Nest: More Than Just a Thermostat

Gone are the days of thermostats that sit lifeless on your wall taking up dust and space. Introducing Nest, an electronic programmable WiFi thermostat; and Nest Protect, a smoke and carbon monoxide detector. These cool gadgets can help you be more aware and conserve energy, which will help you in the long run to save money on your heating and cooling bill.

Nest Thermostat

This self-learning thermostat learns your schedule and can be controlled by your smartphone. Once you have Nest set up, either by yourself or by a Nest professional, it will ask you a series of questions about your current heating and cooling set-up. Utilizing your answers, Nest acclimates to your home, personalizing and optimizing its performance to fit your needs.

Nest programs itself, learning what temperatures you like and building a schedule around that information. It only takes about a week to start settings its own schedule.

When you go out, Nest has an auto away setting that automatically changes to a more energy efficient level as long as your house is unoccupied.

Nest is built to help you conserve energy whenever possible. If you turn down the heat, for example, even just a degree or two, you can decrease your energy use by as much as 5%. When you are saving energy, Nest lets you know by a leaf icon that appears at the bottom of the screen.

If you leave home without adjusting Nest, don't worry; you can control it via a smartphone app. Pretty cool, huh?

Smoke + CO Alarm

Smoke alarms are sometimes seen as a necessary evil. While they perform a useful service in the rare occurrence of an emergency situation, most of the time they are a hassle we want to rip off our ceiling thanks to that annoying chirping that just never seems to stop.

With the Nest Protect, you won't have to worry about burnt toast setting off your smoke detector. Once the Protect detects smoke it gives you an early warning called a Heads-Up: Protect will light up yellow and speak to you in a clear human voice, telling you where smoke is or what the carbon monoxide level is. If there is nothing to worry aboutin the case of burnt toast, for exampleyou can easily silence Protect with just a wave of your arm from a few feet away.

Just like the original Nest, the Protect has a smartphone app that sends you a message if an alarm goes off. Enter an emergency contact into the app so that if something goes wrong, you can get help. In the case of an emergency, Protect literally speaks to you, explaining what's wrong and where the problem is.

When it's time to change the batteries, Protect will send you a message on your smartphonemuch less annoying than a constant chirp at 2:00 a.m. As you go to change the batteries, Protect automatically lights your way as you walk under it.

We think the Nest and Protect are pretty nifty units. Have you tried either of them in your home? Let us know what your experience is like below.