heard of some friends using the AC systems as heaters in winter (they all come with such feature). They all report not being particularly happy with such solution. Having hot air blow into rooms is usually not so pleasant, altough I suppose that is subjective to some extent. Noise is another complaint, if you're not using a good and quiet deivice. But, the biggest complaint seems to be that when you power it down temperature tends to drop quicker, mostly because radiators take more time to cool down, of course.

I particularly like the geothermal solution I've just learned about in this thread. I knew nothing about it, but it sounds actually smart, and makes so much sense.

I grew up in the great white north (most of my time was in north central North Dakota, with time in Alaska and Utah). When I moved to Phoenix, I didn't wear anything heavier than a flannel shirt all winter and use to smile at people wearing coats and carrying blankets to the Coyotes' games. We even went swimming in March in an unheated pool (roommate at the time was a friend from school who grew up in Chicago).

Not any more. If it is below 75F or so, I'm putting on sweatshirts or a light jacket. My parents claim I turned into a thermal wimp (they retired to Omaha).

Umm.. "The Great White North" normally refers to Canada, not parts of the USA.

Cheers

I say that being less than 75miles from the border (and it snowing from October to after Easter some years).

That's the "pretty good white north" zone. If you want "great", you have to cross the border.

Kooooo-loo-koo-koo koo-koo-koo-koo!

Hoser :-)

Though, mind you.. Give PM Harper enough time and leeway, and that point will be m00t.

But for now.. Take off, eh!