Competition: Nest: Airwave: Fail

Spent the summer with Nest installed in my workshop for benchmarking. Whereas I'm not quite impressed with general performance, there's one thing I'm sorely disappointed with: Airwave.

Let's start with the fact that it is advertised as "an exclusive feature of Nest Learning Thermostat". Well, it's not. It existed for ages - don't know about thermostats, but one of my 10+ old HVAC units has it implemented in hardware.

Then come claims that it can "reduce A/C runtime up to 30%". I really doubt it. Except, maybe, the "up to" part - you see, technically, 1% falls under "up to 30%" as well.

Now, "I doubt it" is not a scientific proof, but here's the facts that make me come forward with this claim, and some more.

• Under some circumstances, Airwave will backfire. Trivial example: volumetric heat capacity of the inner coil is too small for the amount of time Nest lets the air handler run. I do not know how they calculate this amount, but in either case, it fails for my specific configuration, 'cause it starts blowing warm air shortly after condenser is shut off.
• To add insult to an injury, this makes the A/C to turn on sooner than it would otherwise have, causing short cycling.
• Apparently, the decision to activate Airwave doesn't really take latent heat into consideration [to proper extent], and I end up with a clammy workshop which makes me put the temperature down two degrees - my normal comfortable working temperature is 28°C, but at the end of this summer, as monsoon came and brought humidity with it, I had to drop it to 26°C.
• In addition, it appears that the inner coil's temperature rises above the dew point quite fast, and air stream starts blowing the condensate back into the air it just finished working hard on extracting humidity out of.

As a result, let me use Nests' marketspeak, "I may have ended up with electric bill up to 30% higher than last summer", when a dumb thermostat was in exactly the same location.

Now,

• Can you fine-tune Airwave? No.
• Can you disable Airwave? No Yes. You have to convince it first that you really want it off, Dave. (see update below)

So, either I have to put up with Nest's inefficiency, or I will have to take it off and eat the $250 + shipping as a cost of curiosity, or just sell it to someone fascinated with it. I suspect the latter will be the case, for Nest is surely falling short of its advertised virtues.

Disclaimer: The above is a personal opinion, based on subjective feelings and objective measurements. Your mileage may vary.

UPDATE (2012/10/02): Since about a couple of days ago, it is possible to disable it. However, as of the moment of writing, this is not yet reflected anywhere on Nest support site.

UPDATE (2012/10/03): Automagically, Airwave turned back on without my interference. So if it annoys you as much as it annoys me, you'll have to watch it for a while and make sure that it is really off. A similar issue came up with Auto-Away - it turns back on without being told to. Looks like a telltale sign of not saving a flag state when a device firmware update is happening.

Competition: Nest: Let Me Try To Help

Like I was saying earlier, Nine out of ten people trying to change the temperature on the webapp and mobile app after being exposed to the actual hardware are observed making circular motions with their index finger and having a puzzled face. It was more difficult on the webapp than it was on the mobile app, because the latter has visible arrows (which some people managed to miss) whereas the former doesn't.

So I wonder, why didn't Nest designers implement this feature and where their usability expert was looking? I'd call this a major goof for a company that paid so much attention to slick hardware design. Or maybe they just underestimate the number of users (of which just Android user base, according to Nest page at Android Market, is between 1000 and 5000 - and I bet that this is a small fraction of users for it looks like the device is targeted at iOS user base)? Or they just don't care?

Well, let me try to help.

You'd think that tracking a circular gesture on a square screen would be difficult? Not at all.

1. Take the touch coordinate. Convert it to polar coordinate system against the center of your thermostat image and work in it thereafter.
2. Take the drag coordinate. Keep the thermostat pointer directed at the drag point - it is easy because after polar conversion you have the angle, hence, the setpoint. You don't care much about the radius.
3. Take the release coordinate. Send it back to hardware.

Voila.

Now, I wonder, how much time it'll take them to implement it? Or they declare the clickety-click the new standard for UI usability?

Honeywell RTH7500: Long Term Verdict

Surprisingly, the most annoying feature of this thermostat turned out to be lack of programmable hysteresis, a.k.a. deadband.

This particular one, installed in this particular location, allows runtimes as short as three bleeping minutes - whereas the time required to get into more or less efficient operating mode is no less than about five minutes for furnaces and about fifteen minutes for an A/C or a heatpump.

Likewise, there is no minimum run time protection (sometimes called short cycling protection).

In other words, this thermostat will make your unit work much less efficiently than it is designed to, and the only way to prevent that is to put the thermostat in a place where the temperature changes very, very slowly - like a closet or a thermally insulated box. Which is not quite that practical.

So, thumbs down, no go.

Likewise, if I ever have to select a thermostat again, I will pay particular attention to presence of programmable hysteresis and minimum run time.

What Google doesn't get about All This Buzz...

...is a simple fact that people are many personas in one.

The Me fixing my cars has nothing to do and wants nothing to do with The Me working for That Big Company, nor The Me obsessed with climate control, nor The Me talking strange tongues, nor The Me playing the sax or doing whatever else.

What's worse, they conflict.

Their areas of interest and social circles are barely, if at all, connected, and quite often information leaking from one circle to another would cause major embarrassment, if not more severe consequences.

Not even talking about the simple fact that a friend of my friend is not necessarily a friend of mine.

It's not even the "nothing to hide" argument, its a simple fact that multiple personas of me are standing in each other's way, and treading on each other's feet, and are annoying each other when they are trying to do something.

Give me multiple personas I can control (without resorting to having multiple accounts, which is a major inconvenience).

Give me privacy controls so I can prevent bleeding of facts from one sphere of interest to another.

Give me a way to separate them.

Then I'll be happy.

I don't see that hapening anytiume soon, though., so for now I'll just buckle up and see if am willing to subject myself to all these voices talking in my headmail all at once.

UPDATE: See? What'd I tell ya? Posted it in the wrong blog. Ah, the hell with it, let it stay here as a lesson. Crossposted to where it belongs.