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Considering parent, myself and most people I talk to consider the point of Nest being the ability to control their thermostat when they are out of the house, I

by autora 4y ago

Considering parent, myself and most people I talk to consider the point of Nest being the ability to control their thermostat when they are out of the house, I don't understand how any system in the 70s or 80s could even work at all like a Nest, let alone better. No mobile phones, no widespread use of the internet and a hobbyist can make a thermostat you can control when out of the house? Would love to know how?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
HPsquared 4y ago
Something connected to the phone line maybe?
braingenious 4y ago
I’m curious, what is the big draw of controlling your thermostat in real time that is significantly better than just (for example) a timer? As an argument against connecting one’s thermostat to the internet, I’ll point to this article: https://www.businessinsider.com/texas-energy-companies-remotely-raised-smart-thermostats-temperatures-2021-6?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/texas-energy-companies-remot...
- dtech 4y ago
  I have a system with the capability. It's quite convenient for dynamic on/off. E.g. instead of having a timer I turn on the heating when I wake up from bed, and if I go home I put it on before leaving or while underway.
- richrichardsson 4y ago
  I'm not sure how intentionally[1] opting into an agreement to have your thermostat remotely controlled is an argument against having it connected to the internet. The best argument would be the hypothetical remote control by a bad actor without any consent. [1] what's curious about this particular story is how "intentional" this was; the report is vague and hints that some people were unaware exactly what they were opting into.
  - braingenious 4y ago
    >I'm not sure how intentionally[1] opting into an agreement to have your thermostat remotely controlled is an argument against having it connected to the internet. ??? I think you immediately followed that up with more than one answer to that?
    - richrichardsson 4y ago
      Users being stupid and not reading what they are signing up for is not a argument against connecting the thermostat to the internet, and hypothetical bad actors are just that, "hypothetical". If you'd linked an article demonstrating concrete proof I'd accept it as an "argument against connecting one’s thermostat to the internet".
- gwd 4y ago
  > I’m curious, what is the big draw of controlling your thermostat in real time that is significantly better than just (for example) a timer? I don't use a smart thermostat, but what's told to me is this. With a "timer" thermostat, you tell the system when to start heating; but what you really want to tell the system is when you want it warm. For example, we regularly give my son a bath between 7 and 7:30, so I want to make sure the bathroom "zone" of my house is reasonably warm at that time; and that his room is a comfortable "sleeping with a blanket on" temperature, ready for him to go to bed at 7:30. (Just about every room in our house has a separate thermostat.) But if I set my thermostat to 19C at 7pm, then it won't be 19C at 7pm -- it will start heating at 7pm, and reach 19C at some indeterminate point in the future. So I manually add my own "static fudge-factor" in, and set the thermostat to 19C at 6:30pm. However, this "static fudge factor" is almost certainly to be ineffective or inefficient: It may hit 19C at 6:40, in which case I'm paying for 20 minutes of unnecessary heating (inefficient); or it may hit 19C at 7:10, in which case the room will be cooler than I want it to be at 7:00 (ineffective). The claim of the "smart thermostats" I've heard is that you can tell it, "I want it to be 19C at 7pm", and it will figure out how long your particular room will take to heat (possibly factoring in the current temperature), and start the heating at exactly the right time so that it hits 19C right at 7pm. Is that something worth having? I think so. Is that worth the extra cost and risk? I don't really think so, which is why I haven't installed one; but I can see why someone else would like it.
  - andrewaylett 4y ago
    The two elements of "smart" are often combined, but there's no need to have both. There's remote control, which is one thing. My Honeywell system can do that, but even if I don't connect it to the WiFi (and earlier versions required extra hardware) it'll still do smart local control. I lose weather compensation in that case, though, as it uses a remote forecast to predict future demand and not bother turning the heating on if it's not actually going to be needed. The more important aspect of "smart" heating is proportional control and predictive heating. As you say, regular thermostats will turn the heating on when the temperature is below the set point, then off when it's above, with some hysteresis to avoid flapping. And one function of the smart system is to predict how early it needs to turn the heating on to get up to temperature in time. The Honeywell will also switch the heating off early if it's confident the temperature will drop by less than 0.5°C before the end of the set time. Beyond that, though, the controller will modulate the boiler to maintain the set point -- heating systems term this "TPI", I assume it's not a PID controller because it lacks the derivative component. Time Proportional and Integral either (in my old house) controls the boiler modulation directly or (in my new house) turns it on for a few minutes in every time slice in an attempt to get the right amount of heat into the system to maintain the set point. Where a system like the Honeywell really shines though is that I'm not turning the whole house on or off -- I've smart TRVs on each radiator, so I can have heat in my office during the day and in the lounge in the evening and not have to keep rooms warm when I'm not using them. Having recently moved house and consequently had a few weeks without the smart system I can attest that it really does make a big difference.
- _djo_ 4y ago
  Being able to do things like change it based on certain conditions, like switching it off if I open a window and not activating it if I'm away from the house over the time it would normally turn on. I can also remotely turn the heating up when I'm heading home, so the place is warm when I arrive. In my case though I'm using Home Assistant on a local server and Tailscale for remote access, so nothing is connected to some company's online service and the actual devices are all offline only.
- derbOac 4y ago
  I'm not sure I want to control my thermostat remotely, but I can think of lots of reasons I'd want to read it remotely.
- bearmode 4y ago
  If you get stuck in traffic on the way home from work, you might have your heating on for an extra 30+ minutes unnecessarily. If you decide to have a lazy day and sleep in, you can turn it on when you wake up instead of potentially 2+ hours early. If you have an unexpected overnight stop over somewhere (e.g. after a night out drinking), you can turn it off until when you're home again. Also works if you're taken to hospital. There are many valid uses for it. The people in that article you posted specifically signed up to an 'energy savers' scheme that explicitly allowed the energy companies to change their smart thermostat temperature. They agreed to it. There's no reason to think that energy companies would normally be able to take over your thermostat.
  - braingenious 4y ago
    The second bullet point under the title of this article is “Customers said they had unknowingly agreed to let companies raise the temperature to save energy.” If your position is that you could never mistakenly click the wrong button or check the wrong box, how is it possible that you could ever be so careless as to not accurately predict your temperature needs?
- astrange 4y ago
  California companies will remotely raise your thermostat too (actually turn it off), but you sign up for it first, and they pay you to do it. That, and it sensing if you're home or not, are what makes it useful.
ridgered4 4y ago
LGR on youtube had a video on a home automation system from the 80s. IIRC it had a modem listen interface, although I don't recall the details.

by autora 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

HPsquared 4y ago

Something connected to the phone line maybe?

braingenious 4y ago

I’m curious, what is the big draw of controlling your thermostat in real time that is significantly better than just (for example) a timer? As an argument against connecting one’s thermostat to the internet, I’ll point to this article: https://www.businessinsider.com/texas-energy-companies-remotely-raised-smart-thermostats-temperatures-2021-6?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/texas-energy-companies-remot...

dtech 4y ago
I have a system with the capability. It's quite convenient for dynamic on/off. E.g. instead of having a timer I turn on the heating when I wake up from bed, and if I go home I put it on before leaving or while underway.
richrichardsson 4y ago
I'm not sure how intentionally[1] opting into an agreement to have your thermostat remotely controlled is an argument against having it connected to the internet. The best argument would be the hypothetical remote control by a bad actor without any consent. [1] what's curious about this particular story is how "intentional" this was; the report is vague and hints that some people were unaware exactly what they were opting into.
- braingenious 4y ago
  >I'm not sure how intentionally[1] opting into an agreement to have your thermostat remotely controlled is an argument against having it connected to the internet. ??? I think you immediately followed that up with more than one answer to that?
  - richrichardsson 4y ago
    Users being stupid and not reading what they are signing up for is not a argument against connecting the thermostat to the internet, and hypothetical bad actors are just that, "hypothetical". If you'd linked an article demonstrating concrete proof I'd accept it as an "argument against connecting one’s thermostat to the internet".
gwd 4y ago
> I’m curious, what is the big draw of controlling your thermostat in real time that is significantly better than just (for example) a timer? I don't use a smart thermostat, but what's told to me is this. With a "timer" thermostat, you tell the system when to start heating; but what you really want to tell the system is when you want it warm. For example, we regularly give my son a bath between 7 and 7:30, so I want to make sure the bathroom "zone" of my house is reasonably warm at that time; and that his room is a comfortable "sleeping with a blanket on" temperature, ready for him to go to bed at 7:30. (Just about every room in our house has a separate thermostat.) But if I set my thermostat to 19C at 7pm, then it won't be 19C at 7pm -- it will start heating at 7pm, and reach 19C at some indeterminate point in the future. So I manually add my own "static fudge-factor" in, and set the thermostat to 19C at 6:30pm. However, this "static fudge factor" is almost certainly to be ineffective or inefficient: It may hit 19C at 6:40, in which case I'm paying for 20 minutes of unnecessary heating (inefficient); or it may hit 19C at 7:10, in which case the room will be cooler than I want it to be at 7:00 (ineffective). The claim of the "smart thermostats" I've heard is that you can tell it, "I want it to be 19C at 7pm", and it will figure out how long your particular room will take to heat (possibly factoring in the current temperature), and start the heating at exactly the right time so that it hits 19C right at 7pm. Is that something worth having? I think so. Is that worth the extra cost and risk? I don't really think so, which is why I haven't installed one; but I can see why someone else would like it.
- andrewaylett 4y ago
  The two elements of "smart" are often combined, but there's no need to have both. There's remote control, which is one thing. My Honeywell system can do that, but even if I don't connect it to the WiFi (and earlier versions required extra hardware) it'll still do smart local control. I lose weather compensation in that case, though, as it uses a remote forecast to predict future demand and not bother turning the heating on if it's not actually going to be needed. The more important aspect of "smart" heating is proportional control and predictive heating. As you say, regular thermostats will turn the heating on when the temperature is below the set point, then off when it's above, with some hysteresis to avoid flapping. And one function of the smart system is to predict how early it needs to turn the heating on to get up to temperature in time. The Honeywell will also switch the heating off early if it's confident the temperature will drop by less than 0.5°C before the end of the set time. Beyond that, though, the controller will modulate the boiler to maintain the set point -- heating systems term this "TPI", I assume it's not a PID controller because it lacks the derivative component. Time Proportional and Integral either (in my old house) controls the boiler modulation directly or (in my new house) turns it on for a few minutes in every time slice in an attempt to get the right amount of heat into the system to maintain the set point. Where a system like the Honeywell really shines though is that I'm not turning the whole house on or off -- I've smart TRVs on each radiator, so I can have heat in my office during the day and in the lounge in the evening and not have to keep rooms warm when I'm not using them. Having recently moved house and consequently had a few weeks without the smart system I can attest that it really does make a big difference.
_djo_ 4y ago
Being able to do things like change it based on certain conditions, like switching it off if I open a window and not activating it if I'm away from the house over the time it would normally turn on. I can also remotely turn the heating up when I'm heading home, so the place is warm when I arrive. In my case though I'm using Home Assistant on a local server and Tailscale for remote access, so nothing is connected to some company's online service and the actual devices are all offline only.
derbOac 4y ago
I'm not sure I want to control my thermostat remotely, but I can think of lots of reasons I'd want to read it remotely.
bearmode 4y ago
If you get stuck in traffic on the way home from work, you might have your heating on for an extra 30+ minutes unnecessarily. If you decide to have a lazy day and sleep in, you can turn it on when you wake up instead of potentially 2+ hours early. If you have an unexpected overnight stop over somewhere (e.g. after a night out drinking), you can turn it off until when you're home again. Also works if you're taken to hospital. There are many valid uses for it. The people in that article you posted specifically signed up to an 'energy savers' scheme that explicitly allowed the energy companies to change their smart thermostat temperature. They agreed to it. There's no reason to think that energy companies would normally be able to take over your thermostat.
- braingenious 4y ago
  The second bullet point under the title of this article is “Customers said they had unknowingly agreed to let companies raise the temperature to save energy.” If your position is that you could never mistakenly click the wrong button or check the wrong box, how is it possible that you could ever be so careless as to not accurately predict your temperature needs?
astrange 4y ago
California companies will remotely raise your thermostat too (actually turn it off), but you sign up for it first, and they pay you to do it. That, and it sensing if you're home or not, are what makes it useful.

ridgered4 4y ago

LGR on youtube had a video on a home automation system from the 80s. IIRC it had a modem listen interface, although I don't recall the details.