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Originally Posted by Efthreeoh
I installed a NEST thermostat when they first came out and were not a Google company. It was nice to be able to remotely control the HVAC from anywhere in the world (for me just the USA really). I liked its feature that it tracks the weather via the internet in advance and adjusts operation of the HVAC accordingly. I live in a unique house mainly built in 1852 that is a few levels above a tent with regards to retaining conditioned air. So, better control of the HVAC and some automatic control based on the weather was welcomed tech.
Then Google bought NEST. Fuck that; Google doesn't need to know how I heat and cool my home. I've kept the NEST disconnected from the wifi ever since.
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It's actually extremely scary how people have just voluntarily handed off their privacy to these corporations. There was a thread over in the off topic where a member was excited about a drone that Amazon or Google was proposing for a home to "investigate" a possible home security incident. Never mind that this thing will have cameras and other sensors capturing everything in your home.
In addition, people have been so short sighted with how these companies have been conditioning them to accept the "you own nothing and will be happy" mantra. From making products disposable to getting your content via subscription streaming services to making your products reliant on some server in the cloud. The last point is an expansion of what you said concerning privacy. But it also has implications on your usage of said product. Companies can just turn off that server forcing you to trash bin a product that was working just fine. Louis Rossman had put out a video recently on a IP camera sold on Amazon. The company didn't alert users that the company no longer supported the camera and didn't pull the product from being sold over the retail channel. Users bought the camera to find out the camera wouldn't work. The only response from the company was to give them a discount on purchasing a new camera that would work.
I myself had this situation happen with a product that work fabulously. It was a Slingbox. Before you were able to use it without the intervention of a cloud server brokering the connection between the remote client and that box. Then they switched the operating model with their newer versions forcing you to use their server. Then AT&T came in and bought out the IP for the company and shut it down. We got a year warning the server is going to go offline. The system work great for me but I was forced to scrap it. I ended up cobbling together a similar but not so elegant solution. Unfortunately it does utilize a cloud based device for the remote control functions. But I figure I can get another solution that does the same thing without a problem if this one fails.
As to the smart thermostat situation, I opted to get a Honeywell product. I figure it was the lesser of the evils out there. I have it installed at my vacation home. The main reason is to be able to get the house conditioned to a comfortable internal temperature when I arrive. I have the temp permanently set pretty high in the summer months and pretty low in the winter months to save on unnecessary energy costs when I'm not there. The thermostat did come in handy one time when my HVAC wasn't working during a really cold winter season. I got email alerts from the thermostat that the temperature of the house was too low. Drove out immediately to check on the house and indeed the HVAC wasn't working.