back to article Nest offers its thermostat in three new pretty colors!

Smart home poster child Nest has responded to criticism about a lack of new products by... releasing its thermostat in three new colors. No ordinary new colors either: they are white, black and copper. Even better – they won't cost you a dime more than the existing silver thermostat. To be fair to the company, when we pointed …

  1. J. R. Hartley

    Fuck that

    Let me run that camera software on my own home server! No way am I paying so that I'm left with a veritably bricked device whenever the company goes titsup. Or even better, when they just decide they don't want to support the product any more. Scum.

    1. wolfetone Silver badge

      Re: Fuck that

      Agreed, although for a different reason.

      If you can look at your home via Nest, someone else can too. I don't trust that Google/Nest will secure the devices that well against people who will break in to these devices. At the end of the day, no device is safe. So it's reasonable to believe that it's more likely someone will hack these rather than not.

      So, no Nest. No. I'm not having your Big Brother shit in my house.

    2. Phil Kingston

      Re: Fuck that

      "Let me run that camera software on my own home server!"

      Which is a great option. Until miscreants burn down your house or because the server has a plug and flashing lights, they include it in their haul of kit they'll take down Theft Converters to finance their next hit. Just saying.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Fuck that

        Your "home" server doesn't really need to be in the house....

        1. Cynic_999

          Re: Fuck that

          "

          Your "home" server doesn't really need to be in the house....

          "

          For most people it does - where else were you thinking you could put it?

          1. Gotno iShit Wantno iShit

            Re: Fuck that

            For most people it does - where else were you thinking you could put it?

            Well to reduce the chance of the server getting pinched just putting it in the loft would likely do, no help against Torchy the Arsonist Burglar though. How about in the garage or at a mates on a reciprocal arrangement?

          2. TheVogon

            Re: Fuck that

            "Your "home" server doesn't really need to be in the house...."

            Mine is in an outbuilding. However it needs to be within Ethernet range - unless you don't care about being able to stream say multi-angle porn in 4K?

      2. Captain Hogwash

        Re: Until miscreants burn down your house...

        You run it on your own server which you configure to upload footage to some dumb off-site storage. E.g. an old netbook running Ubuntu server & Zoneminder configured to capture video from old Android tablets on motion detection events can also be configured to ftp the captured video to some cheap personal webspace. Properly secured, the kit remains under your control and if baddies burn your house down you can retrieve the uploaded video of them doing it. That worked for me until the tablets gave up the ghost. I can't be bothered to shell out for new IP cameras at the moment and the highly visible autonomous killbot patrol seems to have the required deterrent effect anyway.

      3. quxinot

        Re: Fuck that

        "Which is a great option. Until miscreants burn down your house or because the server has a plug and flashing lights, they include it in their haul of kit they'll take down Theft Converters to finance their next hit. Just saying."

        Of the options, I suspect my house is burgled and torched rather less often than cloud-based products lose functionality.

        If you're properly terrified, you'd do both, of course. Using your own home server to manage the cameras, with an online, encrypted backup.

        Interestingly, I've been recently looking after doing precisely this. I'd like a camera at the front door to let me see who rang the bell, and another looking at the sump pump to ensure that the basement stays dry (or at least, so that I can react quickly if it's failing to do so).

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Fuck that

      I'd like a camera to monitor the inside and outside of my chicken coop. I'm not going to buy and run a server to do that. These Nest cameras sound handy.

      Only problem would be getting power out there. Wonder how much a solar/battery system would cost.

      1. druck Silver badge

        Re: Fuck that

        Bullseyed wrote:

        I'd like a camera to monitor the inside and outside of my chicken coop. I'm not going to buy and run a server to do that.
        A server is no longer some big noisy power hungry box covered in blinkenlights, a Raspberry Pi for a couple of quid is all you need, and you can run it off a battery too.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Fuck that

      I really hope you don't work in engineering, sales, marketing, product design or anything else.

      Clearly consumers shouldn't be expected to run a home server.

      Go back to flipping burgers.

    5. TheVogon

      Re: Fuck that

      I'm lost as to anyone that actually lives in their house needs a thermostat you can set remotely. Or why you even need to touch it other than very rarely.

      My thermostat is set to 21 degrees, and I haven't had any need to change it ever in at least 5 years...

      1. Packet

        Re: Fuck that

        Allow me to offer you a scenario.

        While away on vacation, you've set your air conditioner to not come on - to save on electricity costs.

        Now you're returning from said vacation - and it's bloody warm in this post climate-change world.

        Upon your return, at the airport, you fire up your mobile app to connect to your thermostat and issue a command to have the air conditioner come on and cool the house down.

        Technology is just lovely when implemented correctly and with actual value ...

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Fuck that

          "While away on vacation, you've set your air conditioner to not come on - to save on electricity costs."

          My air conditioner is only on when I press the button on the remote. And even if it wasn't it would take decades to pay for the electricity saving versus buying and installing a remote thermostat.

          "Upon your return, at the airport, you fire up your mobile app to connect to your thermostat and issue a command to have the air conditioner come on and cool the house down."

          That would take max 5 minutes after pressing the button on the aircon remote. Still of close to zero usefulness...

      2. Cynic_999

        Re: Fuck that

        If someone is at home 24/7/365, you could indeed set your thermostat to a constant temperature, though it would be a waste of electricity while you are asleep when the house can comfortably be cooler. Some of us however have entire households who and/or go away on holiday together. While a programmable timer can be set to accommodate "normal" weekdays and weekends, there are times when you may be working late at the office, and it's good to be able to delay heating your home until you are expecting to get home.

    6. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Fuck that

      While I don't think Google/Nest have secret plans to take over the world or become Big Brother via your thermostat... they are not going to brick your house either, I just don't understand why Google is in this market. I get it, IoT, but it seems like Google would be better focused on developing software for IoT for all appliance companies (like Android, and Google Analytics applied to IoT) instead of directly being in the household appliance market.... Better still, focusing that cash on building out their enterprise cloud which is A) something they are good at. The Cloud = infrastructure like Google's B) a lot larger opportunity than the thermostat game. I guess they did just acquire Apigee yesterday, so maybe they are focusing in on the cloud.

  2. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge
    Coat

    Emperor's new clothes

    We are just too stupid and ignorant to see the "new" model

  3. Locky
    Headmaster

    Colors?

    Who let the SF office do the proof reading. Next you'll be telling us they are made out of aluminum

  4. tojb
    Flame

    such hostility

    The functionality is useful. Concerns about offclouding photos of your house are very legit, but most people really cannot be bothered running a home server and economies of scale are a thing.

    Maybe the answer here is to design zero-maintainance home servers that can sit next to the boiler and take care of all this shite. Its not the path that nest seems to be taking, but already the average wi-fi router is also a NAS (its cheap enough to add a few gig of SS storage that many routers do so even in the expectation that 90% of customers won't even realise its there) and a few other things.

    The first company to go down the route of designing low-cost low-fail high-security no-drm home servers for this stuff (home automation + NAS) should be a win. Cloud backup can and should be strictly optional, and strictly encrypted.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: such hostility

      My Sky set-top box is a full computer on its own with storage and connectivity. Many people are already running some kind of "home server" without knowing. Many pre-IoT home automation systems rely on small fanless local PCs - you don't really need much processing power for such systems - maybe even a Pi would do, for the simpler ones. Building a reliable one wouldn't cost that much.

      Of course, with such systems they can't collect data about you... and that's what most companies aim to today. Don't expect to see such systems available from main companies, every IoT device is designed as a Trojan Horse to gather data about you to be resold - especially if it is something from Google.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: such hostility

      > Its not the path that nest seems to be taking, but already the average wi-fi router is also a NAS (its cheap enough to add a few gig of SS storage that many routers do so even in the expectation that 90% of customers won't even realise its there) and a few other things.

      Isn't the Google OnHub router line supposed to basically do this for smart home type stuff?

      Google does a much better job than any other company at making all their stuff work well together, but there still are so many easy opportunities for improvement.

      Sadly I don't have a Nest thermostat though. The previous owners installed a new Carrier furnace just a few months before selling the house. Carrier does all their wiring in a proprietary format to prevent people from using any 3rd party stuff. It's like having an Apple. Sigh.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: such hostility

        Agree. IoT has been a mess so far. If any company in the world can pull all of these disparate products and strategies together, it is Google and only Google. Google is brilliant at integration across a diverse set of OEMs, both technically and in creating incentives for OEMs to work together without being overhanded (see Android).

    3. Bob Rocket

      Re: such hostility

      'low-cost low-fail high-security no-drm home servers for this stuff (home automation + NAS)'

      Probably not the first but we're working on this along with legacy 'thing' enablement, don't see why you need to replace your existing kit to have it IOT'ed.

  5. Mage Silver badge

    Nest

    Plenty of more compatible to any boiler alternatives without "cloud creepiness" by established control equipment companies.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Colors are products too

    and likely patentable.

    1. Richard Jones 1
      WTF?

      Re: Colors are products too

      Yes, but in addition to all the above points, those colours for thermostats are so incompatible with my décor that they would go straight to the bin without trying to sit on a wall.

    2. Darryl

      Re: Colors are products too

      This just reminded me of the breathless wait for the white iPhone 4 and the endless stream of articles in mainstream media anticipating it's arrival, about how Apple couldn't get the proper shade of white on the button, then announcing it once it finally came out as if it was a major paradigm shift in mobile communications.

      If Apple can do it, why not others?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Colors are products too

        > This just reminded me of the breathless wait for the white iPhone 4 and the endless stream of articles in mainstream media anticipating it's arrival, about how Apple couldn't get the proper shade of white on the button, then announcing it once it finally came out as if it was a major paradigm shift in mobile communications.

        Except a phone goes in your pocket and has a case on it.

        A thermostat goes in the middle of your wall. Often in the most used room of your house. Matching the color is a liiiiittle bit more important. At my last house I had to use one of the wall plates the Nest came with to cover the hole in the wall from the old thermostat. The wall was kind of an offwhite cream color. The plate was white. The thermostat was silver. It looked weird, I got used to it.

        The plate was supposed to be paint-able to match to the wall, but I didn't paint the wall and thus had none of the paint.

        Anyways, having other color options would have been nice. The black one looks cool. The white one would match the current living room of my house, if my furnace was compatible.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The software learns to filter out persistent uninteresting motion

    say a person trying to pick the lock over and over again :D

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    follow the Google path

    i.e. report to the mothership (big data, yum-yum). Plus they know _exactly_ where you live. And what your mug looks like. And who visits you, when, and for how long. All available to the appropriate law enforcement and other relevant agencies too. And hackers.

    The future's bright, the future's got camera eyes. On you.

  9. Planty Bronze badge
    Thumb Down

    When you have good products

    why do you need 6 month release cycles?

    These 'aint mobile phones.

  10. corestore

    But can we still root it and turn it into HAL? This is serious.

  11. FredTheBaddy
    Stop

    The software learns to filter out persistent uninteresting motion – like a branch moving in the wind

    1) Cut down leafy branch

    2) Hide behind branch and shuffle slowly towards front door....

    "Til Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane"

  12. Seajay#

    $120 a year for one camera

    Or

    ZoneMinder - Free

    Raspberry Pi - £40

    1TB external drive - £40

    Then you can run it on site with no recurring cost and you can use any Camera you like so the set up is probably cheaper too.

    1. Tessier-Ashpool

      Re: $120 a year for one camera

      Or take them up on their free offering, where you don't need to record video every second of every day.

  13. Gene Cash Silver badge

    Revolv

    Every time I'm tempted to buy a Nest, I remember Revolv...

    1. oldenoughtoknowbetter

      Re: Revolv

      Yes, this.

      I don't care what it is, camera, thermostat, TP dispenser or anything else. If it has the Nest name on it I won't spend time or money putting it in my house.

    2. Packet

      Re: Revolv

      As long as Google owns Nest, they're on my do-not-buy list - too much data slurping

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Let Google have a camera at my house?

    Hahahahahahahahahahahaha!

    That was a joke, right?

  15. jzl

    Smart home?

    I have a smart home. My wife has a PhD.

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