Honeywell Lyric thermostat | Hacker News Reader

Honeywell Lyric thermostat

lyric.honeywell.com

35 pointsafx2in51 comments

It looks like a poor man's version of a Nest except it costs $50 more and has to be purchased through a contractor. The distinguishing feature that they are touting (the geo-fencing capability) is not something I would even want. I don't want an app on my phone sending constant updates to Honeywell on exactly where I am located. This seems like an established company trying to play catch-up to an unanticipated change in their market and doing a poor job.

Regarding that last sentence, yes. It's a pretty stark contrast, even, to look at the design of Lyric's website in comparison to the rest of Honeywell's site. I guess there is no harm in trying to disrupt the disrupter, but I don't think that this is going to work for them.

Maybe they could have some success against Nest by playing off of some people's privacy concerns around Google.

A few years ago, I bought an internet module add on for a Honeywell alarm system and was shocked to find that the control UI communicated in plain text with no authentication to the internet module. The module broadcast its address across the entire network every few seconds.

At any location that has one of these installed on a weak WiFi network (an unfortunately likely combination), it would be feasible to crack the network and brute force disable the alarm from the outside, disabling the alarm before ever setting foot inside.

Let's just say I wont be buying any Honeywell products in the future.

Purchased thru a contractor? No thanks. That is Honeywell defending their old allies to their failure.

They sued Nest for allegedly violating patents that Honeywell wasn't using (because they could've owned the Nest market if they'd moved first): http://honeywell.com/News/Pages/Honeywell-Files-Lawsuit-Alle...

No thanks. I don't want to reward that behavior.

yes, either that or have Google keep tabs on the temperature in your house.

Is there a third option here?

Well, current "dumb" programmable thermostats aren't exactly awful and don't connect to the Internet in any way. A smart thermostat might be more convenient or slightly more energy efficient, but our third option is "settle for 'pretty good' until the market sorts itself out".

> yes, either that or have Google keep tabs on the temperature in your house.

I'm okay with this.

I'd prefer they not. Nest uses fairly simple principles to make your house comfortable for you, such as working harder to maintain your ideal temperature when you're at home and by predicting when that's likely to be based on past experience.

Plotting the difference between inside and outside temperature versus time and looking for the intervals where they're closest together (that is, when Nest isn't working hard to make you comfortable) probably correlates very strongly with whether you're home at those times.

You might be comfortable with Google being able to predict when you'll be home. I can imagine a lot of people who wouldn't like that at all.

One reason I haven't started adding 'Smart Devices' to my home is that I am not confident that traditional device manufacturers are thinking about security like they should. Case in point, the Belkin WeMo vulnerability[1]. Does the convenience of adding these devices to your home make up for the fact that every one you add is a potential attack vector?

1: http://hackaday.com/2013/01/31/turning-the-belkin-wemo-into-...

Yes.

The internet of things is miserable from a security standpoint. The bottom line is even with a security-minded approach, we will always be behind the newest attack vector, and to make matters worse no one really takes a security minded approach.

Slightly off-topic, but this is why we shouldn't hook things like the power grid up to the internet. and i personally don't want my fridge, thermostat, and lights to be hackable

I agree on security, but as a more practical point the market disrupters like Nest aren't thinking about reliability or the risks of DIY installation. I have to think Honeywell weighs that differently since they're not targeting the DIY crowd, at least initially.

For example, there were many incidents in January [1] where houses with Nest thermostats malfunctioned in the middle of a serious cold snap. One reason was that the batteries went dead in some thermostats, but normally the battery shouldn't be needed in normal operation when it's wired properly. Guess what, it wasn't wired properly by the homeowner. There should be a built-in diagnosis for that.

Another reason was that Nest sent a firmware update to thermostats in early January--in the middle of a cold winter? Where was their risk assessment on that? Maybe there's little risk of frozen pipes in Palo Alto, but it's a major risk in the eastern and midwestern USA.

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/06/nest-4-0-firmware-battery-p...

Yea, I live in Michigan so I am definitely glad I did not have to deal with a faulty thermostat on top of everything else the winter threw at us :).

I'd like to see an analysis of the reliability of the more common type of thermostat in real-world usage. It's possible that Nest really is worse, but I also wouldn't be surprised if regular thermostats failed in stupid ways too.

On an interesting note, during the last CES Belkin announced that Wemo is going to integrate with appliances such as slow cookers and humidifiers. This is a disaster waiting to happen.

Welcome to Watch Dogs, where everything is online, even your grenades, whether it makes sense or not.

In all fairness to Belkin, they did correct their mistake.

But still, Belkin is a company that has sold technology products for a while now, and even they couldn't get it right.

The problem with Belkin is that they have a history of selling garbage in nice packaging with decent industrial design. Unless something changes drastically in the company's culture, I doubt their product quality will really improve.

Good point, one of the first routers I got was a belkin, and I learned quickly that they aren't reliable.

As usual, the pricing is opaque. Click "Get Lyric" and it directs me to a list of "certified contractors."

> The Lyric Thermostat is currently available exclusively through Honeywell certified contractors.

It does say it will be available for self-installation "soon." However, so far this continues the long-standing tradition with HVAC companies.

Apparently they will be $279: http://time.com/2852103/honeywell-nest-thermostats/

But the front page says average yearly savings of $7. Yikes.

It uses geolocation to give different answers depending on your browser location. Mine says $72 / yr in Woodside, CA.

Mine says $214/yr in Vancouver, BC.

Same. And it doesn't let me enter in my postal code to check the math (it says Postal Code, but the validator only accepts US zip codes)

$92/year - Virginia Beach, VA

Best part: "The Lyric Thermostat is currently available exclusively through Honeywell certified contractors." No, you cannot install this yourself. #facepalm

As of right now you can only get this through a contractor. Seems like DOA if they keep it that way.

90% of thermostats are installed that way. Its really an enterprise business.

Source? Isn't that only true due to the fact that most people do not change thermostats in homes/apartments/condos they move into, or when they change HVAC systems?

I don't think the average populace is generally comfortable doing wiring work.

I'm not so sure. For a home DIYer, changing a thermostat is a pretty simple project. I bought a nice programmable unit a few years ago to replace the old mechanical one, and the entire process took maybe 20 minutes. It's along the lines of "attach the red wire to this screw. Attach the black one to this screw. If you have an air conditioner, put the white wire on this screw."

It didn't involve any tools beyond a screwdriver and the instructions were dead simple. I wouldn't hesitate to install another replacement unit myself.

> For a home DIYer, changing a thermostat is a pretty simple project.

That's my point, though. Most people aren't home DIYers.

I also had no trouble with my Nest, but most of the people I know probably would have had a local handyman install it.

Assuming that figure is accurate, it's still missing context. 90% are installed that way right now. They do seem to be betting the vendor install channel will continue to be the dominant channel in the future, and that bet will likely play a large role in the success of the product.

Since building a new home or building is done through contractors and not likely to change given laws and, well, logistics, if you don't have a contractor channel, your product doesn't get installed from the start.

> They do seem to be betting the vendor install channel will continue to be the dominant channel in the future

In many places it will be. Want to buy a Nest in the UK? Guess what, you can't install it yourself: Nest will send a contractor along to install it for you. Many countries highly regulate heating system installation, for good reasons. Even if you're in a jurisdiction where this isn't a problem, the majority of thermostats get replaced along with other HVAC work (new boiler, new pipework, etc), which is going to be done by a qualified contractor.

Only allowing purchases this way is probably folly, but can you imagine homebuilders talking buyers through their upgrade options and all of a sudden having this new world of automation to include? Thermostats, security, A/V, .... Lots of money is there to be made.

"The next generation of smart technology from the company that invented The Round thermostat."

Wow

Eww. This website could be the poster child of whatever is wrong with today's web design trends.

It looks terrible unless you're in full screen.

It breaks scrolling.

Fonts are some unreadable superthin sans-serif.

Flat drawings of real stuff that are hard to understand and take over the foreground.

It's really horrible. White text on white images, blue text on blue images. Buttons that don't work. Element with a z-index that goes over the navigation while some of the rest doesn't.

Urgh.

I won't buy a NEST after the Google acquisition; nice to see other players entering this space.

Laughable how long it took them -- Honeywell should have completely owned this market.

Next up for disruption is home security.

>Honeywell should have completely owned this market.

True, with respect to "smart" thermostats. But Honeywell already owns the thermostat market, and it's much larger than the "smart" thermostat market.

...today. Prior to Nest, there wasn't a "smart" thermostat market. Suddenly, everyone realized that the concept at least is pretty cool and Nest sold like hotcakes.

Prior to this release, Honeywell seemed to be playing Blackberry to Nest's iPhone: "we own the serious market. Only kids and geeks would want a 'smart' ${device}". And then suddenly one day everybody wanted one, and the incumbents were blindsided to realize that they didn't understand their market as well as they'd thought.

There's no reason at all that Honeywell shouldn't dominate the smart thermostat market, other than that they couldn't be bothered to. In a couple of years when no homeowner is going to want to buy a new house with a "dumb" thermostat, they'll need to have something attractive in that space. I bet more is riding on the success of this release than you'd think.

not sure the 'smart' thermostat market will grow huge in a reasonable time frame. 'save' money by buying a 250-400$ (+ installation) thermostat when a normal one costs around 40$. This works for some people/situations, but I'd rather just turn the heat down before I go out the door. On top of it all, your thermostat can now be used against you in a court of law, and who knows what companies will do with this information.

It'll be interesting to see what happens with power companies and rebates for cooperative thermostats.

Long-term, I imagine the market will largely be driven by new construction and from installation of new HVAC systems in existing buildings. It's much easier to upsell a $250 thermostat as part of a $BIGNUM package than it is to sell one standalone. Rationally the tradeoff is the same either way, but psychologically it works much better.

One other thing about the "Internet of Things" movement that has really bugged me: all of these Internet-enabled Things tend to rely on (oh, no, there's that word again) the "cloud."

I really don't like the idea of my home reporting everything to third parties. If I want access to things on my home LAN, it should be through my own VPN and not a third party.

Requiring that someone run their own home VPN would restrict your market pretty severely. C'mon. These are mass-market consumer devices.

What, did Honeywell hire the vaunted Hardware Copying division of Samsung to make this? Couldn't look more like a Nest rip-off if you set out from the start trying to make a Nest rip-off. (Which they likely did.)

In fairness, both the Nest and the Lyric look (and work!) like a digital version of Honeywell's 1950's-era thermostat: http://lyric.honeywell.com/Images/thermostats_slides/1950_th...

So, round thermostat as skeuomorph. I wonder when we'll see a simpler on-the-wall thermostat that still exposes fancy controls and visualizations on a smartphone - seems pointless to me to have essentially the guts of a smartphone along with a touchscreen bolted to my wall when I already have one in my pocket...

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