Last Friday’s news that Nest CEO Tony Fadell would be leaving the company he founded with Matt Rogers and stepping into an “advisory” role seemed like the culmination of months of stories about Nest’s demanding culture – particularly the frank displeasure of former Dropcam CEO Greg Duffy, who openly regretted selling his company to Nest. These reports have largely focused on Fadell, whose management style has been polarizing. But another dynamic playing out may have been even more important, according to interviews with insiders: Google’s restructuring into Alphabet last year, which placed new financial pressures on Nest to perform that some say limited its ability to innovate.
I’ve never really been able to form an opinion on Nest’s products – they seem kind of interesting, but I just don’t see myself paying that much for a thermostat or a fire alarm.
How many “innovations” did they have after Google’s acquisition?
If not so evident.
Where I live, security systems can only include fire alarms if they get to install them in the whole building. My business is in a strip mall; therefore, Nest was the only reasonable option for a fire alarm that would alert me when I am off-site (i.e., closed at night). Living less than a half mile from my store, being able to receive a phone alert is a good thing. I keep two in my store: one in the pharmacy area and the other is out by the soda fountain.
Can’t say that this YouTube video did Nest’s rep any good (from a Google employee no less!):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpsMkLaEiOY
I’ve no idea if the latest gen of Nest Protect has fixed this or not, but it sure as heck doesn’t make me want to buy one…
rkirkl,
As an observer who’s spent no money on this product, that video is hilarious!
Searching on the internet it appears many owners have buyer’s remorse over these false alarms when they’re at home and away, RMA units failing as well. I wouldn’t even consider one until I knew this was totally fixed, does anyone have information about nest acknowledging/fixing the problem?
The only info I found about a fix refers to the nest product recall over concerns about the motion detector disabling the alarm to easily; seems they fixed that one
To be honest, it turns my heaters on and off as required. That is all the features, innovation I want/need.
My big concern is that if Alphabet wind up Nest, will my house always be cold?!!?
I don’t want/need a “smart” firealarm. A firealarm is smart enough.
Nest’s intrinsic problem is that I already have one. I am not going to upgrade to V3, and I struggle to see a feature that would make me. I am a customer once and only once.
Adurbe,
Yea that concern is even more real because Nest has already discontinued products (from their purchase of Revolv) on google’s watch.
http://www.osnews.com/thread?627137
Personally I like the idea of smart IoT devices, but I absolutely detest how they’re being built to depend on proprietary cloud services. It’s technically unnecessary and restrictive. If they stop supporting older devices because reasons, all the “smart” functionality is rendered useless.
So, I want a unit that can continue to function as a smart device on my lan even when the internet goes out. Secondly, I’d want a device that isn’t hard coded to depend on proprietary software (that can be discontinued from the app stores, for example).
I would jump with joy if manufacturers did this, but where’s the incentive? If anything the engineering meetings likely push for the exact opposite: “this is good work, but we need you make sure the device functionality can’t be modified by anyone but us” and “this would be better for us if, rather than letting the user connect directly, the user logged into our servers. We can collect the data to up-sell services.”
I regret buying proprietary devices, and I’ve been bitten by proprietary junk more times than I care to admit. In my case it’s not because I didn’t know any better, but that it’s genuinely difficult to find products that are open and unlocked for owner control, it’s just not an option.
Does anyone know of a comprehensive website for fully open IoT devices somewhere? If not, maybe that’s something I could do to promote them.
Edited 2016-06-08 14:07 UTC
“Does anyone know of a comprehensive website for fully open IoT devices somewhere?”
Are you just another crazy man screaming at the desert? Just take a look at IoT Consortium Member List.
How does that get you fully open devices?
Thay all want to sell you items that need their software or reports to their servers.
That’s one reason I haven’t bought a nest. I want my smart home stuff to not be tied to a service or provider. Smart stuff shouldn’t have to. You don’t need a cloud to communicate with a thermostat, just a local server and IP address.
tkeith,
Exactly. Does anyone sell that?
Seems like the sort of thing one or two people could do in their spare time with an Arduino, a 3D printer and a Github repository. Sounds like the sort of thing that’d be awesome to see one or two people actually do.
Elder-Panic, Fire, Burglar alarms to WiFi, cell and|or SMS.
The main problem with IOT is that they are trying to add smarts to a product that is normally meant to last > 10 years.
My (basically free) dumb thermostat has kept my house warm when I wanted that for the last 20 years without any issue.
20 years ago I had dial-up internet. There is no way that IOT devices will last 20 years but they cost a lot more.
So why would I buy something that will work less well but costs a lot more money? SMARTS is the answer, but sofar I haven’t seen much useful smarts at all and certainly nothing that would bridge the lifetime+money gap. If I include security into the equation IOT is going to be a no-go for a loooong time
avgalen,
That’s particularly true if the hardware is proprietary and locked down. I always go with open & generic hardware whenever I can because even if the manufacturer goes defunct, I know that I’m not dependent on them for fixes or software upgrades.
It hasn’t been good for consumers that software is often being held hostage by the manufacturers who’d rather we make new purchases than to reuse existing hardware. This sort of planned obsolescence is arguably good for “GDP”, but it causes unnecessary waste and is economically and ecologically unsound for consumers.
Can you give some examples of open hardware that is a popular massproduct? Because it seems that as soon something leaves the “hobbyist/maker-sphere” it is always closed hardware. Now that closed hardware might still get a lot of tinkering support but it often requires support from the developer or reverse engineering
avgalen,
Haha, it’s tough right?
The desktop PC is probably the best example because it’s still relatively normal to get hardware independently of an operating system. It can get hairy with the firmware, but some vendors do support coreboot officially, which is (mostly) open source.
Outside of this market it can be very tough to find products with both open hardware & software. We often have to settle for hacking and reverse engineered like you say, and I’m not really pleased about that. Just because someone is willing & able write their own features doesn’t mean they are willing & able to hack into their own hardware first. Some hobbyists have even been sued for reprogramming their own hardware.
I wish all hardware was available in an unbundled package ready for software development. In some cases I’d even be willing to pay more to get a product minus the bundled os.
Edited 2016-06-11 18:40 UTC