Re:Smart homes and vegetable peelers
by 2muchcoffeeman on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @01:02PM
(#16318025)
Sure, there are still other failure modes for a furnace and you can still freeze to death without a Nest. But now you can encounter similar situations because of a software bug.
Wasn’t that C wire issue causing Nests to continuously turn on the furnace causing homes to get too hot?
FWIW, dumb appliances could have done the same thing.
A furnace that stops working in the dead of winter while away can still burst your pipes if they get cold enough, a broken appliance (and an operator unwillingly to change the situation) can still cause someone to freeze the death or suffer from a deadly heatstroke.
This particular issue cited first probably has mostly to do with the fact that nest really wants you to have a 24V power source for the thermostat (A "C" or "Common Wire"). They've figured out how to make it work without for most systems, but that relies on an internal battery.