Hive / Nest etc Long Term Support

pmartin86

Morning All

Long story short, my thermostat has given up the ghost and I'm looking at options for replacment, as part of this, I've come accross Hive/Nest et al. I'm curious if anyone has any idea about the longer-term support for such devices, obviously your sticking your heating control into the cloud somewhere, whats stopping them deciding one day to just turn off the servers and amke your shiny smart theromastat a brick? Are there any that run service gurantees? what about hosting the stuff localy? etc

Any thoughts?
Paul

TheCyclingProgrammer

It's a risk IMO. I have a Nest, am mostly happy with it but am fully aware that Google could pull the plug at any time.

What happens when that happens depends. They may choose to open source the protocol and API specs, perhaps even a reference implementation that would allow a third party to develop an alternative service. But they may not.

giraffe69

If Hive, for example, pulled the plug the the thermostat can still be used locally i.e. you would still have control over your heating. The app, of course, would not function. It might be a huge own goal however for BG, Google or anyone else to do this.

vansboy

i accepted the offer of a 'free' controllable light kit, from BG, for staying with them at my new property.

I needed to join Hive to accept it, apparently and registered on their site. It said that if I was already a Hive customer, I'd need a new control box of some kind, but as I'm not and know hardly anything about the facility, I'll wait to see what my lights are like and what they actually do, before investing any £$£$.

I did think it not surprising, that this relativly new bit of technology has already meant getting part of it upgraded!!

VB

bridgedino

The 1st hub was rolled out to control only the heating, since launching their other smart products they've changed the hub to suit and you'll now need the newer hub to control the other devices

Andy_Hamilton

There is no guarantee with anything.
The Nest can be taught locally with no internet, it's only the nice things which could be lost such as programming or setting it to warm the house early etc.
It's so intergrated with other home automation and apps like IFFF I am sure it will work for a while.

Npower customers can get one for £130.

Procrastinator333

We have tado. Imo it is the best one as the others just try to learn your behaviour and then guess. Tado is linked to the gps on your phone. You go out it turns off. You come back it heats the house up ready when you get close. I couldnt find any other that used the gps in that way.

Yes they could turn it off. Any of them could, but worst case £30 for a new programmable thermostat and pay someone £50 to fit or try a bit of diy. If it ever does happen you will get plenty of notice.

I do think the smart thermostats are well worth having. I reckon our house gets heated 10-15% less than it used to.

iammumtoone

I was looking at these a while back, at the time I questioned this.

They will/would still work like a standard wireless theromostat which can be controlled manually in the home.

At worst you would lose the 'smart' features but as these are the functions you are paying extra for its a risk.

My other concern was having one would force you to stay ahead in latest operating system for your connected device(s) as they may change the app to only run with the latest systems, this could work out expensive if like me you are happy with a mobile a few generations behind.

System

Tbh, I'm not that worried by it - yes the devices will eventually become unsupported in terms of updates and app revisions but they can still work as standalone units, you can log into the nest account on web browser if your phone isn't switched on and if they decide your nest can no longer be linked to their account I would be very surprised...
Mine was installed as part of a new system, so I needed a thermostat/programmer and the nest wasn't a huge uplift in cost but it's been handy so far

getmore4less

If a supplier goes down what will probably happen is some one will get a hold of or reverse engineer the protocol spec and set up a 3rd party server or you can set up a server on your own network to manage the device.

Make a great UNI project and there are plenty of nerds around that would do it for free.

Chimpofdoom

We also have Tado! Have to say, I spent ages looking up smart thermostats and it's defo one of the better ones,

In regards to the question, though, with Tado, if it loses internet connection or probs with the servers in Munich, it'll operate like a normal thermostat.