I'm having some building work completed in the couple of months which will necessitate a new smoke alarm and motion sensor having to be fitted. My house already has wired some alarms (smoke and motion sensors) throughout however I'm now considering going `the internet of things' route. I will be having a new thermostat fitted. Have any of you used/ are using Hive or Nest products and if so what do you prefer? I'm already a British Gas customer and genuinely have no reason to fault the service I have received over the years so my choice won't be swayed based solely at a customer service level (I know Hive is a British Gas based product). I'm more concerned with future proofing, ease of use and connectivity rather than pure aesthetics. Build doesn't start till June/ July so any help would be appreciated
I've got Hive and I'm really happy with it. It is (by default) just a single thermostat with a really flexible timer. but that works perfectly for me, so I'd highly recommend it.
Cheers SP. Done a bit more research myself and I think I will go with Hive. Don't seem to do a smoke alarm though which is the only negative.
I have the Nest Thermostat and Fire/CO detector, pretty decent, best thing is controlling everything with the smart phone, set once at the start then the spooky learning mode is has pretty much constantly got it right since then. Not interested in paying subs but these 2 devices are sub free unlike their cam. I imagine as long as these features are similar you can choose either, I got my Nest free when I switched to Npower so it was a no brainer.
The smart smoke detectors I don't get the point of, If my house is burning down and I'm not there, I'm pretty sure me knowing about it won't change the fact its burning down. The Hive (at least the one I've got which is about 2 years old) doesn't have a motion sensor, which on one hand I think is a bit of a down side but then on the other hand I'd want the heating to come on before I got home not when I arrived home (so the house was warm when I got there), so I don't think is that much of a loss.
Have you checked out heat genius and Honeywell? They put remote controlled TRVs on each radiator so you can control each room individually (only heat the rooms your using, when your using them). Of course all this extra hardware pushes the price up about 400%
The design of the smoke detector is excellent if you need one. 10 year battery life and it stores logs on the account. I don't use them much but it is nice to know the report will notify me if the battery runs down or the unit has failed. It is in my hall and acts as a motion sensing night light too which is actually really useful. Actually in conjunction with my y-cam netcam if the house is burning down I would feel justified to call the fire brigade if the app notified me of fire and I was elsewhere. The motion sensor is part of how the Nest thermostat learns to turn my heating on before I get home. The system is efficient, I only set the schedule once 2 years ago then it learnt our habits in conjunction with manual adjustments, amends the schedule automatically and pre-heats the house before we arrive/wake up.
I was reading earlier about the Nest Revolve - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/06/nests_bricking_of_revolv_a_wakeup_call/ I'm a bit dismayed at the approach taken in this case as even though you own the hardware they're bricking it when they withdraw support. May not be relevant to their other hardware but food for thought...
Just learning about this now, not cool. Obviously I hope they do not brick my system until after it is time to upgrade it, the smoke detector is openly advertised to last 10 years! When I read the Revolv statement, the excuse used is that human resources used to support it are being put into developing the parallel (and likely aggressively proprietary) system 'Works with Nest', my guess is a new device or their next thermostat will integrate the features of the revolv. In this case the correct way to proceed would have been to roll out the replacement before bricking the revolv and offering it to existing users for free or a token amount. I have no doubt they should have done this and bricking the revolv beforehand is a total dick move, certainly makes me wary of staying with them in the future. Since all smart homes work best integrated through a central account on the net any rival company could also do this or just fold. The technology is in its infancy so I will be interested to see which companies emerge as trustworthy and robust.
We've had Hive for a couple of years now. No complaints; it does everything I need it to - and the smartphone control is a great feature. We got delayed coming home and caught the last ferry at 2.30am - it was nice just to get out the phone and hit the boost button so the house was pretty toasty as we walked in the door. I haven't experienced NEST other than a quick play with the control knob in Currys (I think) - it was very cool and pretty swish, but I found myself asking why I'd want to stand there fiddling with it when I'd just as readily sit on the sofa with my tablet or smart phone to control the heating system - rendering the control knob nothing more than a novelty.
This ^ Initially, I looked at Nest, Tado, Hive, Honeywell, Heat genius and others. I don't like the self learning features of Nest, I wanted something I can control to a fine degree. Hive is a traditional thermostat made "smart", it doesn't seem to bring a lot to the party apart from phone integration. In another words, it doesn't evolve. Same with Honeywell, both are traditional companies operate like selling traditional mechanical things. Heat genius looked great, but ultimately too expensive. So I ended up with Tado. You set a schedule to suit you, at all times when all paired smart phones are out of the house, heating stops automatically. When you are coming back (not when you arrive at home) heating turns on to heat the house up automatically *before* you get in. AFAIK this is Tado's special feature over other smart thermalstats. Tado and Nest is also always improving, like Android/iOS and Tesla motors: https://support.tado.com/hc/en-gb/a...e-planned-What-is-on-the-Development-Roadmap- Tado, Nest and Honeywell also have IFTTT support, if you want any further smart home integration. (eg. my Logitech Harmony remote turns on TV -> turn up heating by a degree) Also Tado actually listens, I've contacted them a few times to suggest new features. One of my suggestion is manual control timer, and it's now in the app. Their customer service is also great and easy to get hold of. DIY install is really really straight forward. Just get a laptop/tablet beside the boiler and follow the step by step guide.
