Sunday, April 15, 2012

Nest Intelligent Thermostat

How the Nest Intelligent Thermostat Works?

Your heating, air conditioning and the ductwork that carries and recycles air between rooms make up the HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) system for your home. You control your home's HVAC through your thermostat. All you have to do is select your heating and cooling options and to set your desired indoor temperature. The thermostat does the rest, switching systems on and off based on the temperature it detects in the room.

The Nest Learning Thermostat goes beyond this simple temperature detection to make a real impact in your HVAC energy consumption. In this article, we'll see what Nest can do, how it does what it does, who's behind it and what challenges it faces in the HVAC industry.

To understand Nest's value, let's first look at what other thermostats do. All thermostats let you set a desired temperature and monitor the current temperature. You can also switch between heat and AC.


Many thermostats rely entirely on your settings. As a result, you might only adjust the thermostat when you feel uncomfortable. In addition, you may not think to adjust it before you leave home to save on energy while the house is empty.

The Nest Learning Thermostat aims to solve this problem. Nest actually programs itself by learning your behavior patterns and desired temperatures for certain days and times during the week, and then building a schedule for your HVAC.

Nest Features: Saving Energy

Nest features what the company calls Nest Sense technology to learns your day-to-day routine and maintains your HVAC schedule automatically, based on what it learns.

Nest creates an Auto-Away mode based on what it's learned. This sets a temperature for minimal HVAC activity when you're not in the building. You can also set an Away mode manually if you wish.

While it's actively heating or cooling, Nest displays an estimated time for the system to reach the desired temperature.


Nest displays a green leaf any time the thermostat is running at energy-saving settings. This can teach you to make energy-saving decisions. For example, if Nest has learned that you typically run your AC until the house is 74 degrees Fahrenheit (23.3 Celsius), you could turn up the temperature until you see the green leaf, perhaps at 76 degrees Fahrenheit (24.4 Celsius), to save energy. The leaf will always appear at cooling settings of 84 degrees Fahrenheit (28.9 Celsius) or higher and heating settings of 62 degrees Fahrenheit (16.7 Celsius) or lower.
  1. Nest lets you know what activity (between Auto-Away, your own adjustments and the weather) resulted in the greatest energy savings throughout the day.
  2. Nest uses WiFi to connect to your Nest account at nest.com. This feature allows you to monitor and adjust the Nest remotely from the Web site.
  3. Nest supports a mobile app available for Apple iOS devices (iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad) and Android devices. The app turns your mobile device into a remote control for your Nest.
  4. You can add Nest to any number of thermostats in a multi-thermostat building. They will work alongside other thermostats, but note that each of Nest's energy-saving features only applies to the rooms in its sensor range and to the HVAC components it controls.
  5. Your Nest account can manage up to 10 Nest devices, whether they're in the same building or at multiple locations.
Nest Technology: Nest Sense

The core technology behind Nest is a combination of its sensors, computer and algorithms. The company calls this Nest Sense. Part of Nest Sense's job is to gather data to use in its calculations. This data goes beyond just measuring the temperature in the room. In fact, Nest gathers data from the following sources:

  1. Three temperature sensors, designed to get a more precise measurement than a single sensor
  2. Motion and light sensors that detect activity in the room at a wide 150-degree angle
  3. A WiFi connection to get weather data about your area from the Internet
Using data from these sources, Nest Sense creates a schedule for your HVAC.

Related Reading: Artificial Intelligence used in Intelligent Devices
Related Reading: How Neural Networks are used in Intelligent Devices?

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