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Comment by pfarnsworth | Hacker News Reader

Wow. I honestly never thought this would happen. Hopefully this means that the change in culture at Nest is real, and we can expect better innovation going forward. As a heavy Nest customer (thermostat, 2 protects and 5 cameras), I've been sorely disappointed over the last 2 years, and hopefully this means that my investment in their technology isn't for naught.

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>I've been sorely disappointed over the last 2 years

I bought a thermostat about a year ago and I've been disappointed too. The marketing I read and a couple people I knew that worked there implied that new features were in the pipeline but since I've installed it I haven't seen a single substantive improvement in the experience.

I just wanted something with a prettier display and better programmability than the hidous LCD thing I had. That and being able to change/monitor remotely's enough.

As for future promised features, they're like campaign promises. Nothing to bet big on.

I'm disappointed even with what I purchased, new features aside.

I have two sets of furnace/AC for my house and two Nest thermostats. My wifi access point when I installed it was downstairs, about 10 feet from the downstairs thermostat with nothing but air between the AP and the thermostat (I moved the AP around a bit too). The unit would not connect even though the upstairs unit connected without issue.

Worse, every time I tried to connect it, it would make me re"type" my wifi password. My password is around 30 characters long and contains a mixture of letters, numbers, and symbols. Entering a password on a Nest thermostat is absolutely terrible, which I kind of expect, and which is okay if you only have to do it ONCE. But I was trying to troubleshoot a problem with wifi and it wouldn't remember the password because it wasn't connecting... I ended up changing my wifi password temporarily until I could get it to connect and update, hoping the update would fix whatever the problem was.

That said, now that they're installed and connecting, they're fine, I guess. But the "wow" factor is pretty much over for me, and with what I've heard about the smoke alarms, I doubt I'll be buying another Nest product.

My wifi key is also insanely difficult. Spinning that wheel and pressing down on the face to select one of the characters is so annoying, you can easily get the character next to the one you intend. And the selector for the space character isn't obvious either. I had to reset mine 3 times, and enter that key each time. I refuse to do it again, that's how annoying it is to anyone who cares about decent wifi keys

What changes are you hoping for in the experience? I think my Nest thermostats work great, and frankly I'd rather that they not muck with that in the name of "improvement." It's basically an appliance, and part of my house, and regular software changes would be a real annoyance (other than fixing bugs, of course). I'd rather they spend their energy on creating new products than on changing the already (IMHO) solid experience on the existing ones.

The biggest one for me: It regularly takes 10+ seconds for the app to load and connect to the thermostat. When it's faster for me to get up and walk to the thermostat than to use the app from another room that's an issue.

Another issue I have is that I can only schedule temps. Auto-away seems to recognize in about an hour that I've left for work, but Away state never shows on the schedule. I leave for work at the same time very morning, I'd like the thermostat to tell me when it thinks I've left so I can adjust it to the correct time and not heat/cool the house for an hour before it realizes I'm gone.

These are minor things, but I paid literally 10x as much as a regular programmable thermostat, I expect a premium experience.

Stop dropping off the network randomly. They blame it on "crappy wifi vendors" not supporting 802.11 power save mode properly but I have it on word from support that Meraki is fully 802.11 compliant.

Would be nice to have optional different displays too. Seems like a silly thing, I know, but it would be nice if I could just setup the 'normal' display to show outside temp without having to go to the menu.

A single app is really shitty. I would rather have an app for the cam and an app for the thermostat.

As I mentioned above, I want better and longer access to data so that I can do real comparisons like year over year data. Not just 10 days ago which is really stupid.

And how about a more stable app as well that doesn't crash?

Apple HomeKit support. I think it's absurd the Nest doesn't natively support it.

Maybe that's because the isn't much room for temperature innovation?

Turns out setting it to 72deg is a pretty effective strategy!

I prefer a more artisanal 71 degrees. Fahrenheit, naturally.

You both must be made out of money. I set mine to 65-68, depending on the time of day.

There are places in the US where it would cost money to set it to 65 and it's cheaper to set it to 77 (cough Phoenix cough).

We typically leave the thermostat at 79 or 80, and even then that's several hundred a month in AC.

If there's one thing I've learned it's not to cheap out on common life luxuries. I've actually gotten rid of any friends who thought it was worth the sacrifice of huddling with a blanket to save $50 a month. Especially when I was over their homes. Fuck that. Don't tout your own incapacities as wisdom.

Mine stays at 77, any lower and the fan never shuts off.

Why? Well, Florida. And the fact that I'm on the 2nd floor of a multi-tenant building with poor insulation. The struggle is real

How about things like the entire dataset that we have sent to Nest over the years? We only get access to the last 10 days worth, which is absolutely useless. I need year-over-year data, not just 1.5 weeks ago. Seriously, do these guys even use a Nest? Why have such an arbitrary restriction of data?

The camera is supposed to have an intercom feature. It still doesn't work. I read about this issue since before Dropcam sold to Nest.

I have two dropcams and the intercom has always worked great for me on both of them.

Hmm I've had plenty of issues with my dropcams but the intercom has always seemed to work. I really, really wish they weren't stationary though. They're so incredibly expensive (far higher than similar products) and they can't even move which is very frustrating. In my opinion anyway.

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