Nest gathered the press yesterday to introduce a refreshed Nest Protect, Dropcam Nestcam, and mobile app. While it’s clear the Google subsidiary is starting to pull an ecosystem together as they refine their offerings, the pace isn’t exactly breathtaking and I’m not motivated to further open my wallet. In fact, given ecobee’s incoming support for Apple HomeKit and remote sensors, I might finally make good on promises to unload my Nest thermostat. You?
More thoughts on the announcements, in reverse chronological order… because Twitter:
I don’t know much (anything, really) about ecobee but their web site and specs leave something to be desired. For example, I know that my gas company has a $100 rebate for Nest and other wi-fi enabled thermostats – ecobee’s site says there are no rebates for me area. They also want a blue C wire or require messing with wiring inside the furnace which Nest doesn’t require. I can’t find whether it works with “threaded” wires which is throwing me off because Nest currently doesn’t work with them so I need to get my wires swapped for one zone to support Nest.
You may want to engage them for some pre-sales support. Adam got rid of Nest twice and didn’t have any problems with his ecobee set-up, and he did do the HVAC unit wiring thingy (which also makes me a bit nervous):
https://zatznotfunny.com/2014-11/ecobee3-smart-thermostat-a-nest-challenger/
I don’t own a nest but I’m not sure how it would work without having a blue c wire since my 3M-50 certainly required one to have enough power to work. I would think its a standard requirement for all newer, smart thermostats.
All I know is that it works — their web site “wizard” shows that it will work — and so far, it has worked for the few days that I’ve had it installed.
So google wants me to put security cameras all over my house. No thanks. I don’t understand why ANYONE would want to put security cameras all over the inside of their house.
I’ve had a Nest thermostat for a little over a year (I think it’s the second generation model.) Anyway, I’ve noticed that both Lutron and Insteon say their HomeKit hub also supports the Nest Thermostat. Does this mean that the thermostat will automatically show up in HomeKit for control by Siri?
I’ve got the pro hub on order from Insteon, but it hasn’t shipped yet.
So I purchased a ecobee3 over the weekend for my downstairs furnace and moved my Nest upstairs, mostly because we have a few rooms with different rates of use downstairs (and the thermostat is in a room we don’t use often) while the Nest is in our bedroom.
So far I like the ecobee but it don’t think its quite as refined as the Nest. I wish that all of the apps/website had the same info as what can be found on the ecobee itself – especially the remote sensors (though looks like they plan to add it soon). The apps/web also seem to sometimes not update as quickly as the Nest and sometimes tell me that updates didn’t make it to the ecobee (even though they appear to have done so).