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Nest Smart Thermostat Stupidity

Smart Thermostats are stupid.  $250 for what amounts to a $30 thermostat with $10 of extra smarts and a $180 display is simply insane.  Then you add the installation costs and security risks and the risk that it will become useless within 15 years and it becomes clear that Smart Thermostats are a very very stupid investment.

I have new approach.  I call it the Better Smart thermostat.  It costs the same as today's inexpensive "dumb" Programmable thermostats, but has 100% of the capabilities of the Nest.

Take today's $30 thermostat and keep it as a regular, simply-programmable thermostat.  It has a temperature sensor, a display, and some relays for turning the systems on and off.  Then add BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) to give it the ability to get hints from an external device.

That's it.  No fancy display.  No special wiring.  No 802.11n.  It uses BLE, so it can use regular AA batteries.

But with BLE on-board, some significant opportunities emerge.  Now the thermostat settings can be easily modified from an app on a iPhone or iPad.  Away from your house?  Enable Away mode.  Coming home?  Enable Home mode.  Super-cold weather?  Fire up the heat earlier.  Daylight Saving changes?  Fix the time of the clock.  Temperatures approaching freezing?  Trigger an alarm.  Record temperature history.  Key track of "system on" energy use.  Program setback schedules from a computer.

Need 8 for your electric heat radiators?  Great, you can afford 8.  Unlike the Nest and their insanely designed counterparts.

And if BLE becomes obsolete, or if you simply don't care about smartness, you still have a 100% good and secure thermostat. 

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