Nest

No, I am not talking about a bird’s nest, why would that be a smart home thing. Maybe for the birds, but not that helpful for us. However, there is a thermostat called Nest and it is smart.

What is Nest

Well according to Wikipedia, “Nest is a smart thermostat developed by Nest Labs and designed by Tony Fadell, Ben Filson, and Fred, Bould. It is an electronic, programmable, and self-learning Wi-Fi-enabled thermostat that optimizes the heating and cooling of homes and businesses to conserve energy. The device is based on a machine-learning algorithm for the first weeks users have to regulate the thermostat in order to provide the reference data set. The thermostat can then learn people’s schedules, at which temperature they are used to, and provide the reference data set. The thermostat can then learn people’s schedule, at with temperature they are used to, and when. Using built-in sensors and phones’ locations, it can shift into energy-saving mode when it realizes nobody is at home”.

Rumor has it that some former Apple Engineers thought of the idea when Tony Fadell was building a vacation home and found that all the thermostats out there were inadequate so they embarked on an idea.  Not a bad one at that.

So yea there you go.

How long

Nest has been around for about 10 years, that is a long time. It has grown since the first one was introduced. Yes  there has been maybe 5 Generations.

• 1st
• 2nd
• 3rd
• E
• Nest thermostat

Google

In January of 2014, Google announced plans to acquire Nest for roughly $.3.2 Billion all in cash, baby. Yea that is a large sum of money. Nest would operate on its own, meaning independently from other Google’s companies.  But that didn’t last long as in 2018 Nest merged into Google’s hardware division, which put this directly alongside Google Home and Chromecast.

My home

I was looking for a new way to heat and cool my home the thermostat just wasn’t cutting it. It was not very efficient. When we would go out of town we either turned it off and the house got really hot or cold. Or it ran all the time we were gone and then it just cost us more money. So there had to be a better way.

My wife didn’t want to spend the money on something so foolish as a “SMART THERMOSTAT” what good would it do. Well, I went ahead and got one. Set it up and away it went. It took my wife several years to learn how to control it. When the house got smarter it was easier for her to control.  It was one of the best things I could have gotten.

When we were on a trip to Alaska we were sitting in the Seattle International airport. I opened up my Nest app on the phone and turned on the air. It was like 82 degrees in the house. I mean it wasn’t like freezing cold, but it was better than if we came home to 82 degrees in the house. We did that several times while out traveling.

The only bad thing about that was that it was linked to my and my wife’s cell phone. So when we were enjoying 80-degree weather in the Caribbean, my son had to control it from the house since it was in the ’20s and ’30s.  I know we should have added him to the location settings. But lesson learned. He could control it from his phone and other options. (I will explain later) . 

App

The app is avaiable on IOS and Android. It is quite useful. You can do the following:

• Control your temp
• Change the mode
  • Heat
  • Cool
  • Heat and Cool
• Update the settings
  • Adding people to the location option

Yes you have to sign up for an account.  Here is what the app look like

My Opinion

Yes, I do have an opinion about this device. It was the first one out on the market and I thought it would be a good addition to the home.  I mean it is the first thing you should get when starting out. I really liked this thermostat it really helped me out in controlling the temperature in the house.  Not only why I was there but while I was gone. I really enjoyed that device and I would recommend it as an addition to any smart home.

Bad blogger

I know I am still learning about this blogging thing and thinking ahead. I didn’t get pictures of the nest before we moved. I know, I know. But the pictures here in this post are from the internet. I thought I did. But I couldn’t find them in my photos on my phone.