Google has officially turned these Nest thermostats back into dumb thermostats
makeuseof.com
makeuseof.com
But I didn't buy it from Google, I bought it from Nest (pre-Google) - a company that designed and sold high-tech gear that was designed to be permanently installed and (presumably) last a good long time. The acquisition was not a good match, but it is what it is - lesson learned and reputations lost.
(and the design, honestly, was more down Apple's lane than Google's - I thought the former would be more likely to buy them out, not that it guaranteed any different results).
I think that's an overly optimistic take, because we've been through this over and over, and it's only getting worse. We collectively are clearly not getting the message, and we don't own anything as a result.
So I believe that the lesson we should learn here is the importance of public pressure and proper regulations that rein in bad actors.
I have one objection, though. It's a mistake to think that Anthropic is on the consumer's side. That's the same mistake we've made over and over.
I am actually going to self-host and vibe code my own cloud service on Cloudflare.
Keep it off the WAN and you'll be streets ahead of commercial vendors, and your weird, one-off, vibe-coded app means those same commercial vendors are the easier, more widely-deployed targets anyways.
I have a personal password manager secured like that I vibe coded to replace 1password and so far it is working great.
On the other, it’s a freaking thermostat controller. An appliance. I don’t want to have to replace appliances before they break, and software breaking it is unacceptable.
I’ve been largely holding off on domotics because so much of it reeks of premature obsolescence... Maybe someone over here has good experience with Home Assistant et al?
They've had 10+ years to plan ahead for this eventuality, and it's not rocket science.
I will probably buy a couple more of the RLC-810As, since I can only assume that newer models will be harder for the owner to actually own.
for a thermostat that's measured in decades
I primarily use zigbee, which is fully local and very reliable. Home Assistant supports a lot, including older hardware. I have a 2010 Philips LivingColors lamp (predecessor of the Hue) that talks early zigbee and still connects to a 2026 zigbee dongle + Home Assistant install.
I avoid any cloud dependency for the reason you give. Anything local, especially with open protocols and an active community, will probably work for a very long time. Likely the lifetime of the appliance.
> $1200 in hardware, practically worthless.
Those things are really hard to control, and no scheduling, no remote control, no sensors, etc.
ive considered connecting the interconnect wire to my esp32 (that replaced the security system) and get it pushed into home assistant, but without the ability to silence, a push notification that it is going off just didnt seem worth it
It truly is, and it's a shame since the hardware build quality was solid.
My gen 3 had a bug where when selecting heat mode from off mode after previously being in cooling mode, it'd pulse the AC briefly before ultimately engaging heat, which is absolutely not what you want to do when it's below safe operating temp for the AC compressor.
It was a really basic thing that would have been quickly patched if owned by a thermostat company, but clearly asking too much when owned by an advertising company.
Never again.
To a point anyway.
Therefore if some device trusts emudhra root certificate...
Have since replaced it with a Z wave Honeywell thermostat, and I'm much happier.
Not only did I kill the wifi & Internet dependency, but the UX is much closer to a traditional thermostat. So other folks don't seem to have an issue with it as much.
And it actually supports my hardware thermometer for dual fuel cutover.
The procedure is simple. 2 fix periods : one in the morning one in the evening and in between if somebody comes home he/she turns the heat manually.
I didn’t see any advantage more inconvenient: * saw people at home that were not * started to heat the whole house while I just work in my office.
I have not yet found a practical case except that I can turn it off remotely when I’m on vacation if i forget.
Are any people here getting any advantages?
It's not a phone, so we're not necessarily expecting the lack-of-longevity we'd expect of a phone. (Although even a lot of phones are basically corp "can-you-upgrade-every-2-yr-or-more".)
And I have to replace my HVAC every 20 years so yes I do expect to have to spend money once every couple decades
I have a z-wave hub I bought about 8 years ago. Admittedly, it's shit, but it does one thing right — you only need the manufacturer's cloud services if you want to control it from outside of your LAN, or if you want integrations with other services.
Fortunately Nest owners got lucky this time and there was an escape hatch that allowed projects like No Longer Evil. But there's a long list of devices that have been bricked when their manufacturers shut down a proprietary backend.
I have a pair of Govee ceiling lights that have a RGB+CCT primary downward facing light and an addressable RGB accent ring. The ARGB ring only exists in their app. As far as both their Matter support and their official API are concerned these units have a single element which is the downward light, the ARGB ring is not controllable from any third-party systems.
If these were using Zigbee, Z-Wave, or Matter over Thread they wouldn't be able to do this but because they use WiFi they can.
I'm going to be opening one up soonish to see how hard it'll be to just replace the controller with one running WLED (or even reprogram the controller already in it).
The easiest way to avoid that problem is to just skip retail WiFi devices altogether because having WiFi basically always means assuming internet connectivity which is not far from mandatory cloud bullshit.
Other major reason being that "IoT" devices usually have the shittiest WiFi radios that usually don't even support 5 GHz and almost never support WiFi 6/7 modes where they aren't wasting a ton of airtime on their low-bandwidth communication.
Considering this I wouldn't mind a smart solution that lasts /only/ ten years, but gets bug fixes during its lifetime.
More dumb electronics please.