mykeyb Posted January 21, 2014 Share Posted January 21, 2014 (edited) So with Google purchasing Nest does anybody use or is planning to use tech to run their home. I have looked at the Belkin Wemo and Philips Hue ranges for lighting but not jumped in yet. I am looking seriously at some kind of smart thermostat for the central heating but apparently even if you could import a Nest Thermostat you have to bugger around with the wiring which I dont particularly fancy so I am going to get the Tado Smart Thermostat. The main reason is my wife works from home for large parts of the week so she always overides the program but then when she goes outs on visits she leaves the heating on which is costing big money. The Tado system works by linking your smartphone to it so when you leave the house it switches of the system and will switch it back on when it recognises your on your way back. You can link more than one smartphone too. You can buy the system for £249.00 or if you want to trial it you can rent it for £6.99 per month which I am inclined to do so hopefully in 12 months time Google will have managed to get Nest onto UK shores. Edited January 21, 2014 by mykeyb Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davkaus Posted January 21, 2014 Share Posted January 21, 2014 Google is creepy enough without me paying them to put the HAL 9000 in my house. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
limpid Posted January 21, 2014 Administrator Share Posted January 21, 2014 I've just started looking at the smart thermostats. TBH, I want something simple which connects by wifi and a simple phone app to program it. If it has hooks for Tasker or Llama then all the better as then it can all be automatic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anthony Posted January 21, 2014 VT Supporter Share Posted January 21, 2014 I suspect when the iWatch comes out it'll be heavily geared to home automation via Apple's (proprietary) iBeacon system. I really hope they don't get their claws into people's homes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thetrees Posted January 27, 2014 Share Posted January 27, 2014 Call me sad, but I just use a British Gas one, which I think was 200 quid installed. Very easy to control with iPad/iPhone. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mykeyb Posted January 28, 2014 Author Share Posted January 28, 2014 The Hive seems quite reasonable when you factor in its fitted for that price. The Nest obviously looks great and if you have a fairly structured life I dare say it will work very well. The issue I have which is why I am looking at Tado is that my wife works mainly from home but does go out and do visits during the day but not every day. The fact that Tado can work out you have left the house and adjust the heating accordingly is the perfect answer as she wont switch the heating off if she goes out and it will be costing a fortune. Now if Google can add that kind of functionality to Nest then it becomes quite interesting....... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mykeyb Posted September 24, 2014 Author Share Posted September 24, 2014 So now my wife has decided she wants to go for the Nest Thermostat because it looks nice!!! Having looked at the options to install it we narrowed it down to 2, through Nest themselves (fitted @ £249.00) or Npower (fitted @ £279.00). Now the only reason Npower got a second glance was that our boiler breakdown cover is with them and there would be less chance of there being issues. Well apparently not as it quite clearly states on the Npower website that any issues following installation should be taken up directly with Nest!! Will see if our boiler is compatible when the come to install. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darrenm Posted September 24, 2014 Share Posted September 24, 2014 I'd be interested to hear how you get on Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mykeyb Posted October 10, 2014 Author Share Posted October 10, 2014 I now have Nest Thermostat installed and it does look a very smart bit of kit. it appears to be very easy to program either from the app or vie the website. As we had only had a timer on our boiler we at least should see some savings as it will switch off when it reaches the desired temp. At the moment it doesn't do geofencing out of the box but has a sensor which will switch you to away after a set time. I am looking at utilising IFTT and either life360 to do somekind of geofencing as I am on Android but my wife is on iphone there isnt any unified solution. Lighting is next on the agenda with either Philips Hue or LIFX. Hue is the more established but LIFX when they get their cloud offering working will work directly with Nest. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mykeyb Posted October 15, 2014 Author Share Posted October 15, 2014 The Nest thermostat is boringly simple and just works. We need to let it learn our schedule for the first week before it starts doing its smart stuff but its interesting to log in and see when the heating was on and for how long. Once it has started being truly smart I can start playing around with geofencing and possible use of IFTTT. We have also got some Philips Hue Lamps which after the initial playing around with colours we now have set and controlled by IFTTT to come on first thing in the morning for an hour and again at sunset which proved really useful on Monday as we were later getting back than expected and would have usually arrived back to a house in total darkness, but they had switched on automatically. I would like to be able to tie all this in with some kind of smart house security but I need to further research 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dodgyknees Posted October 25, 2014 Share Posted October 25, 2014 (edited) Anybody got any feedback on this? What service do you use? What do you use it for? Have your costs gone down? Is it easy to install? What additions can you add to the service? Is it value for money? We are moving into a new house in January, I want to use something like Hive as well as Smart TV's and more. Cheers! Edited October 25, 2014 by DK82 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Rev Posted October 25, 2014 Share Posted October 25, 2014 If you've got half an hour then Will Smith (the white ginger one who is mildly internet famous, not the other one) has been living with connected home stuff for a few months. Here are his thoughts: 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dodgyknees Posted October 25, 2014 Share Posted October 25, 2014 Will do. Cheers! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mykeyb Posted November 1, 2014 Author Share Posted November 1, 2014 The issue is you want to be able to tie all these things together and at the moment I am not sure its there for the enthusiast. Google are hovering up companies to have tech that will work with Nest and Apple have their version which I am sure tech companies will get behind. I wanted to have my central heating, lights and alarm system to work without manual interaction. Is switch heating off and set alarm when no one in, switch on lights at sunset etc. Finding an alarm that I can add to what I already have has been fruitless so far and other things like automatic door locks appear to be US only at the moment. I do think that this area is about to get very big in the next 18 months so options will be available. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davkaus Posted March 7, 2016 Share Posted March 7, 2016 (edited) On 1/21/2014 at 12:58, Davkaus said: Google is creepy enough without me paying them to put the HAL 9000 in my house. Since I posted this, I've bought a house, that has no thermostat, so considering I'll have to pay to put one in, I figure I may as well consider smart thermostats. How are people getting on with thse? I've looked at the Hive, Nest, and Tado, and I can't decide between them. I like the idea of the Nest, but with its learning feature relying on activity around the single sensor in the thermostat, I'm not sure how well it'll work for me, some days I spend the entire evening in the lounge, other days I won't move from my office, and I don't really want to move it around, buy more than one, or have to keep playing with it if I'm in the 'wrong' room. With this in mind, the Tado seems like a good option, as it relies solely on your distance from the house? @limpid, I'd be particularly interested if you found one that integrates well with Tasker. Edited March 7, 2016 by Davkaus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
limpid Posted March 9, 2016 Administrator Share Posted March 9, 2016 On 07/03/2016 at 22:23, Davkaus said: @limpid, I'd be particularly interested if you found one that integrates well with Tasker. I've not used tasker in over a year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisp65 Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 fwiw I've got Hive and I run it from my phone. It also persuaded me to go 'online' with my whole dealings with British Gas, from meter reading to plumbing repairs and it's been a revelation. Just so easy and convenient. Not something I thought I'd ever be saying about British Gas. Usually it's just on the standard settings, but it is really handy to put the heating on or up an hour early if I know I'm coming home early etc.. It's about as simple as it's possible to be (well, I can use it!). We get a regular e-mail that tells us our heating consumption compared with others locally which is a little bit handy in convincing other people in the house that we don't need the house at 20c when we are away for the weekend. We can switch lights on and off too, which is a function my missus likes after we had a half arsed failed break in a few months ago. It can also act as a movement detector / alarm and send alerts to your phone if a door opens whilst you are out. Not sure I even want to know that to be honest so we haven't bothered with that. Oh, and as a side spin off, they gave us a signal booster as we have an old house with actual solid walls. The main upshot of the booster appears to be that we can now sit on the bench 60 yards up the garden and still use the house wifi. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PompeyVillan Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 I've got a Hive 2 and I'm happy with it. I don't want my thermostat to learn what I want, I want it to do exactly what I want when I want. Its very handy if I'm coming home late, I can save an hours fuel. You can actively fine tune the heating to stay warm and not waste fuel. You can do this manually with all thermostats of course, but I never used to that much, because I'm lazy. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mykeyb Posted March 16, 2016 Author Share Posted March 16, 2016 On 3/9/2016 at 10:20, chrisp65 said: fwiw I've got Hive and I run it from my phone. It also persuaded me to go 'online' with my whole dealings with British Gas, from meter reading to plumbing repairs and it's been a revelation. Just so easy and convenient. Not something I thought I'd ever be saying about British Gas. Usually it's just on the standard settings, but it is really handy to put the heating on or up an hour early if I know I'm coming home early etc.. It's about as simple as it's possible to be (well, I can use it!). We get a regular e-mail that tells us our heating consumption compared with others locally which is a little bit handy in convincing other people in the house that we don't need the house at 20c when we are away for the weekend. We can switch lights on and off too, which is a function my missus likes after we had a half arsed failed break in a few months ago. It can also act as a movement detector / alarm and send alerts to your phone if a door opens whilst you are out. Not sure I even want to know that to be honest so we haven't bothered with that. Oh, and as a side spin off, they gave us a signal booster as we have an old house with actual solid walls. The main upshot of the booster appears to be that we can now sit on the bench 60 yards up the garden and still use the house wifi. How does Hive tie in to your lights and movement detection as that does sound interesting. I sort of had the impression that Hive was a bit of a closed shop in terms of it working with other things. Nest have been a little slow expanding their services but if you go to the workswithnest website they appear to be adding services almost on a daily basis. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mykeyb Posted March 16, 2016 Author Share Posted March 16, 2016 On 3/7/2016 at 22:23, Davkaus said: Since I posted this, I've bought a house, that has no thermostat, so considering I'll have to pay to put one in, I figure I may as well consider smart thermostats. How are people getting on with thse? I've looked at the Hive, Nest, and Tado, and I can't decide between them. I like the idea of the Nest, but with its learning feature relying on activity around the single sensor in the thermostat, I'm not sure how well it'll work for me, some days I spend the entire evening in the lounge, other days I won't move from my office, and I don't really want to move it around, buy more than one, or have to keep playing with it if I'm in the 'wrong' room. With this in mind, the Tado seems like a good option, as it relies solely on your distance from the house? @limpid, I'd be particularly interested if you found one that integrates well with Tasker. If you have Nest maybe Hive too although I cannot say for sure and Smartphone then it's very easy to have the heating switch on or off when the last person leaves the house using IFTTT channels, I use it for Nest and my Hue lights too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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