How Nest Thermostat Will Pay For Itself In Two Years

Read original story on: TechCrunch

Based on three separate studies of longitudinal data, Nest reports that its connected thermostat could pay for itself in less than two years from heating and cooling savings. The Google-owned smart-home manufacturer claims that “a correctly programmed thermostat can save about 20% on your heating and cooling bill”, and is also looking to implement algorithms that will make its thermostat better at responding to changes in temperature and anticipating future usage.

By The Numbers: Which Room Gets The Smart Home Devices

One of the major market trends we observed at CES 2015 last month was that the connected home is quickly becoming a reality. Smart home device shipment in the U.S. market is projected to grow nearly 74% from 20.7 million units to 35.9 million in the next 3 years, while the smart home controllers doubling its shipment.

US Smart home devices 2014-17

As rising product availability and mobile compatibility are readying home automation and monitoring to happen in every room of the house, which room will receive the priority of getting connected?

smart home by rooms U.S. female houseowners

According to a recent Better Homes and Gardens survey of U.S. female homeowners, it’s the shared family spaces like the kitchen and living room that takes the priority. In contrast, private spaces such as the bedroom or bathroom are less likely to be equipped with smart home devices.

Privacy concerns of connected devices

And it’s not hard to see the key reason behind such disparity—privacy concerns of connected devices are the number one reason that’s keeping smart devices from entering every room. Over 80% of U.S consumers worry about data security, according to a recent poll conducted by TRUSTe, as a majority believe they should own the data collected by smart devices. Overall, this means that brands in the connected home market need to do a better job at explaining the way personal data is collected and securely used to provide more benefits for the homeowners.

**All charts are taken from eMarketer.

Control Your Nest Thermostat With The Google App

Read original story on: ArsTechnica

The smart thermostat Nest just got even smarter: Nest owners can now use Google’s eponymous app on iOS or Android to easily control their home’s temperature, similar to how they used Nest’s own app. They can also use Google’s voice commands to change or set their temperature before even getting home. More impressively, Google Now will offer up suggestions for temperature settings based on user location and time of the day.

Qualcomm’s AllSeen Alliance Unifies Internet Of Things

The power of the internet of things is that these objects can talk to each other. In the connected home, your lightbulbs turn off because they are aware that the door has shut or your oven just received a cooking instructions from a recipe you saw on TV. The power is in the connectivity which has long been a promise of the future of the home, albeit a mostly unrealized one.

Enter the AllSeen Alliance. The consortium, spearheaded by Qualcomm, aims to create an open framework that lets device communicate to one another. The beauty of the Alliance is that it is device agnostic and works across various forms of communication, whether they be bluetooth, NFC, wifi or Zigbee. With a large player like Qualcomm in the mix, expect some serious advancements in the connected home space in the coming year.