From iPod to smart household appliances

Shane Hickey writes in The Guardian about a former Apple employee, who led the team that developed the iPod, and his interest in designing many of the latest ecological and technical devices found in new homes. Tony Fadell at California-based Nest has been smartening up once-dull household appliances to save households time and money.

Father of the iPod adopts the household thermostat and smoke alarm

Nearing the end of his time at Apple, Tony Fadell was building a holiday home for his family on Lake Tahoe when he tasked the architect with bringing him the most advanced thermostat available, to go with all of the latest ecological and technological devices featured in the new-build home.

Fadell, who has become known as one of the “fathers” of the iPod, was not impressed with the beige apparatus he got back, nor any of the other alternatives, and the foundation stone for Nest, a company that aims to revitalise “unloved but important” household devices, was laid.

At the heart of the California-based firm is a smart thermostat that has been on sale in the UK since April and which claims to cut an average of 20% off energy bills by learning household patterns and managing heat use as a result, using motion sensors to turn down temperatures when no one is at home.

This was followed by a more friendly carbon monoxide and smoke alarm, the Nest Protect, fitted with a five-year battery and which speaks in varying tones depending on the threat level it senses.

Together the products and their future potential have given Nest a strong footing in the “Internet of Things” – the idea in which everyday objects will be connected and able to communicate with each other – which was proved by Nest’s acquisition by Google in January for $3.2bn (£2bn).

Both of the first products – the thermostat and the smoke alarm – had one thing in common: few people paid any attention to them in the past.

“[The smoke alarm], nobody pays attention to it. You only pay attention to it because it beeps at you and you remove the batteries at night because it just bothers you; [in] 75% of fires in the US there was a smoke alarm in the home, just that there was no battery or they were dead and you had no idea. It didn’t give you any notification, it didn’t speak to you, it just beeped at you.”

Nest’s thermostat is twisted to reach the desired temperature and the device eventually learns and automates the patterns. When residents are away or asleep, it switches to lower temperatures and also learns how long it takes a home to warm up and alters the heating schedule accordingly, all the while being controlled by a mobile phone if necessary.

The average UK heating bill stands at £1,400. At £179 plus installation fee, it could take one or two winters for the device to recoup its cost, says Paillet.

“The saving depends on the house. We have houses that are very well-insulated that will be 7% [saving] at minimum [in Ireland] but it can go up to 27%. What we have seen in the US and generally what we have seen pretty much everywhere, it goes around 20% … Badly insulated houses in France will be up to 31%,” he said.

The device also talks to other devices, notably its sister unit, the smoke and carbon monoxide alarm. Should carbon monoxide be detected by the alarm, the thermostat switches off the boiler, a possible source for the gas.

The Nest Protect, which was launched in Britain a year ago and costs about £89, aims to ditch the traditional image of the smoke alarm – a beep to say the battery is running down, a device invariably seen as a nuisance, albeit one that could save lives.

Instead of an alarm, a voice identifies the location, whether it is smoke or carbon monoxide and what level of alert – burnt toast or a full-blown blaze. Like the thermostat, it can be tracked by mobile phone. Lights – green, yellow and red – indicate the level of danger.

The Google acquisition has been “like putting nitrogen in the tank”, says Paillet, with staff numbers tripling since February. But it has also raised concerns about what happens to the data collected by the thermostat; the comings and goings of a family and whether this would result in targeted ads on the device’s screen.

At the recent Dublin Web Summit, Fadell was quick to try to quell those concerns, saying that data would not flow between the two firms and that the Nest devices were being “invited into the home”.

“We will not share and not rent data,” said Paillet. “If you are going into people’s homes with a product, we need to behave properly. You cannot just say tomorrow ‘I’ll take your data and send you a recommendation of the washing machine that you should be buying and I’m going to display that on your thermostat and give you advertising.’ No, we don’t do that.”

He adds that within five to 10 years, there could be hundreds of products connected in the home, an example being the thermostat telling the fridge that the house is empty, thus saving the energy needed to maintain the temperature when the door is opened. In July, Nest and six other companies launched a wireless network called Thread specifically designed for smart appliances.

Tie-ups with other brands have already begun, from Mercedes cars that can to tell the thermostat when the driver will get home to lightbulbs that flash red if there is smoke in the house and a camera that will relay visuals. Temperature can also be turned up if someone is detected as waking earlier than normal via the Jawbone wristband that tracks the daily activities of the wearer.