Do you think Google doesn't already know who is in the "frozen North"? How could knowing how long your furnace runs add any value, at all, for you as an advertising target, if we must always go with that utterly simplistic analysis?
Further people keep repeatedly claiming that the Nest device has some sort of presence detection. To my knowledge it has no such thing -- it simply allows you to program it by daily overrides instead of actively turning it on or off. Though of course many people eventually just end up setting it to a static temperature.
There is no amazing in-house intelligence gathering platform here.
Nest’s activity sensors have a 150° wide-angle view. That range enables Nest to activate Auto-Away in 90% of homes."
Don't know if its just a 0-D light level sensor or a PIR motion detector or a camera. But it does have a 150 degree FoV which vaguely implied optics.
It has certain architectural implications, my thermostat is on a lightly traveled inside hallway between sleeping and living quarters, so I'll never be able to use a nest; it would consider the house unoccupied pretty much all the time other than bedtime and wakeup time. I guess there are people with thermostats installed in their kitchen and/or living room and/or home office?
Conveniently enough, they sell a device to help with that. "In addition, the Nest Protect activity sensors improve the Auto-Away feature of your Nest Thermostat." (Nest Protect is their smoke detector.)
Yes. I'm not a huge fan of the product in general or the financial deal BUT I will say this aspect of the product is genius in that you want an auxiliary sensor aka the smoke detector right where people spend most of their time, bedrooms and offices and such. There are serious problems with the overall situation, but no sarcasm, the specific situation of this product pairing is a work of genius. I don't think that one idea makes up for the other problems, but credit it due them for this.
"Auto-Away saves energy by reducing heating and cooling in empty homes. Instead of having to turn the thermostat down every time you leave the house (and back up when you return), the Nest Learning Thermostat turns itself down automatically when it senses that you’re away."
Nest has a motion sensor, which appears to be a passive infrared light sensor. It's behind the grill hidden in the bottom 1/4 of the device below the screen. It uses this for the Auto-Away feature for example.
Further people keep repeatedly claiming that the Nest device has some sort of presence detection. To my knowledge it has no such thing -- it simply allows you to program it by daily overrides instead of actively turning it on or off. Though of course many people eventually just end up setting it to a static temperature.
There is no amazing in-house intelligence gathering platform here.