Is "sexy thermostat" an oxymoron? Up until Nest Labs got its hands on the temperature-control device perhaps.
The smart-homes company has reinvented the fusty old thermostat of years gone by, bringing a bit of iPod style design to the home, and allowing conscientious homeowners take better control of their energy usage while also helping them to cut costs.
And from today Irish consumers can start building their own smart home with the launch of Nest’s two devices – a learning thermostat and a smoke and carbon-monoxide alarm – in Ireland.
But if the "internet of things" and "smart homes" are the catchwords of today, with both Samsung and Apple squaring up to Nest owner Google in the battle for dominance, Nest says it's about more than that – it's about a conscious presence in your home.
"It's about a caring intelligent home," says Lionel Paillet, European general manager with Nest, in Dublin for the Irish launch.
“It’s about homes doing more for you than you do for them.”
While there are other smart thermostats already available on the Irish market, Mr Paillet says Nest’s product is different because it’s intelligent – it doesn’t just allow you to programme your home heating from an app, it learns to programme your home itself, a process which takes about a week.
“It has the intelligence of a first-generation iPad packed into it,” he says.
The product – which doesn’t incur a subscription fee – is also regularly updated, with the Protect product for example recently modified so it doesn’t set the alarm off if it detects steam, while it also tests itself every evening.
In addition, Nest devices talk to each other – and to you – with the smoke alarm, for example, telling you that it detects a fire on your premises before it sounds the alarm.
And it does so in the comforting voice of a middle-aged woman, localised to whichever country the product is sold in. “The reason it [the alarm] speaks to you is because we found that kids at night don’t react to alarms – but they do react to female voices.
“ We went into a great level of detail to find the right voice of a middle-aged women, ‘the voice of mum’,” Mr Paillet says.
Given the data that Nest collects, privacy is a serious concern for the company, and Mr Paillet is keen to stress that, despite Google’s $2.5 billion acquisition of the company earlier this year, the two companies are run very much as separate entities and do not share data.
“There is a clear separation in terms of our models – we sell products, not advertising – and from a company operation perspective we have our own head office and our own culture, and the decision was taken to operate separately from Google.”
Nest does share the data with you, however, giving you the data back in “thoughtful ways”.
The company has picked Dublin, where it has located its European headquarters, as its data centre. It will also base its customer service operations for Europe here.
Next on the agenda for Nest is to give Dropcam, a home security device which it acquired in June, the Nest touch.
It will also further develop its Works with Nest initiative, to which about 5,000 developers have signed up for so far. This positions the Nest thermostat at the heart of a smart home by encouraging other companies to find ways of linking up with it.
This means that if you have a Jawbone, for example, and wake up earlier than usual one cold winter morning, the device on your wrist will tell the thermostat in your hall that it is time to start heating the house. Other Works with Nest partners include Mercedes, Lifx, Whirlpool and Google.
It's a canny move which may help Google put itself in prime position in the smart-home race. Towards a smarter home: Nest learning thermostat and Protect What is it? Nest learning thermostat and Protect devices
How much do they cost? Thermostat: €219 inc VAT and €35 for stand if you don’t have an existing thermostat; Protect (smoke and CO alarm): €109, inc VAT, wired or battery version does not require professional installation
Where can I buy them? Harvey Normans, www.nest.com and Google play
Who installs the thermostat? Sierra Support Services Group
How much will this cost? About €120 but Nest is giving everyone who buys a thermostat between September 18th -24th free installation. You just take the serial number from the box, and log it into nest.com to arrange an installation.
