Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from half
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer and
Speaker 1: I love all things tech, including reruns about technology. Yep,
Speaker 1: it's Friday. It's time for a classic episode. This episode
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff originally published on November two thousand and eleven.
Speaker 1: I was such a young, fresh faced talent back then.
Speaker 1: Chris Pillette and I decided we were going to crank
Speaker 1: up the heat and talk about thermostat technology. So now
Speaker 1: we present to you tech Stuff, Adjust the thermostat. We're
Speaker 1: going to take the temperature today in our podcast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about the thermostat. Now, we've already talked
Speaker 1: about air conditioning we have on the show, so but
Speaker 1: we didn't didn't cover thermostats at all when we talked
Speaker 1: about air conditioning, not really. And the thermost that, of course,
Speaker 1: is that handy dandy little device that helps you maintain
Speaker 1: the right temperature. Because you know, there are air conditioner
Speaker 1: and heater or units out there that don't use thermostats.
Speaker 1: You manually have to turn it on or turn it off.
Speaker 1: So when you're like thinking galy g the house shore
Speaker 1: is cold. Now I don't need that air conditioner on anymore.
Speaker 1: You can go and switch it off. But most of
Speaker 1: them tend to have some sort of thermostat in there
Speaker 1: which helps maintain a comfortable temperature. You set the temperature
Speaker 1: you want, it starts whatever the process is that needs
Speaker 1: to get to that temperature, whether that's cooling the air
Speaker 1: down or heating it up, and then once it reaches
Speaker 1: that temperature, ideally it shuts off so that you don't
Speaker 1: continue on the pathway to reach the other side of uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and uh it's also I think the second
Speaker 1: largest lead leading cause of divorce. I wanted their degrees colder.
Speaker 1: Are you done? Okay? Yeah? No. Uh. Thermostats are not
Speaker 1: not exclusive to houses, of course, or or buildings or
Speaker 1: or keeping people comfortable. They're also in many other devices
Speaker 1: for keeping those devices comfortable, like say a car for instance,
Speaker 1: um anything that that where you need to measure temperature
Speaker 1: and switch on a cooling or a heating um in
Speaker 1: your In your car, it might turn on the cooling
Speaker 1: fan when it senses the engine might be nearing overheating um.
Speaker 1: And if you look at a house thermostat. And you
Speaker 1: see one of those digital, high tech programmable models on
Speaker 1: the wall, you might get the idea that they are
Speaker 1: super duper sophisticated. But thermostats don't have to be that sophisticated,
Speaker 1: and in fact actually use physics to um determine or
Speaker 1: you know, just set off the switch inside that makes
Speaker 1: things hotter or cooler. Yeah, it's actually pretty cool in
Speaker 1: a way. You know, I don't mean that in a
Speaker 1: temperature way, but I see what you did there. These
Speaker 1: things are hot. Uh. Now, they, like Chris was saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: uses physics. If you're looking at Let's say, let's talk
Speaker 1: about one of the old thermostats. Okay, So so it's
Speaker 1: like that little beige box that's sitting on the wall,
Speaker 1: and it's got a little up got a dial, yeah,
Speaker 1: either a dial or a lever, and it has a
Speaker 1: little physical read out that you look at, and it's
Speaker 1: got a little red needle in that that read out,
Speaker 1: and by turning the dial or moving the lever to
Speaker 1: the left or to the right, you move the needle
Speaker 1: up and down this temperature range to set it to
Speaker 1: whatever you want. So let's say we're gonna say that
Speaker 1: the temperature inside the house right now is a is
Speaker 1: a chilly sixty five because because we're in the dead
Speaker 1: of winter in Georgia and so so we want to
Speaker 1: we want to boost that up to about seventy two.
Speaker 1: Let's say we want we wanted to be a little warmer,
Speaker 1: maybe a little warmer than we normally would, because it's
Speaker 1: kind of chilly, and we want to I want to
Speaker 1: have a nice little day and side, so we moved
Speaker 1: the the lever so that it moves up to seventy
Speaker 1: two and then magically the heater comes on until it
Speaker 1: hits around seventy two degrees and then shuts off. But
Speaker 1: what's going on inside, well, inside the thermostat is at
Speaker 1: the very heart of it is a mercury switch. Mercury. Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't drink it, no, No, mercury is pretty cool stuff.
Speaker 1: It's uh, you know, it's a it's a metal which
Speaker 1: at room temperature is liquid. Yea. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: my family, for some reason, when they broke an old
Speaker 1: mercury thermometer, decided to keep the mercury in a baby
Speaker 1: food jar, which oddly enough, we still have. Of course,
Speaker 1: it's sealed up, you know, touch mercury is highly toxic. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: you do not want to have any contact with mercury.
Speaker 1: But um mad as a header. But sealing it up
Speaker 1: inside a jar, you know, I got to see, you know,
Speaker 1: move it, and it's it's really neat to watch it
Speaker 1: break apart into little metal falls and then reform. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like, yes, exactly, it's the one when the t
Speaker 1: in the documentary Terminator Too would come apart. You know,
Speaker 1: you would see it kind of turn these liquid shapes
Speaker 1: and then reform. Well that's essentially, you know, that's mercury.
Speaker 1: That's what mercury does. Although mercury rarely will take essentience
Speaker 1: and then chase after Sarah Connor, that part, Yeah, that
Speaker 1: part doesn't happen that frequently. Um. But but it is
Speaker 1: a liquid metal. And uh, and here's the thing about it.
Speaker 1: Here's where we get into some physics. We're gonna you know,
Speaker 1: we'll get into more in a little bit, but metals
Speaker 1: um actually pretty much everything will tend to expand when
Speaker 1: exposed to heat. Now, what's really happening is that you're
Speaker 1: adding energy into a system and the atoms in that
Speaker 1: system start to move around. And this is what in
Speaker 1: effect causes expansion. And of course if you add enough
Speaker 1: heat to something, depending on what it is, not everything
Speaker 1: will well they urize, but a lot of stuff vaporizes
Speaker 1: will turn into a gas form. Uh. That's really when
Speaker 1: the atoms are have so much energy and they're moving
Speaker 1: around so much, they're no longer cohesive as a liquid um.
Speaker 1: So mercury, it takes a lot of It takes way
Speaker 1: more heat than it would then we would generate to
Speaker 1: turn mercury into a gas. But all right, in its
Speaker 1: liquid form, what happens is you put it into an
Speaker 1: enclosed space, you add heat, it's going to the liquid
Speaker 1: inside that enclosed space is going to expand. The volume
Speaker 1: increases as the temperature increases. So if you were to
Speaker 1: put mercury, say in a glass bulb, that one side
Speaker 1: is elongated into a tube, very thin tube. As the
Speaker 1: heat increases, the mercury would appear to climb that tube.
Speaker 1: It's because the mercury itself is expanding, the volumes increasing
Speaker 1: as the temperature increases. And that's the basis of a thermometer.
Speaker 1: The old mercury thermometers, you would have this class to
Speaker 1: tube that was filled with mercury. You would have numbers
Speaker 1: that would correspond to whatever the temperature was, and then
Speaker 1: as the temperature rises, you'd see the little level of
Speaker 1: mercury increase inside that glass tube. You know, suddenly I
Speaker 1: want to ride my bicycle. That's a different kind of mercury.
Speaker 1: You want to ride your bike? Yes, that would be nice,
Speaker 1: fat bottom girls, you make the rock and wood, alright, alright,
Speaker 1: the same song does reference it anyway, that's true. That's true.
Speaker 1: So and a thermometer that you've got the mercury expanding
Speaker 1: to tell you what temperature it is. Yes, but there's
Speaker 1: a mercury switch, as you said, inside the thermostat right now.
Speaker 1: In this case, the mercury switch is it's a little different.
Speaker 1: It's not it's not acting as a thermometer. It's a
Speaker 1: glass vial and it has three wires in it. There's
Speaker 1: a wire that goes along the bottom of the glass vial,
Speaker 1: which is in constant contact with the liquid mercury, and
Speaker 1: then you have wires on the left and right side
Speaker 1: of the vial that are just out of contact with
Speaker 1: the mercury. But the vial itself can tilt to the
Speaker 1: left or to the right, and when it does tilt,
Speaker 1: the mercury then comes in contact with the wire that's
Speaker 1: on that particular side of the glass vial and then
Speaker 1: completes a circuit between the bottom wire and the wire
Speaker 1: that's on the respective side. So let's arguably say the
Speaker 1: the vial tilts to the left, the mercury now is
Speaker 1: in contact with both the wire along the bottom of
Speaker 1: the vial and on the left side of the VISal,
Speaker 1: and now you've got a circuit. So this gives us
Speaker 1: some opportunities here if we create a system that will
Speaker 1: tilt the vial one way or the other based upon
Speaker 1: certain parameters we haven't. We have a switch, and we
Speaker 1: have a switch that can either be off or it
Speaker 1: can be on on two different directions, which is great
Speaker 1: for heating and cooling. Yes, so now we think, okay, well,
Speaker 1: you've got the switch. Uh let's say that you you
Speaker 1: want to adjust the heat and you want to turn
Speaker 1: up the heat, and you you move that that uh,
Speaker 1: that lever over that's going to tilt that glass vial. Right.
Speaker 1: The mercury is gonna move over to the correct side,
Speaker 1: and that's going to initiate it's going to complete a
Speaker 1: circuit and then send electricity to the heater, which will
Speaker 1: get the heater going and the fan will start to
Speaker 1: turn and you'll start to have warm air pumped throughout
Speaker 1: the house or whatever it is that you're in. Right, Okay,
Speaker 1: So how does the thermostat know when to stop? Well,
Speaker 1: more physics. Now, you know we've we've talked about how
Speaker 1: mercury is used in thermometers. And you might say, oh,
Speaker 1: so it's sort of acting like a thermometer, right, because
Speaker 1: it can tell if it's hot or cold. No, in
Speaker 1: this case, mercury is just acting as a conductor. And
Speaker 1: because it's it's useful because it's liquid in this case,
Speaker 1: and it will make it will flash into the and
Speaker 1: and touch the two contacts together in the appropriate case
Speaker 1: get a little steamy. In this podcast, I think we
Speaker 1: need to take a quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: Using a thermometer called bimetallic thermometer, and based on its name,
Speaker 1: you may be able to discern what's special about this
Speaker 1: kind of thermometer. Yes, it's got to to two metals
Speaker 1: and one actually it's not in one. They're laminated together, yes,
Speaker 1: to make a strip. So so yeah, on on one
Speaker 1: side of the strip you have one metal and on
Speaker 1: the other side of the strip is another metal. They're
Speaker 1: joined together. And here's why you want this. You see,
Speaker 1: different metals will expand at different rates in in reaction
Speaker 1: to a change in temperature. So one metal, when you
Speaker 1: when you apply heat to it, might expand rather rapidly,
Speaker 1: while a second medal, in relation to the first one,
Speaker 1: will go more slowly. And you put these two different
Speaker 1: pieces of metal together, and as one expands an at
Speaker 1: a rate that's faster than the other, it's going to
Speaker 1: change the shape of that sheet of metal. Now, in
Speaker 1: the case of these thermostats, these bimetallic thermometers tend to
Speaker 1: be arranged in a coil, and so you've got a
Speaker 1: coil of this material where on the outer edge and
Speaker 1: the inner edge it's two different metals. The inner edge
Speaker 1: is usually the one that expands faster um when when
Speaker 1: heat is applied. You've got it in this coiled shape.
Speaker 1: And uh, the way this works is that when it
Speaker 1: when the temperature rises, the the expansion on the inner
Speaker 1: layer of this coil will cause the coil to uncoil,
Speaker 1: start to unwind. When it unwinds enough, it actually presses
Speaker 1: up against the mercury switch and puts it back into
Speaker 1: its central configuration. Okay, I don't need to be on anymore.
Speaker 1: I'll turn off exactly. The mercury no longer is in
Speaker 1: contact with both wires, because once it is set back
Speaker 1: to its central location, only the bottom wire is connected,
Speaker 1: the circuit is broken and the heater stops working. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in general, usually there's a system in place where
Speaker 1: this will actually shut off before you reach that full temperature,
Speaker 1: because depending on where you are in the house, like
Speaker 1: you don't want the thermostat to be right next to
Speaker 1: the heating vent no, because it'll the temperature of the
Speaker 1: thermostat will change too quickly, right, so you would you
Speaker 1: might be in a situation where if the hot air
Speaker 1: were right next to the thermostat, the thermostatic goes, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: it's already seventy two degrees. Meanwhile you're in the living
Speaker 1: room going why is it so cold in here? Right?
Speaker 1: So you want the thermostat to be someplace where it
Speaker 1: will be exposed to the flow of air, but won't
Speaker 1: be right there at e vent So the thinking here
Speaker 1: is that, well, if we we may want the thermostat
Speaker 1: to shut off a couple of degrees cooler than what
Speaker 1: you said, it at because the room that's going to
Speaker 1: be closer to the actual event is going to be
Speaker 1: warmer than where over the thermostat is, and the heat
Speaker 1: will disperse throughout the house. So it's kind of a
Speaker 1: way of making sure you don't get too warm, because
Speaker 1: then you're gonna be saying, they're thinking, I said it
Speaker 1: to seventy two, and now it feels like it's like
Speaker 1: seventy six. What's going on? So um to do that,
Speaker 1: they have a resistor inside the thermostat, No, I'm not
Speaker 1: going so. Resistors will actually heat up as electricity goes
Speaker 1: through them, and the resistor itself acts as a heater
Speaker 1: for that coil that's inside the thermostat, so it will
Speaker 1: expand a little faster than it would if it were
Speaker 1: just measuring the ambient temperature of the air. Right, so uh,
Speaker 1: that will cause the heater to to shut down a
Speaker 1: little more quickly than it would if if it were
Speaker 1: just reacting to the ambient air temperature. So um, of course,
Speaker 1: if the house cools down, you know, after you've heated
Speaker 1: it up, then that coil is going to slowly start
Speaker 1: to contract, you know as as it's uh uh, as
Speaker 1: that temperature drops and if it contracts enough, then the
Speaker 1: mercury vial is going to tilt again, and that's going
Speaker 1: to start the system all over again. You get that
Speaker 1: completed circuit, sends the electricity to the heater, and you
Speaker 1: start up again. The same thing is true by the
Speaker 1: way of air conditioning, except you know, you're talking about
Speaker 1: contracting instead of expanding. That's the it's just tilting the
Speaker 1: mercury vile the other way, and as the temperature goes down,
Speaker 1: the coil contracts, and then the vial will eventually be
Speaker 1: set back to its central configuration. Uh. Now that this
Speaker 1: is your basic analog thermostat. That it's not the way
Speaker 1: all thermostats work. It's the way the older ones work.
Speaker 1: So if you ever in a building that has that
Speaker 1: and you hear that clicking noise, that's the sound of
Speaker 1: the vile actually turning and uh and and the circuit completing. Um,
Speaker 1: that's that's what you're hearing there. Some thermostats are using thermistors,
Speaker 1: which are sort of digital thermometers. It's a little different.
Speaker 1: That's that's not UM based on the mercury switch necessarily,
Speaker 1: although some are kind of a hybrid between the two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I actually think that that that system is brilliant because
Speaker 1: it's relying on the laws of physics. You know what,
Speaker 1: you're not going to change for the thermostat, So it's
Speaker 1: not like neutrinos are suddenly going to go faster than
Speaker 1: the speed of light. Right, um. And that was a joke, people,
Speaker 1: I know, I'm reading up on the whole story. That
Speaker 1: was just a me playing playing a joke about the
Speaker 1: laws of physics not changing. Right. No, But it's a
Speaker 1: it's a brilliant system because it's so simple and it's
Speaker 1: design um and very frankly, I've I've found that the
Speaker 1: manual thermostats, while they don't necessarily save you as much
Speaker 1: energy as a programmable uh, some programmable thermostats are real
Speaker 1: painting the neck to you, especially if you don't realize
Speaker 1: what what setting it's on, or you take a week
Speaker 1: of vacation and you're at home and you're thinking it's
Speaker 1: so warm, and oh it's on the programmed one as
Speaker 1: opposed to a constant I almost always turned the program off,
Speaker 1: which is not terribly um efficient and and actually one
Speaker 1: could argue irresponsible of me because it means I'm wasting
Speaker 1: electricity and uh uh, that's probably no, that's I can't
Speaker 1: really argue with that, right. Well, um, well, the digital
Speaker 1: ones that use the thermistors. In case you're wondering how
Speaker 1: the thermistor works, it actually is um allowing uh. It
Speaker 1: changes the electrical resistance of the material inside as the
Speaker 1: temperature changes. That's how it determines, uh, if it's at
Speaker 1: the right temperature or not, or whether you know, the
Speaker 1: the heating or cooling device needs to be still going. Um.
Speaker 1: And of course the programmable thermostat still use still need
Speaker 1: to be able to identify what temperature it is because um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's simply adding a layer of electronics
Speaker 1: to the simplicity of the thermostat, because you know, you're
Speaker 1: just saying, okay, at six in the morning, I wanted
Speaker 1: at this temperature at you know, two in the afternoon,
Speaker 1: and I wanted at this temperature on the weekend, I
Speaker 1: wanted to be this. You know, Once you do that
Speaker 1: and it has uh the clock in it internally set correctly,
Speaker 1: assuming that your batteries don't die. Um, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's just adding a layer of complexity. But the thermostat
Speaker 1: at its heart it's still using uh you know, basically
Speaker 1: measuring the temperature and using the switch to turn the
Speaker 1: heat or cooling system on or off. Yeah. Yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 1: there's certain components that are gonna be uh common across
Speaker 1: all thermostats. They may not take the exact same form,
Speaker 1: but they follow the same function. Yeah, even in a
Speaker 1: system where you have zoning. Yeah, zoning can be important
Speaker 1: if you're in a well, if you're in the build
Speaker 1: office built in an office building, clearly you're gonna need
Speaker 1: zones because the especially if it's say it's a high
Speaker 1: rise um or a skyscraper, that's the temperature is going
Speaker 1: to vary quite a bit from the very top to
Speaker 1: the very bottom. Especially if you imagine that there was
Speaker 1: no heating or cooling system in there at all, you
Speaker 1: would know, you know, well, it's gonna feel a lot
Speaker 1: different on floor number one than it is on floor
Speaker 1: number fifty. So so you've gotta have special zoning in there.
Speaker 1: But even some houses will have it, especially depending on
Speaker 1: the the layout of the house. You know, some houses
Speaker 1: are if they're like a flat style where it's it's
Speaker 1: multiple floors, it may be that the the bottom floor
Speaker 1: is always much cooler than the top floor, and you
Speaker 1: might want special zoning there so that the entire domicile
Speaker 1: remains and a comfortable temperature. Um. So yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that's also fairly common. And we're also seeing some web
Speaker 1: connected thermostats these days where you can even you know,
Speaker 1: manage your home's climate remotely the Internet of Things, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is interesting and frustrating in the sense that it's
Speaker 1: frustrating in the sense that there's not really a standard
Speaker 1: way to approach this yet. So it's all proprietary. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you can, you can. There's several different companies that
Speaker 1: offer home automation systems and basically what you do is
Speaker 1: you set the UH different systems up and we're talking
Speaker 1: things like locking and unlocking the doors, turning lights off
Speaker 1: and on, um, the thermostat, and all sorts of other things,
Speaker 1: perhaps UM camera security system some you know, the different things,
Speaker 1: and you can have the system set up to where
Speaker 1: you can manage all these things through a computer or
Speaker 1: even your smartphone now um. And yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty simple. It's just uh, you're right. I
Speaker 1: mean a lot of the times the hardware UH is proprietary.
Speaker 1: So let's say you have one company and their billing
Speaker 1: has gotten out of control, and I could I could
Speaker 1: get a cheaper system. Um, you're likely to have to
Speaker 1: have the new company come in and install their equipment,
Speaker 1: because it won't they can't go, oh, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I can, I can use so and So's equipment. You're
Speaker 1: probably not. Now that's not necessarily true, but it is
Speaker 1: in in some cases. There's also the possibility. There's also
Speaker 1: the possibility that whatever company you go with ends up
Speaker 1: going out of business. And if that happens, if your
Speaker 1: commands are sent through corporate servers before they get to
Speaker 1: your house to make whatever the changes are, if that
Speaker 1: company goes out of business, then you're out of luck.
Speaker 1: I mean, most of these systems still have the way
Speaker 1: you know, you can still program it manually, so that
Speaker 1: it's not like all functionality is gonna disappear. It's just
Speaker 1: that the extra stuff you pay for might not stick around.
Speaker 1: But that does bring us to an interesting development, something
Speaker 1: that has made the news recently. Uh, and it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of interesting that that's such a you would normally
Speaker 1: think thermostats those are fairly mundane. Yeah, I mean the
Speaker 1: sort of thing that usually makes waves in the tech world.
Speaker 1: I could guarantee you that that the thermostat you were
Speaker 1: describing earlier in the episode is something that just about
Speaker 1: everybody we're talking to on this podcast has seen in
Speaker 1: somebody's house at some point. Yeah, simply because um it's
Speaker 1: so reliable. Thermostats don't just break in a lot of instances.
Speaker 1: So I've seen, you know, the old mechanical thermostats last
Speaker 1: years and years and years and years. Um so, and
Speaker 1: I could just about guarantee that people have seen the
Speaker 1: type that you were talking about before, the pre digital variety. Okay,
Speaker 1: now I've been chilling out to this podcast tool and
Speaker 1: now it's too cold in here, all right, I gotta
Speaker 1: make another adjustment. In the meantime, let's take a quick
Speaker 1: break to thank our sponsor. So, you know, other than
Speaker 1: the programmable thermostat, there hasn't been I would say, a
Speaker 1: massive surge in thermostat technology. Yeah, the web connection is
Speaker 1: probably the closest thing that we can come to. But
Speaker 1: even then you're just adding some sort of connectivity to
Speaker 1: the device. In this case, we're talking about something that
Speaker 1: that goes a step beyond just connectivity. And we owe
Speaker 1: thanks to Mr Tony Fidel, who made a real name
Speaker 1: for him self developing being one of the developers on
Speaker 1: a truly iconic product, which is the iPod. And in fact,
Speaker 1: it's so iconic that we have podcasting. Uh. And yeah,
Speaker 1: there are people who refer to it as netcasting or
Speaker 1: or webcasting, but but truth you know, the podcasting is
Speaker 1: like the common that's different. Podcasting is is the common
Speaker 1: term for what what it is that Chris and I
Speaker 1: are doing right now. Um, and we you know, it
Speaker 1: owes everything to the Apple iPod. It was the MP
Speaker 1: three player that it was not the first MP three
Speaker 1: player to hit the market, but it was a huge
Speaker 1: success and it essentially defined in the market once once
Speaker 1: the iPod hit and people started to adopt it, all
Speaker 1: other MP three players at that point for moving forward
Speaker 1: were essentially guided by the iPod. Either they were trying
Speaker 1: to do what the iPod did but do it better,
Speaker 1: or to try and completely depart from the way the
Speaker 1: iPod did things in a way to differentiate the the
Speaker 1: product from the standard bearer. Really so well, I was
Speaker 1: gonna say one of the things that made the iPod
Speaker 1: great and it's time was the simplicity of its controls.
Speaker 1: And you'll remember, just a couple of minutes ago, I
Speaker 1: was talking about how some digital thermostats can be a
Speaker 1: real pain in the neck to use UM because the
Speaker 1: controls aren't necessarily UM aren't necessarily straightforward in their labeling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or it may it may take multiple steps just for
Speaker 1: you to go. Like if you want to get really
Speaker 1: granular with your programming, so that you know, for instance, uh,
Speaker 1: you might tell a work one day out of the week,
Speaker 1: and so you want that one day out of the
Speaker 1: week to have a slightly different program than all the
Speaker 1: other work days that you have. You know, so let's
Speaker 1: say that you let's say you work from home on Tuesdays,
Speaker 1: and so, uh, you know, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday
Speaker 1: you want to set up so that's going to save
Speaker 1: as much electricity as possible while you're away. But on
Speaker 1: Tuesday's you're going to be home. So you're gotta make
Speaker 1: sure that when you program your your thermostat that the
Speaker 1: Tuesday is the exception and your weekends are exceptions because
Speaker 1: you know your weekend you're not gonna be away from
Speaker 1: your home the way you are during the work week.
Speaker 1: So getting this program in a typical digital thermostat can
Speaker 1: sometimes be frustrating. It's like setting an old VCR you're
Speaker 1: put kids, ask your parents what VCRs were. But Monday, Tuesday, right, okay,
Speaker 1: Wednesday two pm, three pm too late, gott to go
Speaker 1: around the horn. Yeah so yeah, back, it could be
Speaker 1: a little bit of a frustration, a little bit of
Speaker 1: an exercise and frustration. So the Mr Fidel, who now
Speaker 1: works for a company called Nest Labs, decided to try
Speaker 1: and develop a thermostat that would be easy to program,
Speaker 1: and not just easy to program, but could learn how
Speaker 1: to program your climate control system in your home based
Speaker 1: upon your activities. Yeah. Yeah, now, I mean Nest Labs
Speaker 1: is a fairly new company. Um uh Matt Rodgers, who
Speaker 1: worked on the the iPod and iPad, was the co
Speaker 1: founder and vice president of engineering for Nest Labs. Um
Speaker 1: and he uh. He interviewed with uh Martin Lamonica at
Speaker 1: uh C net, which was an interesting interview. I'm just
Speaker 1: talking about how the point is to make a very
Speaker 1: simple and easy to use thermostat that picks up, uh,
Speaker 1: picks up what you're trying to lay down. Man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's paying attention to the way you like things.
Speaker 1: It's called the the it's the Nest thermostat, the and
Speaker 1: the nest learning thermostat in fact, uh so uh very
Speaker 1: simple looking designs, a little round thermostat has has the
Speaker 1: temperature and nice big digits so it's easy to need. UM.
Speaker 1: It even has a little leaf icon that will pop
Speaker 1: up whenever you're using the thermostat to its to its
Speaker 1: best efficiency, so that you're saving power and you're conserving electricity.
Speaker 1: We've seen that actually in other products as well, particularly
Speaker 1: in cars. Cars that are supposed to be energy efficient,
Speaker 1: now many of them, Yeah they have a little leaf icon,
Speaker 1: the Nissan Leaf being the leading example. But yeah, seeing
Speaker 1: this pop up in other products now and in this case, yeah,
Speaker 1: it has this feature where not to you have the
Speaker 1: remote control that you have with other web enabled thermostats,
Speaker 1: but in this case it actually starts to um follow
Speaker 1: what you do and it will start to proactively make
Speaker 1: adjustments based upon what you have done in the past,
Speaker 1: and it will even do things like connect to the
Speaker 1: web and look at things like weather reports. So you
Speaker 1: know you've set up the system, you have a web
Speaker 1: enabled to some it knows where you are based upon
Speaker 1: the information you've put in. It's not like there's a
Speaker 1: GPS or anything in it. It's that you are entering
Speaker 1: this information. So in our case, we'd say Atlanta, Georgia.
Speaker 1: And then because it knows we're in Atlanta, Georgia, let's
Speaker 1: say there's a heat wave that's moving through Atlanta, Georgia,
Speaker 1: it already knows proactively that the temperature outside is going
Speaker 1: to to go up, and it starts to prepare everything
Speaker 1: so that the air conditioning system is going to be
Speaker 1: more active during those times than it would be if
Speaker 1: the temperature were, you know, more moderate. So it's kind
Speaker 1: of interesting in that it's not just learning how you work,
Speaker 1: Like maybe it learns, you know what, he likes it
Speaker 1: pretty cool at night, but by the time it starts
Speaker 1: getting to the morning and wants a little bit warmer,
Speaker 1: it starts to make those adjustments based upon how you
Speaker 1: adjust the thermostat yourself. Um, it also will anticipate your
Speaker 1: needs based upon what's going on outside. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: It is very cool. It is also very pricey. It's
Speaker 1: around two and fifty dollars, and here here in the
Speaker 1: United States, that's quite a bit more than most programmable
Speaker 1: thermostats i've seen. That being said, two fifty dollars when
Speaker 1: you look at personal electronics is really reasonable. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: like I'm looking, I'm I'm When I heard two hundred
Speaker 1: fifty dollars, my reaction was wow, that's all. But that
Speaker 1: was because I was thinking about the smart technology and
Speaker 1: the programmability and and how it does this anticipation, and
Speaker 1: how much money it would, at least in theory or
Speaker 1: could save you. Because that's the big thing is that
Speaker 1: up to fifty of the typical American electric bill goes
Speaker 1: to heating and cooling, So if you were to improve efficiencies,
Speaker 1: you could theoretically save money. In fact, there are some
Speaker 1: estimates I saw where you could save up to a
Speaker 1: thousand dollars a year with the right system in place,
Speaker 1: which means that in a quarter of a year you've
Speaker 1: already paid off the purchase price of the Nest. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That being said, Nest is not sponsoring this podcast. This
Speaker 1: isn't an advertisement for Nest. It just was one of
Speaker 1: the points that they brought up, at least in their
Speaker 1: marketing speak. Yeah, and and it's important to note too
Speaker 1: that this system isn't so firmly ingrained in another system
Speaker 1: to the point where it can't be used as a
Speaker 1: standalone device. As a matter of fact, that it's uh
Speaker 1: um even though the creators are are formal former appollites. UM.
Speaker 1: The Nest can be used with an iOS device or
Speaker 1: an Android device so that you can actually uh make
Speaker 1: contact with it and change the temperature if you need
Speaker 1: to UM. And it uses WiFi on its own, so UM.
Speaker 1: You know, it doesn't have to be hooked into some
Speaker 1: brain somewhere else in the building as as some other systems.
Speaker 1: And I want to point out to it's not all
Speaker 1: home automation technology that requires those systems, but some of
Speaker 1: them do. UM. So there are some that just hook
Speaker 1: up directly to your home network, and this is one
Speaker 1: of those examples. This links directly into your home wireless network. Earlier,
Speaker 1: I was thinking of the home automation system that is
Speaker 1: offered through my alarm company, and if I wanted just
Speaker 1: a centralized operating so yeah, exactly, and if I wanted
Speaker 1: to take advantage of that uh and and later on
Speaker 1: switch providers, they would end up not being able to
Speaker 1: use that equipment. But yeah, there there's other stuff you
Speaker 1: can use now. According to Nest Labs, it takes about
Speaker 1: a week for this thermostat to learn what you like
Speaker 1: based upon you know what what you tell it during
Speaker 1: during that first week, which is kind of interesting to
Speaker 1: me too, that the algorithms are so so um sophisticated
Speaker 1: that you can pick up on your activities that quickly.
Speaker 1: Um raisins he likes. It makes me wanna. It makes
Speaker 1: me think that there's gotta be ways where you can
Speaker 1: screw with it. Like I would just imagine going to
Speaker 1: someone's house who has this and just like they're just
Speaker 1: gonna think that he wanted at ninety two degrees at
Speaker 1: three in the morning. Well, and and yesterday, um, literally
Speaker 1: yesterday for then they were recording this. Uh, the uh
Speaker 1: maintenance guy came to do our semi annual uh check
Speaker 1: up on my furnace and you know, does the heating
Speaker 1: and air conditioning thing. And of course to do that
Speaker 1: they have to crank up the thermostat to something that's
Speaker 1: ridiculously higher to make sure the heat or the air
Speaker 1: conditioning comes on so they can check it. And so
Speaker 1: I wonder what the nest would do. It's like, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, why does he suddenly wanted at eighty five degrees? Uh,
Speaker 1: that's kind of strange anyway, Uh, it's interesting to see
Speaker 1: that they're just it's interesting interesting to see some some
Speaker 1: real development in this field. When you know, when you
Speaker 1: consider that again, like Chris was saying, this is not
Speaker 1: exactly one of those technologies that has had you know,
Speaker 1: a meteoric rise in sophistication over the last several decades,
Speaker 1: and for the for many years, it just kind of
Speaker 1: the old the old analog systems were that was that
Speaker 1: was what you saw. Yeah, but you know, they're all
Speaker 1: still based on the same principle of trying to to
Speaker 1: get the climate at the right perture and then maintaining
Speaker 1: that until you change the settings. So some thing's never change.
Speaker 1: By the way, if you are interested in reading more
Speaker 1: about the thermostats and exactly how these these systems work
Speaker 1: and things like the bimetallic thermometers, um, we have some
Speaker 1: articles on how stuff works that cover this, including how
Speaker 1: home thermostats work, which is a very comprehensive article about
Speaker 1: the whole system. And then we have how thermometers work,
Speaker 1: which was written by our very own martial brain uh
Speaker 1: that will go on into more detail about things like
Speaker 1: the bimetallic thermometers if you want, if you're interested and
Speaker 1: want to learn more about that, you want to get
Speaker 1: deeper into the physics of it. I recommend both of those, alright, guys.
Speaker 1: That wraps up this classic episode of tech Stuff where
Speaker 1: we talked about thermostats. It was always enjoyed to revisit
Speaker 1: those episodes I recorded with Chris Palette so long ago.
Speaker 1: Hope you guys enjoyed it as well. If you want
Speaker 1: to learn more about the show, including ways to contact us,
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