Thursday, November 22, 2012

Nest Learning Thermostat




On Sunday, I finally caved in and ordered the Nest Learning Thermostat.
By Wednesday, it had arrived which seems pretty fast to me.

Since I'm in Canada, I ordered it from the Canadian site.  That means I get features like I can display the temperature in Celsius.

I was very impressed with the packaging.  It's very reminiscent of Apple which makes sense since Tony Fadell from Apple was involved in the design.  There is even a Nest multi-bit screw driver included in the package.  It comes with several different mounting options depending on your existing connection.

The installation was really easy.  The guide comes with little stickers that you use to label the wires in the current set-up.  Then you just plug them into the little connectors, pop in the Nest and you're done.

It took about 10 minutes before I could actually do anything.  You have to go through the set-up menu which includes connecting it to your WiFi.  Entering your WiFi password with just a dial and a button is a little time consuming.  Then it spent about 5 minutes downloading new firmware, and then another couple minutes booting up.

The interface is very simple and intuitive.  And the Web and Android App interfaces are also nobrainers.  Now I just have to wait and see how it does "learning" my heating behaviour.

The next step is to see if I can hook my de-humidistat into the Nest.  I opened it up and it has a relay in it that seems to be controlled by the physical position of a dial via a cam of some kind.  I figure all I need to do is control the relay via my Nest, but I want to look into the wiring more before I try anything.

This is a shot of the wiring all finished on my Nest.  Still missing the de-humidistat that should connect to the * connector.



And here's a shot of it connected and booted up


And one last shot showing the de-humidistat box above it.



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