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I finally understand what I was missing about these new thermostats. They are self learning. Which mean say you set your house to be 70 degrees at 8 in the morning. It will actually learn how long it takes to reach 70 degrees and start the furnace early so that when 8 in the morning rolls around it will be 70 degrees. A standard one will only kick on at 8 and then need to heat up to 70 degrees which may take 10-15 minutes depending on the previous temperature. So basically it just learns based off of house sizes etc. how long to reach the temp. Kinda neat.
 
A lot of the newer thermostats are this way. The one you got at work probably is, and others are as well. My programmable one that I can remotely control is still of the fashion where if the heat is set to 72 at 8:00 it would start heating at 8:00 and take X number of minutes to get up to 72. Easily something you can still control, say setting the temp to go to 72 at 7:30 instead of 8:00.

The ones that attempt to guess how long and start early is nice, though it does remove full control from you since it might start 10 minutes early or it could start 20 minutes early. One of my coworkers has something similar to the one you posted had been put in at your workplace and he wishes it behaved like mine. He wasn't exact control of when the furnace comes on, not when the house temp reaches a specified temp.

I'm with you though, having it so I could just say that at 6:30 when I wake up I want it to be 72, it would be nice.

The Nest also tries to learn times you are home and away and automatically create a schedule. I"m not a big fan of that. First, it would never shut off in my house, with dog activity and opposing work schedules between myself and the gal. Also, it cannot gauge if I come home late, when and how long errands will take etc. It might save a very small amount if it shut off after periods of inactivity, but then again if I spent the day downstairs it might just let it get colder than I want because I wasn't up near it. So anyway, I'm not sold on one that "learns" my schedule and tries to accommodate that necessarily, I prefer to just specify when and where temps get set.

 
Also, I dunno if any of these companies are considering anything for baseboard heat. These all just work with the low voltage wiring of a central air furnace. If you have something like baseboard heat, where the thermostat is basically a fancy 120V light switch (if temp falls below setting, it switches on and allows current to flow) there is nothing for you in home automation really. Nest devices can work with others, but unless you have a mansion you are unlikely to have two separate heating/cooling systems it would be able to control. It seems a more common setup is a furnace it could run, backed up by basedboard heat or something similar that it cannot. The exception here might be very new homes of if you just put in a newer furnace system that can heat/cool multiple zones independently.

The only home automation choice you have with high voltage heaters is to have controllable switch / relay of some sort and some temperature sensor. From your controller then you'd have to frequently poll the temperature setting from the sensor and "flip switch" on your high voltage relay when appropriate. That and you'd have to wire this up so that either the relay or a physical thermostat could turn it on, just in case your automation gear shits out and you still need to be able to turn on the heat

 
I'd like to do something to control holiday decorations. Was getting bored of unplugging the tree lights. It would be handy to control it from an ipod or webpage.
 
I'd like to do something to control holiday decorations. Was getting bored of unplugging the tree lights. It would be handy to control it from an ipod or webpage.
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This was a big part of why a number of the light switched and outlets got put in or changed out with Z wave ones in my place. Z-wave is a mesh network, so some light switches I swapped out are convenient, but were also done to extend range.I replaced the switch that controls one outdoor outlet so the lights on the roof and front yard decorations could be controlled. I also had some z-wave controllable modules to plug in on one side of the garage so the decorations there could also be controlled. Added a controllable outlet in two areas of the house, one for the Christmas tree and another in an are some other décor goes. With my vera controller we can control from the web or many different devices.

 
That is pretty cool. I don't know about monitoring water on toilet flushes, but some of that would be pretty awesome.

Everything I've used so far is Z-wave, so I can turn lights on/off. Lock/unlock the door. It's all in here somewhere I guess already. Anyway, I am considering adding a Powerlinc modem to my Vera 3 controller so I can also use some Insteon components. The problem is that none of the "standards" out there have everything you might want. Z wave has a lot and so does Insteon. Insteon is back-compat with X10. I think Z wave has the most options, but Insteon has better options for overhead garage door and ceiling fan controls. On the other hand, Z wave has deadbolts and door handles you can control while Insteon does not.

 
Well you made me think about it. Powerlinc modem for my Vera 3 to run Insteon is ordered and on the way. Along with one ceiling fan control and two garage door monitor/control modules. Guess I'll be testing it out this weekend.
 
Well you made me think about it. Powerlinc modem for my Vera 3 to run Insteon is ordered and on the way. Along with one ceiling fan control and two garage door monitor/control modules. Guess I'll be testing it out this weekend.
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You just wanted an excuse to order it.
 
For anyone looking at home automation, one nice controller option that can span multiple technologies is the Revolv system. It's compatible with ZWave, Insteon, Zigbee and some other devices. There's some limitations to this which rule it out for the setup I want, but those could be discussed more in depth if someone else starts looking and wants some more detail
 
It is done. The Insteon FanLinc and Garage door monitors are in place and I can now control the ceiling fan's speed (high/med/low/off), the fan's lights (on/off/dimmer), monitor whether garage doors are open/closed, and open or close the garage doors.

The Insteon support in the Vera 3 controller is pretty limited. It handled the garage doors and fan light, but could run the fan itself. The vera 3 is essentially a custom router running the DD-WRT firmware with a ZWave radio, so someone had written their own Altsteon plug-in for it which offers better Insteon support.

Setup was not straight forward at all, but that's the price you pay for ability to have pretty powerful customization options I guess. All in all they work great, but I'll limit my Insteon devices to a minimum for now and stick to ZWave as much as possible until either the Vera 3 has better baked in Insteon support (or a little more friendly 3rd party app for it), or until something like Revolv or the SmartThings controllers have a few less restrictions keeping me away.

 
I'd like to. I don't have any grand plans to have them in the house. Most immediate though on them is that I'd like one focused on the front door along with a motion sensor I have. I don't want a big multi camera w/ separate DVR box setup. Mostly I want it to do two things:

1) If there's motion snap a still shot or a few seconds of video, could configure this when we are out of town to send an alert or something too. maybe a still on motion and go to video if someone starts entering invalid codes in the door lock

2) Pull up a live feed on demand

This way if we aren't home and someone stops we could see who. Was a neighbor kid by trying to peddle cookies/popcorn? Did UPS/FedEx come yet? Those are under scenario 1. The other scenario is if I'm home and want to just see who rang the doorbell and determine if I want to answer or not. Currently I just have to peek out the window and hope they don't see me, or just ignore it and figure if they really want to talk they'll ring again...

 
Beyond that camera scenario, I might add 1 or 2 others, facing the driveway and backyard. I live pretty close to an intersection, so people are always turning around in the driveway. Might be handy to capture stuff in case someone wrecks my mailbox or something.
 
I have a single IP camera that I use that has pan/tilt/night vision. Then I have an app on my phone that I can remotely view anywhere. Works decent. Doesn't record or anything. I think it has the capability to though if hooked up to a DVR device. But I mostly use it to check in on the cats when were away. One outside your doors that take snapshot or records would be nice.
 
A PTZ would be great, especially if a motion sensor or such could trigger it and then it could use some built in tracking capability to see what's going on, or just capture a series of images around it.

The problem I have is none of the PTZ camera's I've seen claim to be for outdoors and none look built to really withstand rain/wind/snow/cold. Is yours rated to be outdoors in the elements?

 
A PTZ would be great, especially if a motion sensor or such could trigger it and then it could use some built in tracking capability to see what's going on, or just capture a series of images around it.The problem I have is none of the PTZ camera's I've seen claim to be for outdoors and none look built to really withstand rain/wind/snow/cold. Is yours rated to be outdoors in the elements?
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No mine is not outdoor. The outdoor ones cost alot more and some aren't all that reliable unless you wanna pay alot.
 
I don't really have a need to monitor the inside of my house, especially if the outside were monitored. Dogs are always around, and work opposing shifts with the gal, so generally the house isn't empty for more than a few hours a day.

I am a little surprised nodle has a PTZ capable camera in his house linked to the NSAnet though...

 
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