Nest is launching an API
nest.com
nest.com
I have a few Nest devices, and they all do motion detection. If I'm away for a few days, I'd love an alert if my Nests detect someone in the house. It could alert me to check a security camera, and then to call the police.
It could do fancy stuff, like only alert me if I'm not at home by checking my phone's location. Or perhaps you could set off the fire alarm to try and ward off intruders.
I imagine alarm systems are on Nest's roadmap. I'd be worried if I was ADT.
You can already do all that and more with plethora of Z-Wave devices with Vera* without any external services.
A VeraLite-G (eBay make an offer): $135.
A Z-Wave thermostat (2-gig CT100 that can display humidity on the main display): $80 (I got a couple for $62 on sale)
No dependency on Google to control your home: priceless.
Disclosure: I use MasterCard sometimes.
I owned a BMW once and you literally could not tinker with the car yourself. The engine was a sealed black box. Kind of like the Nest.
The "just like SSL" comment is justified, AFAICT.
Most motion sensors for alarms are dual infrared/microwave (requires heat and motion) to prevent false alarms. Even then it can happen. My dual tech pet immune motions at home connected to my HAI Omni have had a couple of false alarms over the years. Once due to a ceiling fan being on (tripped microwave) then some sort of heat event (sun changed through window quickly).
Accurate motion detection for alarms is tricky, and requires very specific placement.
I use this to turn my Nest's away mode on and off when my iPhone leaves my home wifi (I live alone, and in Phoenix, so this helps my power bill quite a bit).
OTOH, I'm probably not part of the target market, as I'm perfectly happy futzing around with Vera* and VLAN/VPN/SSH tunnels.
I'm not opposed to Internet connectivity per se but the external (Nest/Firebase/Google) services requirement for remotely controlling and/or automation of the devices.
The only appeal of Nest to a hacker is its industrial design, IMO. Apparently its UX is not that great (humidity display fail) either, while an $80 z-wave thermostat is much more usable/flexible.
I guess, because the learning feature is still nice.
Myself, I wanted a Nest up until google bought them... no way I'm giving them sensors in my home.
Do you have a smartphone that has anything made by Google installed on it? If so, they already have lots of sensors in your home. Some of which they haven't tapped into yet, some they have.
If not, do you ever use any of their services from home? What about all the sites that use Google Analytics? Even with just that, they know where you live and could easily compile a set of times you're at home, which is just about the only thing that Nest data gives them. (I personally don't view the humidity at my home that revealing, privacy-wise.)
I want to stress that I'm not trying to antagonize you or belittle your stance- I feel privacy is very important, and it makes me happy when others feel the same. I'm just trying to show you that unless you've taken (what some would say) extraordinary measures, Google already knows more about you than what Nest is going to give them.
There's a gap between "not using the internet" and "not at home", which can't be gained from GA, but can from a motion/temperature sensor.
The truth is, I do consider the measures I take to protect my privacy as being, while not extraordinary in the common sense, certainly more than perhaps 96-98% of people. There is a tradeoff between privacy and functionality in many things, but a hacker can always take what they need from the anti-privacy side while maintaining far more privacy than other people.
When that happened, I immediately filled out the form asking for more information. And I have heard not a single peep since then. I've actually been assuming that since the Google acquisition, this project may have been shelved. Is there actually a sign of life? The submitted link doesn't seem to have any new information.
Also, nice work guys! This is a great step forward for Firebase.
"Hackers gain control of networked thermostats, thousands hospitalised and injured"
Also, pretty funny: http://i.imgur.com/ouoxxoZ.png
The other companies involved in home automation? Not so much. The kit will probably be about as secure as most SCADA systems - and that's going to have some serious consequences one day.
I guess smarter thermostats make it tempting to centralize that functionality, but keeping the thermal safety systems separate from any networked functionality seems like a nice, clear and sensible design principle.
* How not to write an API
* Nest is launching an API
Kidding aside, I'm excited to see interesting uses of Nest's API in the near future.
Copy advice: ditch the superlatives in the introduction ("amazing devices") to make some room for a more pithy description.
I want the thermostat (with knowledge of outside temperature and winds) to know that my HVAC can increase the temperature by, say, 1C every 30 minutes.
Based on what it knows about my location and biometrics, it can drop to the minimum to prevent the pipes from freezing or other problems when I'm gone, and know when my classes/work ends and commute time to turn on the system at just the right time to be pleasant for my arrival. Maybe detect/realize that I'm in a, or will be in a, traffic jam, and hold off accordingly.
Integrate it with my alarm clock to cool the bedroom by a few C overnight, but warm the place up so I'm not chilled when I get out from under the blankets.
Detect that I've gotten out of bed in the middle of the night, and start blasting heat into the bathroom.
Nest is $250 each. Ouch.
Nest can do all that out of the box, and it doesn't cost $250 for a new one on eBay, where you're quoting the rest of your prices from. They're $185-200 there BIN, and regularly on Amazon from the Amazon Warehouse Deals seller, which makes your z-wave stuff the "ouch" purchase. Whatever your opinion on having the API hosted externally, the product itself has some smart stuff built in. Looks pretty snazzy too.
For the record, I have a VeraLite and some z-wave stuff too. I'm not a huge fan. I don't care that Google hosts the API for my thermostat. I do care that if I'm standing outside my front door and want to open the deadbolt over z-wave, it takes 15-30 seconds, with a 50% success rate of the command getting through at all.
BTW, what does a deadbolt have anything to do with your Nest/HVAC system? Do you want to depend on Google to open/close your locks as well? It's _not_ normal to take 15-30 seconds to open a Z-wave deadbolt remotely (it's immediate if you use the lock keypad) with 50% of success rate: something (probably the security C/R exchanges) is timing out: the default timeout is 20 seconds. For me, it was 100% (knocking on wood:) with a few seconds latency for the times I tried, executing a night arrival scene from a phone in a car, which turned on path/door lights and unlocked the door, because I'd have groceries/takeouts in my both hands.
I'd tend to agree that Z-Wave devices and a Vera* controller is probably too much for non-tinkerers to handle in the current state, because average people can't even handle a wifi printer :). There are people who use Nest as a basic thermostat, i.e., for the looks only.
The main motivation for me to squawk on this topic is that I don't like the _trend_ of external services (nothing against Google per se :) owning my data and now control of my home.
We (hackers/tinkerers) can do better and demand a choice.
Yes, something's definitely timing out. If I watch the Vera UI after sending the command, it times out and retries several times before giving up. Yet other times it works, but usually only after at least one retry. The hub isn't too far from the door, and there's no walls in-between. The unreliability of z-wave stuff is my biggest problem with it.
The Nest responds pretty much instantly to commands despite them having to go out to the internet then back. The unofficial APIs provide access to everything the device and its web/mobile apps can do. Same with my Belkin WeMo switches and sensors -- you're probably not a fan of WeMo either, but I'm a fan of them responding instantly and speaking UPnP.
The divide between these products isn't really about "tinkerers vs non-tinkerers". If that was it, Nest/WeMo/etc would win over the monoprice z-wave stuff any day. They're much easier to hack with (no extra hardware required, HTTP APIs, open source libraries readily available) and typically do a lot more than the generic single-function devices.
The divide you've set up is around privacy and external dependency. The tradeoffs there aren't the same, and not everyone's going to agree with you on that either, even hackers with full knowledge. I don't necessarily think self-hosted and self-supported APIs are a better future. That's a future that would limit a lot of the cool stuff you can do with these devices to us, instead of making it available to everyone. Most of the coolest stuff in our homes today already relies on entrusting a certain amount of control and information to 3rd parties, from your electric company, to your ISP, to the makers of all the set-top boxes connected to your TV, to the phone in your pocket. All of these things involve giving up tons of data and control of your home.
I have no problem with "smart thing" makers hosting APIs so long as they remain trustworthy with that data, and reliable, which is not a huge ask. I'm a lot more confident Google can run Nest's API reliably and securely than Vera staying in business and keeping its P.O.S. MiOS functioning.
OTOH, I'm too somewhat disappointed at the quality, security and the development of the MiOS, but we as hackers can at least do something about it.