TechStuff Classic: TechStuff Builds a Nest

UH and the products they make. And I, like Lauren was saying, Google has made a really incredible move in offering to purchase Nest for a what some might call a ridiculous sum of money. I think that three point two billion accounts as pretty ridiculous. I mean, I mean, it's a company that makes two things so far, yes, and it's only existed since so and they've only been having stuff that they could sell since So anyway, let's

let's talk about this. If you had told me ten years ago that I'd be sitting down and talking into a microphone to record a show about a company that's big product is a thermostat first, I would say who are you and why are you? In this consulting firm because that's where I was ten years ago. But moreover, I just said no, I wouldn't. Who who would want

to listen to that? Well, okay, there has been a lot of buzz about Nest over the past couple of years that it has existed because they make these these smart devices, smart thermostats and smart smoke detector carbon monoxide exactly, um. And and you know, with the Internet of Things becoming more of a real thing, people have been excited about. This is one of the leading companies that's creating the kind of hardware that you can use to to make

your home and Internet of things. Yeah, and also the design aesthetic right, gorgeous it is and and and it works with your smartphone and that's all terrific. And I did want to mention that for the record, thermostats are kind of a big business. There's some ten million sold in the US every year, and they control some half of the energy used in US homes, right, so this is not insignificant. Yeah, if you talk, if you look at your energy bill and you divide it by two,

that amount of money is going straight to your system. Yeah. So if you are able to make an impact on that. It will reflect in the amount of money you have to spend on energy bills, particularly if you live in a place where you have a fairly extreme climate, so that you're HVA system has to work extra hard to make sure your living space is a comfortable one. And uh. And in fact, what this all comes back to a guy named Tony Fidel, who once upon a time worked

for a little company called Apple. Yeah, by work, do we mean it? He kind of led the iPod and kind of that the iPhone teams for a while, for multiple generations for iPod and I think three generations of iPhone he was overseeing that. He was senior vice president of those departments. And uh. And so yeah, we're talking about someone who definitely knew about designing for a particular aesthetic, uh,

and to create something that is attractive for consumers. Because it's easy for us to forget this and I know we say it on tech stuff all the time, so maybe it's not easy for you to forget because we

say it so frequently. But before the iPod, you know, MP three players existed, there were, but no one had really designed one that really cut the public's attention like there were there was no one that was a dominant player at the time, and then the iPods design really started to kind of dominate to the point where you started seeing other companies designs look more iPod ish. Not to Ryan Stirrup any patent, you know, wars again, but

but people realized that. I mean, previous to that, I think that most MP three players looked like they were functional, Yeah, like bricks. I had one. I mean I had one that I loved because it was probably about the price of an iPod, but it had twice the capacity. But it looked like a brick and it felt like one too. It was heavy. But the uh, you know, and the

iPhone another great example. We've talked about that before too, about how in the United States smartphones were pretty much the realm of executives, right like BlackBerry was king in the US. Now in Europe and in Japan that was a different story, but not here in the US. It wasn't until the iPhone came out that you started seeing the consumer market move toward it. So this is a guy who was right there on the forefront. He knew a thing or two about, you know, making sure you

had an attractive product. But that's not exactly what got him excited about this. First of all, he retired. He retired in two thousand eight from Bowl. He was he was like, okay, I have made my mark. I I have helped bring to really influential products to the market. I may rest, but apparently things just weren't always you know,

the most comfortable temperature at the Fidel house. Maybe he just got up to change the thermostat one too many times, and he started thinking about this fact, the fact that half of your energy is spent controlling the climate of your home, and that, according to at least some study that he was aware of, because it's in a blog post on the Nest web page, that the average person adjusts his or her thermostat hundred times a year, and so and and and Furthermore, he was, you know, he

was trying to update his home to he he was like, we've got these gorgeous products for our music and for communication. Why can't we have that kind of thing for everything? Why does why does this control for my climate? Where apparently I'm getting up to do it multiple times a day, Because if it's times a year, that's you know, that's a bunch. Why is it so boxy and ugly, and because the almost thermostats not really aesthetically pleasing, they're they're functional, right,

So that's why Yeah. Yeah, According to another guy that we're going to be talking about in just a couple of seconds, the design, the basic design on thermostats has not really changed since the nineties. Yeah. You either have the digital kind or you have the old kind that has sort of a coiled thermometer in it. If you

want to know more, you can actually go back. We did a tech Stuff episode about how thermostats work back in the day where we talk about the actual the actual mechanics of a thermostat, both the I think we mainly focused on the old, the old mercury switch kind, but there are various other types as well. Um. And another thing that Fiddel was thinking about was the fact that he, you know, we we live in the incredible future. Why can't I control my thermostat from my smart phone? Right?

And and and there were some products out there that would let you do that, but they cost like five dollars a unit, right, And you had to you know, you you essentially had to go to some sort of home automation specialist and then have that installed forum then

why are why are these things in for you? It wasn't like something where you could go to a warehouse in or or is some major store Hony People or Lows or something like that and say show me where the automated or the remote thermostats are, because it was all packages that you had to go through contractors to get,

so not the not the most accessible, certainly. And he also realized that we were getting to a point as far as computer software is concerned, where you could create very sophisticated algorithms that could have quote unquote learning behavior right, they could start to recognize patterns and then respond to those patterns in a predetermined way. So the big example that we would have with nest is that if no one's in the house, there's no need to have the heat cranked up or the a C cranked up to

keep the house at the regular comfortable temperature. And if you know when people are coming home, all right, if it notices that you come home at six thirty every night, then it can start working the house towards that temperature whenever it needs to in order to have it ready for you to get home. Yeah, so when you walk

through the door. It feels as if your house has stayed that temperature all day long, whereas the reality is between the hours of whatever and whatever, it was not you know, either the system wasn't working at all, or it wasn't working nearly at full capacity, it was working enough so that it wouldn't take too much work to Yeah, yeah, you don't want to. I mean, obviously you don't want to shut everything down. Like if it's if it's the the what was what do they call it the polar vortex?

When uh, it was when I was at ce S, so I missed it. I wasn't here in Atlanta, and that's what they called it. Nine degrees here. There's some kind of science about it that I think that we have actually written and stuff about on how stuff works at this point, but I have no idea. I just

saw tweets that said polar vort text. I was like, I don't know what it is it the day after tomorrow back in Atlanta, I don't know nine degrees it was basically yeah, in that case, you wouldn't want the house to get all the way down to you know, below freezing obviously not. But but at the same time, you wouldn't want it to be at you know, seventy five degrees because you'd be using a lot of energy while you're not actually there. So it needed he solve

the problem. It was an engineering problem. You had to build a device that could monitor the temperature, keep it within a certain range, and then be flexible enough so that that range changes based upon the parameters that are present.

And also if you happen to like it warm in the morning but cold at night, then if you had a thermostat that could learn these patterns, it could start to anticipate it and change them for you proactively, so you don't have to be the one to go up there and say like, oh, you know, I like it cold when I go to bed, but when I wake up, it's it's my body temperature so low. I need to get my temperature up. I needed to be warmer. So

this was a great opportunity he saw. So he ended up contacting a couple of other folks and working on an idea for a learning thermostat. Yeah, and these were mostly other ex Apple folks or perhaps folks that were maybe at the time still working for Apple. Exactly the date lines of these there's certainly ex Apple folks now yes, um, and and one of them, Mr Matt Rogers, he would

wind up co founding this company, Nest with yep. So twenty ten is when Nest Labs officially forms May specifically, and they their strategy was to be kind of quiet about what they were doing. They didn't talk about their products, I didn't talk about their lines of research really, and so it kind of took the world by surprise when in October of twenty eleven, Fidel essentially announces, Hey, here's this thing we've been working on. Is this little, round,

gorgeous looking device. It's actually a thermostat and it's smart and it can connect to WiFi and you can adjust it with your phone and it learns what you like. And people were just thinking, you are saying too many things, Mr man, I don't know what you're what's going on. I think that they owe so much of their um just general corporate feel from Apple. Uh. You know. Matt Rogers strikes me as kind of an Apple fanboy who

who became eventually one of the iPod software developers there. Um. But he has said that his first computer, when he was like three years old, was a Macintosh Plus and that, um, a lot of the you know, design, sensibility and just just concepts of how to run a business are definitely deeply owed to Apple in general and Steve Jobs very particularly sure, and you can certainly see elements of that when you look at both the company and its products.

So Fidel wrote a blog post that when up on the Nest website October and kind of explained why a thermostat because that was you know that you had two big reactions from people when this was first announced. People would say, uh huh, like what, what's what's your game? Why would you even do this? And the other were like where when and where can I buy one of these?

Because it looks beautiful? And I mean, I remember when this came out because I remember, you know, I was a big fan of shows like c Nets Buzz Out Loud, and I remember people like Tom Merritt and Molly would going, uh, you know, kind of bonkers over this thing. They were they were like this, yeah, and at the same time when I started looking into it and my gosh, I kind of want one of those two. Well, he in that blog post laid out what it was they wanted.

The thermostat to be able to do. He said he wanted to design the thermostat to learn your preferred temperature and schedule since when you left the house or when you came home, to give you tips and feedback on your energy use. To be able to connect to WiFi so you can control it from anywhere, for it to look beautiful, and for you to feel proud to actually be an owner of it, which it's very Steve jobs ish kind of thing, right right, and also to have

a positive impact on the world. And you know, I honestly think based upon the work that this company has done, they're being they're being sincere about that. It's not that you know, it's obviously it's a business, but it's not something where I don't think that's just lip service, like

let's make the world a better place. I haven't heard any numbers from outside sources, but according to the company UM as of as of only February, they had already helped energy efficiency to the tune of saving like two

million kill a lot hours of energy. So I'm like twenty nine million dollars worth and in US, yeah, convergion, so you're saving money and you're also by by taking down some of that demand, we don't have to produce as much energy and we're not wasting it on on heating an empty house, or we're not burned, we're not burning even more coal or or using up more natural gas or whatever it happens to be that has provided the heat and or a c for those homes. And um,

it's interesting. They started taking pre orders for the Nest thermostat, and I think that was at a price point of two, which I believe is what still is today. Two, So you know, not a small amount of money for something like that, but still cheaper than any I mean by half, cheaper than any relatively similar products in the market. Yeah. Yeah, and also it would ultimately save you money, assuming that

you're using it properly. So at any rate, pre orders pre orders within three days of of them talking about this, that within that blog post going up, they had sold out of all of their stock that they had planned on producing in the short term. So after three days of the store being opened, they shut it. They closed the store after three days with the explanation of guys, this had way more of a demand than we had anticipated. We knew that we had something potentially big on our hands.

We didn't know that all of you would agree with us. And so they closed the store and they started working very hard on meeting the demands of the initial pre orders as well as figuring out how were they going to meet the expanded demand. And it wouldn't be until uh later in UH I think it was March two thousand and twelve. So they shut the store down November two thleven. It's not until March two thousand twelve that

they're able to open the store back up again. I'm sure that most of that time was devoted to um to investment related issues and sure and maybe like uh streamlining manufacturing process and he's getting the supply chain in order, you know, lots of stuff that the background stuff. Yeah, that's not terribly exciting to talk about. It's pretty important. It turns out that that's a big deal. We'll be back with more about tech stuff explaining how Nest works

after this quick break. So, starting in May two twelve, the Nest Thermostat became available in other places besides their online store. You could get it at Lowe's Hardware stores. By June, you can get it on Amazon. By a little bit later in the year. I think of by October that year you could get it best Buy. You can't even get it at the Apple online store. Yeah,

so you know, that's obviously the relation. And I don't know, I'll be right now, I don't know if that's going to be be the same now that Google has is acquiring Nest. Yeah, that's a con question. They have affirmed that they are going to um continue supporting I I O S product exactly. Yeah. It's not gonna be like suddenly your iPhone is unable to adjust the temperature of your home, right that would be that would be a

pretty ridiculously poor business decision. And I think I think the Google and Apple have both learned their lesson on that kind of I mean, you even had for a while, you had one person, like you had the CEO of Google sitting on the board of directors of Apple for a while, that was Eric Schmidt. That that didn't last forever. He did a step down for the board of directors eventually.

But the relationship between Google and Apple is not always contentious, even though they are direct competitors, at least in the mobile space and arguably in the computer space. But I don't think chromebooks are really that big of a competitor against at any rate. Yeah, at any rate. Getting back to Nest, So by October, remember this is just one year, not even a full year since they had announced it, because they they announced it late in October two eleven.

But in October twelve, the second generation of Nest Thermostat debuted and um, this one was you know, a little sexy er, even it was thinner. So they were able to miniaturize some of the components make it even more compact, which is kind of astounding because they even increased the

capabilities of the second generation. So the first generation worked with oh, I don't know, it was something like fIF HVAC systems out there, and you had to check to make sure before you know, they stressed check to make sure that the one that you have, the system you have is uh is compatible with the system UH. Well, they were able to open that up to a much

larger percentage of the market. They also were able to create a device that could work with uh H VAC systems that had two different capacities for cooling down your house, so some of them would work at a percent sometime and then knock it down to for just maintaining a temperature, or if it didn't need to, like if you're getting starting to approach the temperature, then they might might power down a little bit, but not turn all the way off. Well,

those systems have two dedicated wires for that. There's one dedicated for there's one decadent, and the original Nest did not have the capability. Yeah, you couldn't. It didn't have a place to plug both of those in the second Nest did, so you could do that. It also works with multi stage heating systems. That works with systems that have humidifiers or de humidifiers, and and across all energy modes. I mean if you've got gas or propane or electricity

or etcetera. Yeah, So, so it definitely opened up the market a lot wider than the initial Nest did. And again it was smaller too, so um or at least it was thinner, it didn't project out as far from the wall. So yeah. They say that three out of four of their Nest customers opt to install it themselves

and that it can be installed within thirty minutes. They also have the Nest Concierge service, so if you feel like you are one of those one of who would likely electrocute him or herself were you to attempt to install it, such as, I don't know yours truly, uh, not that I haven't nest, but if I did, I would totally. I'm tech savvy, which means I also know it can kill me. Um. But yeah, you can actually opt for an additional fee to have someone come out

and help you. So then made two thousand thirteen, Nest made its first acquisition. It was a company called my Energy, which specifically builds products that let users track energy usage and savings. So the idea is by getting some more analytic data and some more collective uh products, they can make the Nest even more effective and make products further down the line that are able to incorporate some of this analysis so that you get an even more granular

idea of what's going on and how you can save energy. Now, as we've seen in the past, there's a huge market for stuff that collects data and then analyzes it and presents it to you in an understandable way. Oh sure, and and basically any time that you allow these days, um, you know, nerds, which are most of us. Let's be honest and um to to min max their surroundings. You're going to yeah, fitness trackers perfect example, right, being able to sit there and say, like, now I'm able to

attract every single calorie that I intake and burn. I don't mean to make you check your force while you're doing that, but it's a little bit over a thousand today, I'm gonna work out. Okay, that's good. So yeah, I don't. I'm not wearing any of my accouchramal today, not even my pebble. I feel a little lost without it, to be honest. But anyway, so clearly there's a market there, so it makes sense to bring that in and incorporate that in the Nest family. But then, uh, you know,

we get over. Towards the end of two thirteen, they also introduced a brand new product, and that's the Nest Protect. That's their smoke detector and carbon monoxide detector. Now, this was obviously a departure and some people again we're thinking, why why would you would I need one of those to be smart? Doesn't the thing on the ceiling that beeps do just as well. But this one, again is

WiFi enabled. It can can neck to an app so that that way you can get an alert on your phone if your smoke detector goes off, which obviously could be you know that could be monumentally important. Oh sure, sure it can. It will wirelessly connect to other smoke detectors in your house, so that if, for example, there's a fire in the kitchen, then all of them when they go off, can say, hey, there's a fire in the kitchen. Right, it can specifically tell you where the

alarm was triggered. A lot of smoke detector systems are wired together so that if one alarm is triggered trip they all they all beat, but they don't tell you

which one it was that was set off. Right, So you have the information that you need in order to get out, but you might not have the information you need to maybe to get out very safely, or or to or to actually diffuse a situation before it gets you know, unmanageable, because it may be that there's something smoking that you can actually take care of and minimize

the damage. But if you don't know where in the house that's singing place, obviously the most important thing for you to do is to get out safely, right clearly. So this would give you more information about that, and also,

of course the carbon monoxide monitor, which is also very important. UM. It also will work wirelessly with Nest thermostats, so if the carbon monoxide A sensor picks up a concentration, it'll send a message to the Nest thermostat to say, hey, shut off the furnace because we have a leak somewhere or something's going on. Yeah, yeah, I really need stuff. And um these are less expensive than the Nest thermostats. The thermostats are two fifty. The smoke detectors are about

I think one thirty to one fifty. As I recall, I didn't write it down in front of me, but I know it's right in that range because I was actually looking at it to um possibly replace my smoke detectors. But if I do that, I will have to buy five of them because I have five smoke detectors in

my house. Anyone who follows me on Twitter saw that that terrible day when I got home and one of them was chirping, and the way my house is laid out, I could not tell which one it was, so I had to go out and get new batteries for all of my smoke detectors, but you should do anyway, but well, yeah, yeah,

but this would actually tell me what's going on. Also, it's designed to be very uh, very careful with power consumption and and the and it even says you wouldn't have to replace the batteries every single year, but it would give you an alert when it has to. In fact, it would send you a message on your phone so that you wouldn't have to sit there and listen to

that chirp forever trying to figure out right. And if you're away from your house and you get that message, then you actually have the opportunity to go and buy a battery before you get back and realize that you need to go back out again. So very clever and uh yeah, it's it looks like it's a pretty neat product. You do have to replace it every seven years or so because the detectors will eventually wear out. It's a chemical based thing, I specifically the carbon monoxide sensors in particular,

and that's that's that's typical. By the way, if you think that that's unusual, no, that's not unusual. For carbon monoxide detectors. You do have to replace those regularly because the sensors do wear out over time. UM, smoke detectors didn't last a little bit longer, but carbon monoxide and I think it's still recommended to replace your your smoke detectors once every ten years or so. Yeah, I'm I don't have the number in front of me, but I

feel like UM. And all of these devices, by the way, do have activity detection like like motion and light sensors on them so that they know when you're coming to and fro rooms, so that they can all link up and decide, you know, figure out when someone is in there and whether or not they need to be activated for for the for the thermstat's sake, although the carbon monoxide and smoke detectors work together with the thermstats to

help them cover more area. And they also have lights in them and will light up if you want them to, so that when you you can set it so like if it's in bedroom mode, it won't do that. So if it detects motion, it won't light up and wake you up, But if it's in a hallway and you walk out, it will end up acting like a little night light, which I thought was kind of cute too. And and the light changes color and we'll give you a warning. This is probably the thing I like the

most about the smoke detector. So let's say it starts detecting a little bit of smoke and it's not enough for it to trigger a full warning yet, but it wants to alert you to this fact. It will give you an actual human voice, uh warning saying that there is detecting some smoke, and the little blue ring of

light on the device will turn to yellow. And then if you go to it, and let's say you are like me and you're attempting to roast some veggies and you did not realize that you had a little bit of minced garlic on the burner or whatever, and that's the only reason there's any smoke at all. Uh. You can wave physically at the smoke detector and it will say, oh, false alarm. Well then never mind. It will shut itself off. It will never do the full blast alarm. So my

dog would be so excited about that. Yes, yes, my dog too. Yeah. So the idea of being able to uh not have the typical response in the Strickland household where the alarm goes off and then the other person in the house helpfully chimes out, dinner must be ready. That would be nice. That's my life. We've got a bit more to say about the Nest, but first let's take another quick break. Okay, So it's and uh in there was some really big news, especially like we're recording

this podcast on January. It was not very long ago at all when we heard the news that Google was acquiring Nest for the some of around three it depends upon who you ask. Some say three point two billions, some say three point one, some say three point five. But in excess of right, yeah, and I think that the official news might have broken on thet of January wearing that's yeah, not long at all, right, And and the thing is, the thing is that Fidel had had

a meeting with them before Nest even launched. Um and then at the TED conference, uh he and Sergey Bryan had a big pow wow and they showed him a video and a prototype of the Nest and kind of got them pretty excited about it, like excited enough that in May of that year, Google led their first round of financing. I guess it was their second round of financing, but um and and would also lead their next round

of financing the next year. So Google was involved early on and making sure that this company was going to get the funding it needed to do the work they were doing. And I mean, if you look at some of Google's other stuff that they're doing with the automos, driving is probably the easiest example, right, you can you can see that this sort of these algorithms and these products fit very well into this kind of integrated uh you know, using information in an actual, real world physical way. Yeah.

And it's been such a big year for Google in terms of hardware. Um, you know, they they acquired Motorola for what like twelve point five billion dollars. They've been working so much with Chromebook. Uh. They they've been working with Glass. They've got a rumored smart watch project that that could be coming out this year. Although although rumored smart watch projects are pretty bountiful, three more watches on the way to me, So I'll get excited about that

when I see a picture. I've got to watch problem, okay, I And I imagine that CS did not help that at all. It was okay, Yeah, I saw a lot of watches, but I thought, no, I think I've got that one covered with one exception, but we'll talk about that and to see it. Well, we have already talked about that the ce S podcast, we just haven't recorded it yet. Yes, they're publishing in opposite order. I think.

So you guys out there have already heard me talk about it, but I have not, will have already talked about it yet. I think I need a diagram that

sentence go on. Yes, um okay, and so so, both Google and Nest have have indicated that Nest is going to remain its own sort of independent thing, which you know that was that was one of the big concerns, right people where those knee jerk reactions as Google is going to purchase this company that does smoke detectors, does that mean that Google is going to change it in

some way? Like is it going to no longer be the thing that we got excited about, right or are they going to make them work on some other projects instead of what they were originally created for? And they've said nope, that Google is mostly going to be providing you know the kind of money and infrastructure and marketing teams and tech resources that will let Nest be more

themselves than they ever have been before. And other concerns like The other big one is that you could conceive of Nest devices gathering lots of different information like well, I mean, they do gather lots of different information. Um, and how that is going to be put to use is a pretty big and pretty fair, I think concern from the sectors right now. And Nest has already come out and said that they don't they don't plan on

changing their privacy uh statements. Well, they said, and I quote from their blog, our privacy policy clearly limits the use of customer information to providing and improving Nests products and services. We've always taken privacy seriously and this will not change. Right, So the fact that they take privacy seriously won't change. They haven't said that their privacy policies won't change. Okay, fair enough if you're going to parse

it to that level. But I think I think the main concern people had was, all right, so does this mean you're gonna send Google all this information about when I'm home, when I'm not home, how active I am, what I you know, whether or not you know how many people tend to be in my house and rooms I spend the most time in. It's all the information is going to go to Google and then I'm going

to get directed advertising or worse because of this. And I think that was them saying like, that's not gonna happen. You're not gonna You're not going to have your your smoke detector and your thermostat tattling on you. Well, I mean, you know, I could. I could certainly see One of the concerns that I that I've read about was that Google could sell your your energy usage data to providers to let them advertise to you more sadly. Um. And

I can totally picture Google doing that. I mean maybe, yeah, kind of, I can see it happening. I mean, if let me put it to you this way, if that would mean at the end of the day that I actually had the opportunity to take advantage of genuinely good deals, I wouldn't necessarily be upset about that. Yeah. And and to be fair, and Nest already does have partnerships with energy providers. Um, I mean they are opt in, and but it's for you know, either free or discounted equipment

or rates on energies. And I would hope they would remain an opt in approach. That would I always prefer opt in to opt out, because when you know that you can take advantage of the stuff, but you don't feel like that's a appropriate then you don't have to

do anything. I hate systems where it just assumes that you are in whole hog and then you have to hunt through this labyrinthian system to find the one checkbox two un check so that you are looking at you Facebook so that you can so that you can get out of that system. So as long as it remains opt in, and of course that's a big if, right, I mean that's I like to wear rose colored glasses for this sort of stuff. But I am aware that sometimes companies make these changes. But as long as it

remains opt in, I'm perfectly fine with us. But at any rate, anytime you're talking about any kind of ice that's collecting information in one way or another, how that data could eventually be used is always going to be

a concern, exactly. Yeah. Um. One one other Google's Sway kind of concern is that it's going to is that it may become difficult to not have a nest installed in your house if they get enough contracts with enough HVACT providers and which you know they certainly have the the money and the marketing power to do then, um, you know, having having these providers, say, because you can buy a Nest retail, but you can also get it through whatever company you use to to heat and cool

your home. And so people have expressed a concern that that it will be harder and harder to have a non smart thermostat in your house once these things really catch on and people figure out how much money and equipment wear and tear can be saved by installing them. Oh, sure, if you have a system that is dependent upon Nest thermostat. Not that there are such systems right now, because right now Nest is designed to work with anything to work

with the pre existing systems. But down the line, let's say we go down five ten years, I could see that being a real issue, especially you're talking several generations down in the Nest product line. You could end up with a system that was optimized for a Nest and then yeah, you know, you might in theory be able to disc nect it and then put in a generic thermostat, but it might not work very well, kind of like the way Nest wasn't always compatible with everything that existed.

Pregeneration too and yeah, I think that that's another another area where people are like, well, what if I don't want that much data collected about me? And what if I want a dumb thermostat and I and I don't think that. I mean, I think it's going to be at least a couple of minutes before anyone is forcing us all to have smart thermostats. But that when the day comes, you'll be used to it, so don't worry

about it. And by then all of your data will be out already from everything else that we interact with, so our thermostat will be you know, it will mean nothing. But then, um, so let's talk a little bit about what actually makes it tick. Not that they tick, they don't tick. If if your nest is ticking, you might

want to have that checked out. Now, the nest thermostat has multiple temperature sensors inside of it, and this is the idea of the multiple sensors is in order to get the most accurate reading on the temperature of the room, right, So these sensors are are designed so that they can very carefully calibrate the climate system so it meets exactly what it is that the thermostat has learned you like.

So if it knows that I like the temperature of my house, especially say in my bedroom to be right around seventy degrees when I go to bed, it can uh start that up when it gets close to bedtime, and the rest of the time it may just be you know, kind of a warmer temperature or colder depending upon what time of year it is. Um and then uh.

So that's the main sensor obviously for heat, but it also contains motion and light sensors, so it can detect when people are home, because if no one's home, then it can go into away mode right and Ottawa Way I think is what they call it. But anyway, the the idea is that it can then start to ramp down the the system so they're not putting out so not consuming so much energy. And it used to be that it would wait I think it was it was more than an hour or an hour plus something to

before I would go into auta away. Now it's half an hour. Um they did a software update, so I think even generation one will do it in half an hour now. So if it doesn't detect any movement, and if especially if you have a pattern of leaving at around a certain time each day, it will go ahead and get and go into that away mode so that it doesn't waste energy. And then there are all these algorithms that has that uses an onboard computer. It's actually

got a microprocessor. It's an arm based microprocessor, so similar to what you would find in a mobile phone or a tablet, uh. And it would run those algorithms to create those those patterns and the responses to the patterns so that it would start to control the system and make sure it was the most comfortable whenever you happen to be coming home. Um, and that would be and that's that learning behavior kind of thing that active change. And it has both RAM and ROM, so I mean

it's it is like a little computer. It's like it's a tiny well mounted computer that knows what temperature you want it to be. Yep. It's got the Wi Fi chip obviously that allows it to connect to your home network. This is what allows you to operate it via an app. Right, although they also can connect wirelessly directly to each other without going through your home networks, so that if your

power goes out, they can still talk to each other. Yeah, they're not obviously if your power goes out, they are not going to be able to control system. But it means that in the in terms of the carbon, monoxide and smell detectors, that they will still operate, Yes, exactly. One of the cool things I actually looked at a tear down of a Nest thermostat, and there was They showed the battery inside the thermostat and a couple of cool things about it. One, the battery is there sort

of to act kind of in the place of a capacitor. Now, a capacitor is designed to store energy and then release it all at once. The battery is not releasing it all at once. What's there to do is to supplement the electricity that the Nest dermostatic gets from your home, So you hardwire it to your home right so it's connected to your HVAC system that way and it draws

power that way. But that power is not sufficient enough for it to do some of the ultra cool things the Nest does, like broadcast over WiFi or have that beautiful LCD screen which is I think four bit and three twenty by three twenty resolution. So you know, most thermostats don't have that. They don't need that much power, but this one does, so the battery provides that extra power.

The cool thing about the tear down was they showed that not only is it a replaceable battery, but the directions on how to replace it are actually on the various cables that attached to the battery itself. It says pull this, push this, and so. Uh. The the it was, I fix it. That's a great website for anyone who likes tear downs. You should go check that out, but specifically to show how easy or difficult it is to take apart various pieces of equipment if you ever have

to repair it. So it's really meant for repair Phoe. You know, it's not necessarily meant for the average person. But they said this is remarkable because not only is it easy to do, but they even include instructions on how to do it. It's very it's very repair friendly, which if you think back to the fact this guy's from Apple might shock you. That's some commentary. But they also have sensors that are humidity sensors, so that it can control a humidifier or de humidifier if that's part

of your climate control system. I do not have one of those. Um also it can work with you know, you have you ever seen the systems that have uh heating elements underneath floors, so it can actually do radiant heating. It will heap the floor system they have. They'll work with the nest too. They have sensors that will work with that as well. Yes, that's pretty awesome and uh and it's also important because one of the drawbacks to

those those systems. One thing is that they are really efficient and they're very quiet, but it takes a while for it to warm up a room, and they tend to kind of muck with regular thermostats. Thermostats really have trouble being able to detect whin a room is a

comfortable temperature using this radiant heat technology. But the next one has a mode in it when you if you have that kind of system and you hook it up into the nest, it can take that into consideration and thus not be confused, so you don't end up with floors that are too warm to walk on, which would be bad. The floor is literally lava floor. Yeah, so it also is you know, it's it's got all the elements of your basic computer is really what is it?

And it's a circular circuit board. So if you look at those tear downs, it is a thing of beauty. And in fact, I think on the I fix at one in particular, they say, you don't seem any circular circuit boards. This is pretty cool. That's that's really cute. That's that I mean, it's it's an optimization of the space, which is wonderful, but just that kind of design detail is wonderful. Yep, yep. So it's really an interesting product.

It's one of those things where maybe eventually I will I'll go whole hog and and save up the money to refit my house because I would need to share I it would be a significant investment. You know, you're talking at that point for for me to replace the thermostats and the smoke detectors in my house. We're talking more than a thousand dollars. So that's not a small

amount of money. It's certainly not. But you know, some of the cool stuff I talked about what some of those naysayers are talking about with with this entire Google deal, but some of the cool stuff that could go on, you know, uh, nest could potentially collaborate with your Google apps to automatically detect when you're on vacation or how long it takes you to get home from work, and uh, and an update its temperature preferences based on that, and

it's temperature warm up and cool down. Yeah, I didn't even mention that the WiFi connectivity allows it to even figure out what the temperature is in your region, so that it can anticipate how hard it's going to have to work or how hard your HVAC system will have to work to camera act what and where the outside temperature happens to be. So here in Atlanta, for example, and say I don't know July, it would know that

the temperature outside is surface of the sun. And therefore, if you are going to be home in forty five minutes, it might as well start cranking up the A C now, because that's how long it's going to take it for your house to be habitable by the time you get there.

Also some commentary um Also, Nest employees could potentially start collaborating with with other Google departments and and working on on hardware, maybe maybe that elusive smart watch that we've been hearing about, or some of those automated cars or are personal robots that Google X has been talking. If I find out that the Google automated car gets a Nest climate control system in it, I'm just like, just just just sell it. Just let me buy one, or

not even climate control. I mean, these are clearly incredibly um smart, savvy people who are working for Nest. They could they could work on any number of projects, and they could they could be I mean like, could Nest be Google's new smart home division? Yeah, no, it totally

could be that. Now, you know, before we get all excited about that, let's keep in mind that Motorola has not exactly become Google's you know, mobile division, and in fact, there's some talk of Motorola spinning off and becoming its own, uh independent sub company. So you know, there's we're not we're not ready to prognosticate fully yet. It's too bad. I didn't make this one of my two thousand fourteen

predictions that Google was going to buy Nest. I did not see that coming, and I don't think anybody saw this one coming, aside from maybe like Larry Page and maybe Fidel Yeah. I did make the joke on Twitter that if Google wanted, they could pay me three point one billion and I'd be happy, to manually change everyone's thermostatic for them whenever they liked. But they did not take me up on that, I'm sorry, which is too bad because then I could have afforded to get the

Nest once put in my house. All right. Well, anyway, that wraps up our our discussion about Nest the company, the fact that it has entered into this new era. Uh and you know, we don't really know what that means yet. It could very well mean that we're going into an era where privacy becomes even a larger concern and that you know this, this could mean some dark stuff in the future. I'm hoping that that's not the case.

I'm cautiously optimistic that we're going to see some really cool collaborations between Nest and Google come out of this, and hopefully the kind that will benefit us as consumers more so than say, any kind of advertiser. That wraps up this classic episode. Hope you guys enjoyed it. I look forward to hearing from you if you have any suggestions about future topics I should cover in tech Stuff. The best way to get in touch with me it's over on Twitter. We use the handle text stuff hs

W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H