{"id":476,"date":"2011-11-20T07:56:39","date_gmt":"2011-11-20T12:56:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auroralux.net\/blog\/?p=476"},"modified":"2011-11-20T08:54:14","modified_gmt":"2011-11-20T13:54:14","slug":"nest-costs-what","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fhmiv.net\/blog\/2011\/11\/20\/nest-costs-what\/","title":{"rendered":"Nest costs WHAT?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Nest Learning Thermostat<\/a> sounds neat, which is what I accidentally keep calling it when I forget its forgettable name. Even the nicer thermostats I use have room for improvement, but $250, excluding installation, smelled more than a little bit rich for a thermostat, even one that can “program itself around your life.”<\/p>\n

I thought about building a thermostat that has many of the interesting features of the Nest, but I realize this would be an expensive and involved project. For example, the WiFly Shield<\/a> to tie an Arduino in to my WiFi network costs $90 from Sparkfun. For the downstairs thermostat, I could use the $46 Ethernet Shield<\/a> instead, but that’s approaching $50 just for network connectivity! I’m not the only one to try this<\/a>. The easiest approaches<\/a> I’ve seen don’t replace the existing thermostat, they just bypass it. Since I already have a digital thermostat instead of a simple mercury switch model, that approach wouldn’t work for me, and I’d have to interface with the 4-wire controls coming from my HVAC. <\/p>\n

A lot more searching and reading leaves me with the same question as the folks over at tested.com: How is the Nest different?<\/a> There are other smart, networked, programmable thermostats on the market at price points from around $100 for the Radio Thermostat<\/a>, $300 for the Ecobee<\/a>, and even more for solutions from traditional HVAC vendors, such as the Honeywell Prestige line that starts around $400. It seems like Nest isn’t a unique or new energy management system — it’s a networked thermostat with nice industrial design and slick software. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Nest Learning Thermostat sounds neat, which is what I accidentally keep calling it when I forget its forgettable name. Even the nicer thermostats I use have room for improvement, but $250, excluding installation, smelled more than a little bit … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[24,18],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fhmiv.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fhmiv.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fhmiv.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fhmiv.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fhmiv.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/fhmiv.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":486,"href":"https:\/\/fhmiv.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476\/revisions\/486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fhmiv.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fhmiv.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fhmiv.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}