Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello everyone,
Speaker 1: welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Poulette. I
Speaker 1: am an editor how stuff works dot com and sitting
Speaker 1: across from me, looking heated, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Baby,
Speaker 1: it's cold outside, So yes, we're going to take the
Speaker 1: temperature today in our podcast. Yeah, we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about the thermostat. Now, we've already talked about air conditioning,
Speaker 1: yes we have on the show, so but we didn't
Speaker 1: didn't cover thermostats at all when we talked about air conditioning,
Speaker 1: not really. And the thermostat, of course, is that handy
Speaker 1: dandy little device that helps you maintain the right temperature.
Speaker 1: Because you know, there are air conditioner and heater units
Speaker 1: out there that don't use thermostats. You manually have to
Speaker 1: turn it on or turn it off. So when you're thinking, Gali,
Speaker 1: g the house shore is cold. Now, I don't need
Speaker 1: that air conditioner on anymore. You can go and switch
Speaker 1: it off. But most of them tend to have some
Speaker 1: sort of thermostat in there. Which helps maintain a comfortable temperature.
Speaker 1: You set the temperature you want, it starts whatever the
Speaker 1: process is that needs to get to that temperature, whether
Speaker 1: that's cooling the air down or heating it up, and
Speaker 1: then once it reaches that temperature, ideally it shuts off
Speaker 1: so that you don't continue on the pathway to reach
Speaker 1: the other side of uncomfortable. Well yeah, and uh it's
Speaker 1: also I think the second largest lead leading cause of divorce.
Speaker 1: I want to two degrees colder. Are you done now?
Speaker 1: I am okay, yeah, no. Uh. Thermostats are not not
Speaker 1: exclusive to houses, of course, or or buildings or or
Speaker 1: keeping people comfortable. They're also in many other devices for
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 1: sophisticated and in fact actually used physics to um determine
Speaker 1: or you know, to set off the switch inside that
Speaker 1: that makes things hotter or cooler. Yeah, it's actually pretty
Speaker 1: cool in a way. You know, I don't mean that
Speaker 1: in a temperature way. I see what you did there.
Speaker 1: These 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 the little upon 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 the temperature inside the house right now is a
Speaker 1: is a chilly sixty five because because we're in the
Speaker 1: dead of winter in Georgia and so so we want
Speaker 1: to 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 inside. So we move the
Speaker 1: the lever so that it moves up to seventy two
Speaker 1: and then magically the heater comes on until it hits
Speaker 1: around seventy two degrees and then shuts off. But what's
Speaker 1: going on inside, well, inside the thermostat is at the
Speaker 1: 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. Yep. 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 as a header. But sealing it up inside
Speaker 1: 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 balls and then reform. It's
Speaker 1: like Terminator, Yes, exactly, it's the one when the in
Speaker 1: the documentary Terminator too would come apart. You know, you
Speaker 1: would see it kind of turn through these liquid shape
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 will vaporize. But a lot of stuff vaporizes will
Speaker 1: turn into a gas form. Uh. That's really when the
Speaker 1: atoms are have so much energy and they're moving around
Speaker 1: so much, they're no longer cohesive as a liquid um
Speaker 1: So Marcy Ary, I mean it takes a lot that
Speaker 1: it takes way more heat than it would then we
Speaker 1: would generate to turn mercury into a gas. But all right,
Speaker 1: and its liquid form. What happens is you put it
Speaker 1: into an enclosed space, you add heat. It's going to
Speaker 1: the liquid inside that enclosed space is going to expand.
Speaker 1: The volume increases as the temperature increases. So if you
Speaker 1: were to put mercury, say in a glass bulb, that
Speaker 1: one side is elongated into a tube, very thin tube.
Speaker 1: As the heat increases, the mercury would appear to climb
Speaker 1: that tube. It's because the mercury itself is expanding, the
Speaker 1: volumes increasing as the temperature increases. And that's the basis
Speaker 1: of a thermometer, the old mercury thermometers. You would have
Speaker 1: this glass tube that was filled with mercury. You would
Speaker 1: have numbers that would correspond to whatever the temperature was,
Speaker 1: and then as the temperature rises, you'd see the little
Speaker 1: level of mercury increase inside that glass tube. You know,
Speaker 1: suddenly I want to ride my bicycle that's a different
Speaker 1: kind of mercury. You want to ride your bike, yes,
Speaker 1: fat bottom girls, you make the rock and world alright, alright,
Speaker 1: the same song does reference it anyway, that's true. That's
Speaker 1: in a thermometer that you've got the mercury expanding to
Speaker 1: tell you what temperature it is. Yes, but there's a
Speaker 1: 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. Then
Speaker 1: you have wires on the left and right side of
Speaker 1: the vial that are just out of contact with the mercury.
Speaker 1: But the vial itself can tilt to the left or
Speaker 1: to the right, and when it does tilt, the mercury
Speaker 1: then comes in contact with the wire that's on that
Speaker 1: particular side of the glass vial and then completes a
Speaker 1: circuit between the bottom wire and the wire that's on
Speaker 1: the respective side. So let's arguably say the the vial
Speaker 1: tilts to the left. The mercury now is in contact
Speaker 1: with both the wire along the bottom of the vial
Speaker 1: and on the left side of the vial. And now
Speaker 1: you've got a circuit. So this gives us some opportunities
Speaker 1: here if we create a system that will tilt the
Speaker 1: vial one way or the other based upon certain parameters
Speaker 1: we haven't. We have a switch, and we have a
Speaker 1: switch that can either be off or it can be
Speaker 1: on on two different directions, which is great for heating
Speaker 1: and cooling. Yes, so now we think, okay, well, well
Speaker 1: you've got the switch. Uh, let's say that you want
Speaker 1: to adjust the heat, and you want to turn up
Speaker 1: the heat, and you you move that that uh, that
Speaker 1: 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: But uh, in this case, we're using uh, a couple
Speaker 1: of other metals. Yeah, it's uh using a thermometer called
Speaker 1: bimetallic thermometer. And based on its name, you may be
Speaker 1: able to discern what's special about this kind of thermometer. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's got to to two metals and one actually it's
Speaker 1: not in one. They're laminated together, yes, to make a strip.
Speaker 1: So so yeah, on on one side of the strip
Speaker 1: you have one metal and on the other side of
Speaker 1: the strip it's another metal. They're joined together. And here's
Speaker 1: why you want this. You see, different metals will expand
Speaker 1: at different rates in in reaction to a change in temperature.
Speaker 1: So one metal, when you when you apply heat to
Speaker 1: it might expand rather rapidly, while a second metal in
Speaker 1: relation to the first one, will go more slowly. And
Speaker 1: you put these two different pieces of metal together, and
Speaker 1: as one expands a rate that's faster than the other,
Speaker 1: it's going to change the shape of that sheet of metal. Now,
Speaker 1: in the case of these thermostats, these bimetallic thermometers tend
Speaker 1: to be arranged in a coil. And so you've got
Speaker 1: a coil of this material where on the outer edge
Speaker 1: and the inner edge it's two different metals. The inner
Speaker 1: edge is usually the one that expands faster um when
Speaker 1: when 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 thermostat
Speaker 1: will change too quickly, right, So you would you might
Speaker 1: be in a situation where if the hot air were
Speaker 1: 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 a 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 vent is going to be
Speaker 1: warmer than wherever the thermostat is, and the heat will
Speaker 1: disperse throughout the house. So it's kind of a way
Speaker 1: of making sure you don't get too warm, because then
Speaker 1: you're gonna be sitting there thinking I said it to
Speaker 1: seventy two and now it feels like it's like seventy six.
Speaker 1: What's going on? So um to do that, they have
Speaker 1: a resistor inside the thermostat. No, I'm not going so.
Speaker 1: Resistors will actually heat up as electricity goes through them,
Speaker 1: and the resistor itself acts as a heater for that
Speaker 1: coil that's inside the thermostats, so it will expand a
Speaker 1: little faster than it would if it were just measuring
Speaker 1: the ambient temperature of the air, right, so uh, that
Speaker 1: will cause the heater to to shut down a little
Speaker 1: more quickly than it would if if it were just
Speaker 1: reacting to the ambient air temperature. So um. Of course,
Speaker 1: if the the house cools down, you know, after you've
Speaker 1: heated it up, then that coil is going to slowly
Speaker 1: start to contract, you know, as as it's 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 way,
Speaker 1: of air conditioning, except you know, you're talking about contracting
Speaker 1: instead of expanding. But it's just tilting the mercury viile
Speaker 1: the other way, and as the temperature goes down, the
Speaker 1: coil contracts, and then the file will eventually be set
Speaker 1: back to its central configuration. Uh. Now that this is
Speaker 1: your basic analog thermostat. It's not the way all thermostats work.
Speaker 1: It's the way the older ones work. So if you
Speaker 1: ever in a building that has that and you hear
Speaker 1: that clicking noise, that's the sound of the file actually
Speaker 1: turning and uh and and the circuit completing. Um, that's
Speaker 1: 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 faster than the speed
Speaker 1: of light. Um. And that was a joke people, I
Speaker 1: know I'm reading up on the whole story. That was
Speaker 1: just a me playing playing a joke about the laws
Speaker 1: of physics not changing. Right, No, but it's a it's
Speaker 1: a brilliant system because it's so simple in its design.
Speaker 1: Um and very frankly, I've I've found that the manual thermostats,
Speaker 1: while they don't necessarily save you as much energy as
Speaker 1: a programmable Uh, some programmable thermostats are real painting the
Speaker 1: neck to you, especially if you don't realize what what
Speaker 1: setting it's on, or you take a week of vacation
Speaker 1: and you're at home when you're thinking, well, it's so warm,
Speaker 1: and then oh, it's on the programmed one as opposed
Speaker 1: 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 that's probably no, that's I can't really
Speaker 1: argue with that, right Well, um, well, the digital ones
Speaker 1: that use the thermistors. In case you're wondering how the
Speaker 1: thermistorre works, it actually is um allowing. Uh. It changes
Speaker 1: the electrical resistance of the material inside as the temperature changes.
Speaker 1: That's how it determines uh, if it's at the right
Speaker 1: temperature or not, or whether you know, the the heating
Speaker 1: or cooling device needs to be still going. Um. And
Speaker 1: of course the programmable thermostat still use uh 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 this which to turn the
Speaker 1: heat or cooling system on or off. Yah. Got so, Yeah,
Speaker 1: There's certain components are gonna be uh common across all thermostats.
Speaker 1: They may not take the exact same form, but they
Speaker 1: follow the same function. Even in a system where you
Speaker 1: have zoning. Yeah, zoning can be important if you're in
Speaker 1: a well, if you're in a build office built in
Speaker 1: office building, clearly you're gonna need zones because especially if
Speaker 1: it's say it's a high rise um or a skyscraper,
Speaker 1: that's the temperature is going to vary quite a bit
Speaker 1: from the very top to the very bottom. Especially if
Speaker 1: you imagine that there was no heating or cooling system
Speaker 1: in there at all, you would know, you know, well,
Speaker 1: it's gonna feel a lot different on floor number one
Speaker 1: than it is on floor number fifty. So so you've
Speaker 1: gotta have special zoning in there. But even some houses
Speaker 1: will have it, especially depending on the layout of the house.
Speaker 1: You know, some houses are if they're like a flat
Speaker 1: style where it's it's multiple floors, it may be that
Speaker 1: the bottom floor is always much cooler or than the
Speaker 1: top floor, and you might want special zoning there so
Speaker 1: that the entire domicile remains and a comfortable temperature. Um. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's also fairly common. And we're also seeing
Speaker 1: some web connected thermostats these days where you can even
Speaker 1: you know, 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 as
Speaker 1: you set the h 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 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 in.
Speaker 1: In some cases, there's also the possibility. There's also the
Speaker 1: possibility that whatever company you go with ends up going
Speaker 1: out of business. And if that happens, if your commands
Speaker 1: are sent through corporate servers before they get to your
Speaker 1: house to make whatever the changes are, if that company
Speaker 1: goes out of business, then you're out of luck. I mean,
Speaker 1: most of these systems still have the way, you know,
Speaker 1: you can still program him it manually, so that it's
Speaker 1: not like all functionality is going to 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 people, just
Speaker 1: about everybody we're talking to on this podcast has seen
Speaker 1: in somebody's house at some point, simply because um, it's
Speaker 1: so reliable. Thermostats don't just break in a lot of
Speaker 1: instances 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 the pre
Speaker 1: digital variety. Um so, you know, other than the programmable thermostat,
Speaker 1: there hasn't been I would say a massive surge in
Speaker 1: thermostat technology. Yeah. The the web connection is probably the
Speaker 1: closest thing that we can come to. But even then
Speaker 1: you're just adding some sort of connectivity to the device.
Speaker 1: In this case, we're talking about something that that goes
Speaker 1: a step beyond just connectivity. And we owe thanks to
Speaker 1: Mr Tony Fidel who made a real name for himself developing,
Speaker 1: being one of the developers on a truly iconic product, yes,
Speaker 1: which is the iPod. And in fact, it's so iconic
Speaker 1: that we have podcasting. Uh and yeah, there are people
Speaker 1: who refer to it as netcasting or or webcasting, but
Speaker 1: but truth you know, the podcasting is like the common
Speaker 1: that's different. Podcasting is is the common term for what
Speaker 1: what it is that Chris and I are doing right now.
Speaker 1: Um and it we you know, it owes everything to
Speaker 1: the Apple iPod. It was the MP three player that
Speaker 1: it was not the stimpy three player to hit the market,
Speaker 1: but it was a huge success and it essentially defined
Speaker 1: the market once once the iPod hit and people started
Speaker 1: to adopt it, all other MP three players at that
Speaker 1: point for moving forward were essentially guided by the iPod.
Speaker 1: Either they were trying to do what the iPod did
Speaker 1: but do it better, or to try and completely depart
Speaker 1: from the way the iPod did things in a way
Speaker 1: to differentiate the product from the standard bearer. Really so well,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say one of the things that made
Speaker 1: the iPod great and its time was the simplicity of
Speaker 1: its controls. And you'll remember, just a couple of minutes ago,
Speaker 1: I was talking about how some digital thermostats can be
Speaker 1: a real pain in the neck to use UM because
Speaker 1: the controls aren't necessarily UM aren't necessarily straightforward in their labeling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or it may it may take multiple step 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 gonna save as
Speaker 1: much electricity as possible while you're away. But on Tuesdays
Speaker 1: you're gonna be home. So you're going to make sure
Speaker 1: that when you program your your thermostat that the Tuesday
Speaker 1: is the exception and your weekends are exceptions because you
Speaker 1: know your weekend you're not gonna be away from your
Speaker 1: home the way you are during the work week. So
Speaker 1: getting this program in a typical digital thermostat can sometimes
Speaker 1: be frustrating. It's like setting an old VCR. You're put kids,
Speaker 1: ask your parents what VCRs were? But Monday, Tuesday, right? Okay?
Speaker 1: Wednesday two pm? Three pm too late, Gotta go around
Speaker 1: the horn. Yeah, so came back. It could be a
Speaker 1: little bit of us, a little bit of an exercise
Speaker 1: and frustration. So the Mr Fidel, who now works for
Speaker 1: a company called nest Labs, decided to try and develop
Speaker 1: a thermostat that would be easy to program, and not
Speaker 1: just easy to program, but could learn how to program
Speaker 1: your climate control system in your home. Based upon your activities. Yeah, yeah, now,
Speaker 1: I mean Nest Labs is a fairly new company. Um uh.
Speaker 1: Matt Rodgers, who worked on the the iPod and iPad,
Speaker 1: was the co founder and vice president of engineering for
Speaker 1: Nest Labs. Um and he uh he interviewed with uh
Speaker 1: Martin Lamonica at uh C net, which was an interesting interview.
Speaker 1: I'm just talking about how the point is to make
Speaker 1: very 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: And it's called the uh the it's the Nest thermostat,
Speaker 1: the and the Nest Learning Thermostat in fact, uh so
Speaker 1: uh very simple looking designs, a little round thermostat has
Speaker 1: has the temperature and nice big digits so it's easy
Speaker 1: to read. Um. It even has a little leaf icon
Speaker 1: that will pop up whenever you're using the thermostat to
Speaker 1: its to its best efficiency, so that you're saving power
Speaker 1: and you're conserving electricity. We've seen that actually in other
Speaker 1: products as well, particularly in cars. Cars that are supposed
Speaker 1: to be energy efficient, any of them. Yeah, they have
Speaker 1: a little leaf icon. The Nissan Leaf being the leading example,
Speaker 1: but uh, yeah, seeing this pop up in other products
Speaker 1: now and in this case, yeah, has this feature where
Speaker 1: not to you have the remote control that you have
Speaker 1: with other web enabe old thermostats, but in this case
Speaker 1: it actually starts to um follow what you do and
Speaker 1: it will start to proactively make adjustments based upon what
Speaker 1: you have done in the past, and it will even
Speaker 1: do things like connect to the web and look at
Speaker 1: things like weather reports. So you know you've set up
Speaker 1: the system. You have a web enabled system. It knows
Speaker 1: where you are based upon the information you've put in.
Speaker 1: It's not like there's a GPS or anything in it.
Speaker 1: It's that you are entering this information. So in our case,
Speaker 1: we'd say Atlanta, Georgia. And then because it knows we're
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, Georgia, let's say there's a heat wave that's
Speaker 1: moving through Atlanta, Georgia, it already knows proactively that the
Speaker 1: temperature outside is going to go up, and it starts
Speaker 1: to prepare everything so that the air condition naing system
Speaker 1: is going to be more active during those times than
Speaker 1: it would be if the temperature were you know, more moderate.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of interesting in that it's not just
Speaker 1: learning how you work, Like maybe it learns, you know
Speaker 1: what he likes it pretty cool at night, but by
Speaker 1: the time it starts getting to the morning and wants
Speaker 1: a little bit warmer, it starts to make those adjustments
Speaker 1: based upon how you adjust the thermostat yourself. Um, it
Speaker 1: also will anticipate your needs based upon what's going on outside.
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool. It is very cool. It is also
Speaker 1: very pricey. It's around two and fifty dollars, and here
Speaker 1: here in the United States, that's quite a bit more
Speaker 1: than most programmable thermostats I've seen. That being said, two
Speaker 1: fifty dollars when you look at personal electronics is really reasonable.
Speaker 1: I mean when I like, like I'm looking, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: When I heard two fifty dollars, my reaction was wow,
Speaker 1: that's all. But that was because I was thinking about
Speaker 1: the smart technology and the programmability and and how it
Speaker 1: does this anticipation, and how much money it would, at
Speaker 1: least in theory or could save you. But because that's
Speaker 1: the big thing is that up to fifty of the
Speaker 1: typical American electric bill goes to heating and cooling. So
Speaker 1: if you were to improve efficiencies, you could theoretically save money.
Speaker 1: In fact, there are some estimates I saw where you
Speaker 1: could save up to a thousand dollars a year with
Speaker 1: the right system in place, which means that in a
Speaker 1: quarter of a year you've already paid off the purchase
Speaker 1: price of the Nest. Yeah. That being said, Nest is
Speaker 1: not sponsoring this podcast. This isn't an advertisement for Nest.
Speaker 1: It just was one of the points that they brought up,
Speaker 1: at least in their marketing speak. Yeah. And and it's
Speaker 1: important to note too that this system isn't so firmly
Speaker 1: ingrained in another system to the point where it can't
Speaker 1: be used as a standalone device. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: that it's uh um even though the creators are are
Speaker 1: formal former applyites UM. The Nest can be used with
Speaker 1: an iOS device or an Android device so that you
Speaker 1: can actually uh make contact with it and change the
Speaker 1: temperature if you need to. Um. And it uses WiFi
Speaker 1: on its own, so um. You know, it doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be hooked into some brain somewhere else in the
Speaker 1: building as as some other systems. And I want to
Speaker 1: point out to it's not all home automation technology that
Speaker 1: requires those systems, but some of them do. Um So,
Speaker 1: there are some that just hook up directly to your
Speaker 1: home network, and this is one of those examples. This
Speaker 1: one links directly into your home wireless network. Earlier, I
Speaker 1: was thinking of the home automation system that is offered
Speaker 1: through my alarm company, and if I wanted just a
Speaker 1: centralized operating so yeah, exactly, and if I wanted to
Speaker 1: take advantage of that, uh and and later on switch
Speaker 1: providers they would end up not being able to use
Speaker 1: that equipment. But yeah, there there's other stuff you can
Speaker 1: use now. According to nest Labs, it takes about a
Speaker 1: week for this thermostatic to learn what you like based
Speaker 1: upon you know what, what you tell it during during
Speaker 1: that first week. Which is kind of interesting to me too,
Speaker 1: that the algorithms are so so um sophisticated that it
Speaker 1: can pick up on your activities that quickly. Um raisins
Speaker 1: he it makes me wanna. It makes me think that
Speaker 1: there's gotta be ways where you can screw with it.
Speaker 1: Like I would just imagine going to someone's house who
Speaker 1: has this and just like they're just gonna think that
Speaker 1: they wanted at degrees at three in the morning. Well
Speaker 1: and and yesterday, um literally yesterday for then they were
Speaker 1: recording this. Uh, the maintenance guy came to do our
Speaker 1: semi annual check up on my furnace and you know,
Speaker 1: does the heating and air conditioning thing. And of course
Speaker 1: to do that they have to crank up the thermostat
Speaker 1: to something that's ridiculously higher to make sure the heat
Speaker 1: or the air conditioning comes on so they can check it.
Speaker 1: And so I wonder what the nest would do. It's like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, why does he suddenly wanted at eight
Speaker 1: five degrees. Uh, that's kind of strange. Anyway, Uh, it's
Speaker 1: interesting to see that they're out just it's interesting, interesting
Speaker 1: to see some some real development in this field when
Speaker 1: you you know, when you consider that again, like Chris
Speaker 1: was saying, this is not exactly one of those technologies
Speaker 1: that has had, you know, a meteoric rise in sophistication
Speaker 1: over the last several decades and for the for many years,
Speaker 1: it just kind of the old the old analog systems
Speaker 1: were that was that was what you saw. But uh,
Speaker 1: you know, they're all still based on the same principle
Speaker 1: of trying to to get the climate at the right
Speaker 1: temperature and then maintaining that until you change the settings,
Speaker 1: so some thing's never change. By the way, if you
Speaker 1: are interested in reading more about the thermostats and exactly
Speaker 1: how these these systems work and things like the bi
Speaker 1: metallic thermometers. UM, we have some articles on how stuff
Speaker 1: works that cover this, including how home thermostats work, which
Speaker 1: is a very comprehensive article about the whole system. And
Speaker 1: then we have how Thermometers Work, which was written by
Speaker 1: our very own martial brain. Uh, that will go on
Speaker 1: into more detail about things like the metallic thermometers if
Speaker 1: you want, if you're interested and want to learn more
Speaker 1: about that, you want to get deeper into the physics
Speaker 1: of it, I recommend both of those. And uh, I
Speaker 1: guess that kind of wraps up this discussion. It's actually
Speaker 1: getting a little chilly here in the studio, so we're
Speaker 1: gonna take a little break now and heat things up
Speaker 1: before we have to record another podcast. I think, UM,
Speaker 1: some of some of these stuff you should know, T
Speaker 1: shirts probably flammable, all right, So, uh, guys, we're wrapping
Speaker 1: this up. If you have any topics you would like
Speaker 1: us to discuss in future episodes, please let us know.
Speaker 1: You can send us an email that addresses tech stuff
Speaker 1: at how stuffworks dot com or let us know on
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Speaker 1: include Twitter and Facebook. Are handled there is tech stuff H. S.
Speaker 1: W and Chris and I will talk to you again
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