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Comment by atom_enger | Hacker News Reader

We have two nest thermostats installed at work. I rotate the WiFi keys for our APs quarterly and these things are the biggest pain in the ass to reconnect to the WiFi.

The furnace turns off almost immediately after changing the WiFi key once the Nest loses connectivity. At first I thought it was coincidence but now that I rotate on a strict schedule it's a joke in our office. However, what's not a joke is what happens when the internet goes down. So does our heat.

What the hell, Nest?

Relevant: https://twitter.com/internetofshit

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Not surprising. My first Nest wouldn't connect to any of my 5 access points in my house.. thought it was a bug until I found it COULD connect via tethering from my iPhone.

Spent a weekend troubleshooting, Nest ultimately sent me a replacement, which I was sure wouldn't fix my issue, but it actually did! Bad chipset.

Then I had the common wire issue. Then I fixed that.

Then 6mo later I spent a few hours on the phone with support before I found out I actually had something in the furnace fail over the summer. I was amazed it was not a Nest issue.

Also, my Nest loses its internet connection when it goes into the infamous "power save" mode, which Nest insists means your access point is not 802.11 compliant, but I have the certification from Meraki that their APs are fully compliant.

It's been a fairly colossal pain in the ass, even though at least one issue was not Nest's fault.

From cruising the forums, they just break shit way too often, don't give a downgrade option, don't allow you to choose whether or not to apply software updates, and.. just generally treat an important home appliance like it's a cheap toy.

Just to provide a counter point of view, I owned a Nest 1st gen for 2 years (before selling my house) and didn't have a single issue.

I worked at home which means the smart scheduling was useless but the aesthetics and ease of use were great. Not to mention turning it on/off while away from the house was nice (I know, not limited to Nest).

Really? The Nest Thermostat should still be able to control your heaters even without internet. https://nest.com/support/article/Do-I-need-Wi-Fi-to-use-Nest

>“We had a bug that was introduced in the software update that didn’t show up for about two weeks,” Mr. Rogers said apologetically. In January, devices went offline, and “that’s when things started to heat up.”

At what point is this just a matter of complexity growing beyond its masters' capacity to manage it? Computers interacting with all sorts of analog systems are going to have a million edge cases.

But it's just beginning. Give them the ability to interact with other connected objects, and your potential problems proliferate. Add a smart garage door opener, and you may not figure out how that's connected to your thermostat cranking the heat too high, or who's to blame.

Seriously — listen to this: http://iotpodcast.com/2015/12/episode-36-a-total-breakdown-i...

  is this just a matter of complexity growing beyond
  its masters' capacity to manage it?

No, this is stuff we know how to get right if it's a priority for the business.

Back in the 1990s if Microsoft released a new version of Windows they would test compatibility with other vendors' software - and often adapted Windows to maintain compatibility of vendors were relying on some eccentric behaviour.

What you do is build a test lab. You buy 100 routers covering a range of chipsets and manufacturers. Plug them into a network and a software-controlled power switch. Every time you do a revision of your hardware you keep a few back for the test lab. Then every time you do a revision of the software, you deploy it to all the hardware, and you test it one at a time on every one of the routers. Customer's having problems with hardware so old you can't get it for your lab? Ask the customer for theirs, and offer them something better in trade.

You do the same with furnaces - although you probably need many fewer units in your test lab because the interfaces are a lot simpler.

The main reason not to do this is cost - a company might think spending $200,000 on a test lab has lower returns than spending that money on adverts or product discounts.

But that is not the case.

Any non-hip, non-fancy, non-SV thermostat control system doesn't have these bugs.

Sure, those systems don't come in fancy design, but they will work offline, they will work in every edge case, and they'll cost twice of what Nest costs.

Treating IoT devices as if they'd be consumer software, with updates every week and constant internet access has never worked, and probably never will.

And ironically, IoT devices could be much more reliable if not done by the SaaS startup playbook. Just don't be greedy and stop with the cloud bullshit. A lot of IoT devices are just some hobby-grade projects put in nice packaging and launched into stratosphere on investor-fuel marketing boosters.

I certainly can't complain about my INSTEON thermostat. It won't win any design awards, and doesn't have a color screen or a touchscreen. But it works well, and I can interface my computer with it. It also works when the Internet is down.

As my new 3DS game had to get a software update before I could play it, I realized software engineers did a lot better job releasing working software before there was a way to fix your bad software post-release.

I don't think "offline" in this context means that the problem was because the device couldn't connect to the internet. It sounds like the bug drained the battery which prevented it from functioning.

The bug probably affect the Nest's ability to do low power charging using the fan wire. Evidently, as long as the fan runs, the Nest will charge at a lower rate than you get with the common wire hooked up. That is, unless you release some bad code and didn't do a full CI/CD run on a test unit and wait 2 weeks for the battery to go dead to figure out there was a bug.

Which hit me on the 8th at exactly 9:29AM. It was FREEZING in the house. Dead nest. Took me about 10 minutes to look up the issue and 5 to hook up common.

Any code that touches battery or recharge methods should throw a red flag immediately and have a 1 month wait time slapped on them. Also, there should be a dedicated Test Nest for each release known to be "in production".

Did they actually say it was a bug in the battery / recharge code?

It sounds like they could have just added some generic code that prevented the device from going into deep sleep.

I haven't heard that, but I assumed one of three things went when it happened: 1. the Nest was fully charged when I bought it and then was unable to charge itself enough from the fan running and went dead, 2. something happened to the wiring on my heating system to cause it to not charge, or 3. something happened to the Nest itself.

The first assumption was addressed by several heat and air contractors on Youtube, so I hooked up the common 24v wire to ensure it would charge and it immediately started working again. This required me to hook up the wire on the heating unit itself, and the Nest. Given I've worked with electronics and have built parts of houses, done wiring, plumbing, etc., it was a 5 minute job for me.

The Nest was built to provide a feature by which it could charge itself off the latent, low power current that runs through the fan wire while it is running. This is one of those cases where more features equals more things to break when you push.

This is the heart of the problem. It's not 'the cloud', unnecessarily complex feature sets, or any of the other complaints being thrown around

It's that the software was not thoroughly tested. Nest cut corners in R&D.

Consumers are also at fault for not taking the time to understand the hack job Nest has done to trickle charge the device when no common wire is available. Those with 'mission critical' needs (babies, elderly, 2nd home) rolled the dice and are as much at fault as Nest IMHO.

As more devices become 'smart', the companies that invest in design & testing will become more trusted. But also, consumers need to appreciate that a device is only as smart as the infrastructure it's connected too. Any limitations in your house need a fallback plan.

(I'm actually glad that trickle charge hack has come home to roost)

> Consumers are also at fault

I can't disagree with this more. When you are trying to replace a thermostat, the onus is on you to do right by your customers. And that may be (is!) difficult. But the customer is never at fault for trusting you, but you can be at fault for abusing their trust.

Your assertion implies a one way trust channel. Company ---trust---> customer. While money is stored trust, it can be used in a trusted or untrusted way. This implies there is little to no customer ---trust---> company.

Most thermostats are trustworthy because they are simple. I bought a fancy thermostat back in the early 90s that had a small LCD screen on it and it would run a schedule if you set it. I eventually replaced it with a regular thermostat because it was a pain in the ass to adjust the temperature with button pushes and the hall that it was in was dark most of the time. This is the extent of customer trust given to a company.

The ability to control the Nest with a dial and from my shell on my computer are great reasons for me to trust the Nest and buy it. That said, I'm also cognizant of the fact it needs to connect to the Internet to allow control from the CLI, do updates and set the schedule correctly.

The onus may be on a company to do right by its customers, but the fact is that mistakes can and will occur if the requirements are such that a remote update and control system be in place for the product.

I think @radiorental is correct that customers don't take the time to understand that having a device which provides X features comes with Y risk associated with it. Nest will always be at risk for "being at fault" for a problem that will occur again in the future. Customers need to understand that a time savings on one side may mean a time cost on the other, when Nest isn't able to cover it for them.

I might point out that anyone who disagrees with this assertion assumes that Nest should not make mistakes. Assuming a complex system is perfect, or can achieve perfection, is irrational.

To put this into perspective. The competing product https://www.ecobee.com/ makes no attempt to power itself via trickle current.

Nest, in an effort to widen the install base went out on a limb. And that's fine but a little research would reveal not insignificant user feedback with installation issues

I'm putting some onus on the customer to understand all the pros & cons with a given product. With the state of smart devices in the home at the moment, homeowners are effectively system integrators. You can't have your cake and eat it.

Would you put t-mobile at fault for selling a phone to a user who didn't check the coverage map first?

Do you read Amazon reviews for any given product you purchase there, or assume all manufactures are selling the absolute best mankind can produce?

The Nest is not fit for installation in a huge portion of homes. The trickle charge tries to side step lack of common wire. When it works it's fine, but it's not hard to find reports of weird installation problems.

It is also a gigantic pain in the ass to change wifi settings on the Nest Protect, and it's worse because they are mounted on the ceiling so you have to get a ladder. These guys could have learned a lot about ease of use from Sonos. In fact, for the money that Google spent, I would have bought Sonos five times rather than buying Nest.

"However, what's not a joke is what happens when the internet goes down. So does our heat."

Predictable. Avoidable. Pitiful.

Why not (and i realise that this is a dirty horrible hack) isolate those devices to their own dedicated virtual ap and isolated network. that way you get to restrict what they can talk to, what can talk to them and the keys that everyone else uses.

this also allows you to finally get around to rolling out eap so the scourge of shared wifi keys can die out :)

> this also allows you to finally get around to rolling out eap

* WPA2-Enterprise is not universally supported. (Ferinstance, no Chromecast can connect via WPA2-Enterpise. :( )

* Which EAP? EAP-TLS? EAP-MD5? [0] EAP-MSCHAPv2? Or perhaps EAP-GTC? [1][2]

> this also allows you to finally get around to rolling out eap so the scourge of shared wifi keys can die out

Unrelated to the issue at hand... I really wish OS X and Windows supported EAP-WFA-UNAUTH-TLS (and that EAP-UNAUTH-TLS would become an "actual" EAP method, rather than languishing as a vendor specific extension. Securely encrypted zero-configuration public WiFi can't come fast enough! :)

[0] God no! ;)

[1] It probably sounds like I'm trying to imply that WPA2-Enterprise is too complicated. Frankly (speaking as a guy who's implementing his own RADIUS server as a hobby project), it's really not. There are just many, many options available to you... and not all of them are supported by all RADIUS servers.

[2] Anyway... given what very little I know about EAP-GTC, I would suggest that -if we're going for a near-zero-configuration deployment- it would be the most suitable for the situation that we're talking about... The trick would be hooking the verification logic for the security token in the device into the RADIUS server. :)

> * Which EAP? EAP-TLS? EAP-MD5? [0] EAP-MSCHAPv2? Or perhaps EAP-GTC?

EAP-TLS ideally. You need a CA infrastructure, a radius server, and a way of doing automated enrolment, revocation and install of client certificates. A lot of work if you haven't already got those parts (though many places already do), but it's fairly hassle free and secure once up and running.

For bonus points you can extend 802.11x goodness to your wired desktop ports as well.

You probably need at least one other network/BSSID with standard wpa2 for non-managed devices as you say.

So, I'm fairly new to this... how would you do automated installation of client certs on:

* OS X machines

* Android devices

* A Nest Thermostat

> For bonus points you can extend 802.11x goodness to your wired desktop ports as well.

Though, that only works if you have either a Smart or a Managed switch that understands that it needs to tag frames from that port with RADIUS-dictated VLAN tags, right?

OS X - puppet/chef or equivalent

Android - MDM (I think the stock google apps MDM can do client Certs and 802.11x network config)

Nest - would not bother; stick on a dedicated standard WPA2 network, segregate from rest of network then leave well alone.

Wired network - yes, you'd need a managed L2 switch (but then you'd need that anyway to trunk multiple tagged vlans to your APs).

Nest's wifi has always been sh*t (for lack of a better word). It's the only device that I've had to reboot the AP for.

It is by far the most fragile device from a network connectivity standpoint. I'm so happy that I won the Nest or I would be so much angrier at the whole thing.

> However, what's not a joke is what happens when the internet goes down. So does our heat.

That's very odd. My Nest functions fine during Time Warner outages.

> However, what's not a joke is what happens when the internet goes down. So does our heat.

As a couple of other folks have noted, that's not normal. You might want to get on tech support with them.

My Nest just keeps running its last program when it looses internet.

Hilarious. A residential thermostat that needs tech support. Only in the Silicon Valley echo chamber can that seem like a good idea. It reminds me of the old engineering saying: "If it's not broken it doesn't have enough features yet."

https://yourhome.honeywell.com/en/contact-us

I'm at a complete loss of words at why you think that's even in the same class of support...

Why? He said tech support, the link given has a number for tech support. Seems pretty similar. Honeywell also has a wifi smart thermostat that is controlled by an iPhone app and competes with the Nest.

Seems pretty damn similar.

Everything electronic needs tech support. You could have a 100% reliable product that's nothing more than a single button that literally does one thing when you press it, and you'd still need tech support because people will call in and ask you how to use it, or why it doesn't do anything when they don't push the button.

Criticizing Nest for having tech support is just silly. Much better to criticize it for the actual stupid failure being experienced by the original commenter.

I've had two nests at home for almost 2 years, and have never had them stop working when the wifi went out. They just stick to whatever schedule they were programmed with the last time they were on the internet.

I wouldn't buy a nest again because their API is locked down and they seem to think they own all the data that they collect in my house and won't let me access it, but they've been reliable for me and I have never had a problem with my heat going out.

I've avoided nest because I worry it may fail and literally cook my animals during the brutal summer heat we get. Seems that worry may be founded.

Typical Google product.

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