Nest Thermostat

Nest Thermostat

Nest Thermostat Appliance Type Smart device, Thermostat Launch Date 2011 Status Active Product Line Smart Thermostat Platform Nest Labs Website www.nest.com

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he Nest Learning Thermostat is an electronic, smart thermostat. It is Wi-Fi-connected, programmable, and by learning its owner’s temperature habits and routines, the Nest Thermostat works to save the owner energy costs. The thermostat can be controlled either by interacting with the device’s touch screen or through the smartphone app. It is a product of Nest Labs, a manufacturer of smart home devices. It serves an ethical good by saving its owner money, and the world energy; however, due to the thermostat’s connectivity to the internet, there are ethical concerns.

History

Nest Labs was created by Tony Fadell, who used to work for Apple, and played a role in creating the iPod and iPhone. The Nest Thermostat (first version) was the first product made by Nest Labs in 2011. The first version of the thermostat was slightly bulkier than the current version. Its features included an auto schedule of the heating and cooling of the house, sensing when the home was empty, saving an energy history, and showing when the temperature settings were energy efficient. Since then, the thermostats have gained even more functionality. They now are able to automatically turn on features that will save you energy, send you reminders, be better at sensing when you are around, and can control the boiler.

Since the release of the first thermostat, the Nest Protect smoke and carbon monoxide detectors have also been released by Nest Labs. These work in conjecture with the thermostat. If smoke is detected it will tell the thermostat to turn the fans off; or if carbon monoxide is detected, the thermostat will turn the heat off. Nest Labs is working on making almost all of a home’s controls automated with the thermostat at the center of it all.

How it Works

The Nest works with most HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning) systems, and is installed in place of an existing thermostat. The Nest Thermostat is round with slightly domed glass over its display. It has a touch interface that lights up as it is approached and an outer ring that controls the temperature. After the Nest is installed it monitors the owner’s habits for the first week. After it has learned the owner’s habits it will schedule the HVAC based on the owner’s routine and wants to best save energy. It updates itself automatically as updates are released by its parent company, Nest Labs.

Beyond the thermostat’s hardware are sensors and algorithms that make it work; this is what Nest Labs refers to as Next Sense. Nest Sense pulls information from 4 different sources: 3 temperature sensors, a humidity sensor, motion/light sensors, and a Wi-Fi connection to get information on your nearby weather. Using these sources, the thermostat is able to set your heating and cooling to more optimal energy saving settings and schedule for when you are away.

Ethical Implications

Energy Savings

Three studies have been conducted to measure the amount of energy the thermostat actually saves. Two were done independently and one was completed by Nest Labs. They measured users’ energy use before and after using the Nest Thermostat across 41 states. In the Energy Savings White Paper released by Nest Labs, they stated that all the results showed the Nest Learning Thermostat saving the home owners “about 10%-12% of heating usage and electric savings equal to about 15% of cooling usage in homes with central air conditioning.”

Sensitive Information

For the Nest Thermostat to work, it needs sensitive information on its owner that is very private. First of all, its main ability to save energy comes from knowing when no one is home. There are many reasons why a home owner would not want information on when they are not home available to others. Also because the thermostat is Wi-Fi connected, it has the network credentials of the home stored in plain text.

Ethical Concerns

Although the Nest Thermostat is not hackable remotely, hacking is possible with physical access to the device. Although this is unlikely to happen if you install a new one into your home, there are definitely risks for people buying them used off eBay or other online markets. Security researcher TrapX Security has shown that control can be gained by going through the device’s USB port while it is powering up. By loading a custom software into the thermometer at this time they are able to get access to the owner’s Wi-Fi password and information on whether or not they are home. Furthermore, all this information is being pulled directly from the thermostat, so it is not yet encrypted. In the the TrapX testing, they also found that they could exploit the Wi-Fi access and gain control over other devices hooked up to the Wi-Fi. Through the thermometer the hacker could then potentially control the home’s computer, baby monitors, other Internet of Things’ devices, and more.

Combating These Concerns

The Nest Thermometers’ security has never been compromised remotely because of the security Nest Labs has installed in it. It is only susceptible with physical access, which is also true to mostly every other hardware device. Nest Lab’s thermostats have not yet been able to come up with a way to prevent these attacks from occurring through the device, because its vulnerability is directly in its hardware. However, if the device does get compromised it will be known as soon as Nest pushes an update to the thermometer, and they see that it is not working properly.