On Saturday, January 17, 2015 at 6:01:03 PM UTC-5, Nil wrote:
On 17 Jan 2015, trader_4 wrote in
alt.home.repair:

I was at HD today, took a look for the new Honeywell knock off of
the Nest. They have it, $280. I don't know exactly what it does
or doesn't do, how it compares to the Nest. But it apparently can
track your location via your smartphone, so that if it thinks
you're on the way home, it will resume the normal heat/cooling, ie
get the temp adjusted for you. That's kind of cool, but how well
it works, how it differentiates with multiple people in the house
etc, IDK. I wouldn't be the first to buy it, that's for sure.

My HD seemed to be really pushing the Nests hard - there were standing
displays all over the store, not just near the other thermostats. I
read up on them a bit, and I see lots of complaints and comments about
that that give me the feeling that their technology isn't fully refined
or reliable. They sure do look hi-tech and cool, but you pay extra for
the look.

I didn't notice any Nest knock-offs, but I'm not surprised.

IDK if Nest has fixed their problems, but from what I saw a year or more
ago, it looked like a disaster to me. They rely on power stealing,
which apparently led them to put FETS in the base or something instead of
using a relay. I saw lots of reports of them shorting out, with the heat
or AC running non-stop. A lot of other problems too. Even worse, from
what I read, there is no real definition of how it works, what it does,
how it learns, etc. A lot of people saying that it was doing strange
things that they had no control over. My conclusion was that it looked
nice, but I wouldn't want one.