Nest Thermostats Improve in Order to Learn More About You
A thermostat can learn about your sleep schedule and your location.
The day has come when your home’s thermostat can talk to your washing machine, your car, and learn about your sleep habits. You house may soon outsmart you.
Palo Alto-based company Nest Labs, which makes home automation products, just released an “enhanced auto-schedule’’ software update today for its Nest Learning Thermometer.
Nest says the thermostat, which costs $249, will be more skilled at detecting your schedule and preferences — what time of day you’re usually home, when your kids go back to school, if always like your room to be a toasty 80 degrees. You can also control the thermostat from a phone or computer.
It will also display the time, weather conditions outside, how much energy is currently being used, among other metrics. By more accurately detecting your schedule and knowing when you’re home, Nest claims this newest update will save 23 percent energy in cooling and 20 percent in heating. How it lives up to these promises remains to be seen.
Nest, which was acquired by Google this year for $3.2 billion, can also be integrated with other products. It can sync with fitness and sleep tracker bracelet, Jawbone, for instance. When the bracelet senses that you’re awake, it will turn on the thermostat to your preferred temperature.
If the thermostat senses that you’re not home, it can tell your Whirlpool washing machine to keep your clothes fresh, or the dryer to put your clothes through another cycle to avoid wrinkles.
It can also connect with your Mercedes-Benz car, which can let Nest know when you’re almost home, and the thermostat will adjust to the right temperature.
The company also created Nest Protect — a smoke and carbon monoxide alarm that notifies you what the problem is and where it is in the house. It can send a message to your phone if you’re not home.
Yes, the future is really here. Disney Channel’s Smart House saw this coming years ago.
You can expect to see more high-tech gadgets in your home. This Cape Cod mansion has an iPad in every room to control lighting, temperature, and sounds. And these apartment units in Boston will have lighting to keep your circadian rhythms in check.
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