Re:We're hearing about troubles at Nest
by analog31 on Monday February 15, 2016 @08:33PM
(#11107363)
People came home to apartments that were 90 because their heaters were stuck on full blast during the summer.
When I was in grad school, I wired a temperature controller to an experiment, set it, satisfied myself that it was working OK, and went away. Guess what. The relay failed, and the heater was stuck on, until it melted the experiment.
As a grad student in physics (not even EE or embedded systems), I could chalk it up to a beginner mistake.
But if you design a commercial product that controls the release of large amounts of energy, you can't make beginner mistakes. There many not be many remaining reasons why age and experience are valuable traits in a engineer, but this is one of them. Germane to one of the other comments, this may also be why a 110 year old company still has a reason to exist.
When I was in grad school, I wired a temperature controller to an experiment, set it, satisfied myself that it was working OK, and went away. Guess what. The relay failed, and the heater was stuck on, until it melted the experiment.
As a grad student in physics (not even EE or embedded systems), I could chalk it up to a beginner mistake.
But if you design a commercial product that controls the release of large amounts of energy, you can't make beginner mistakes. There many not be many remaining reasons why age and experience are valuable traits in a engineer, but this is one of them. Germane to one of the other comments, this may also be why a 110 year old company still has a reason to exist.