Tony Fadell, father of the iPod, has taken on the task of redesigning the thermostat. Nest is a 100-person start-up company that's applying the design and user-experience DNA of Apple to the thermostat. With its Learning Thermostat, Nest took a device that hasn't had a major redesign in decades and gave it some of the iPod and iPhone design magic. Fadell and his team think they've come up with an alternative that's easy to use and that learns from what we do. Along the way, the company thinks it could cut 20 to 30 percent off the average household's $1,000 or so in annual energy bills.
The system was built to learn about a household's use of cooling or heating, and to automatically adjust temperatures based on current and forecasted weather conditions, as well as whether anyone is home, their schedules, and their normal usage patterns. Rogers said the Learning Thermostat picks up on those patterns in about a week. Crazy... I want one. Looked at some of the pictures, and they are pretty sexy!
... let me add, I did NOT come up with the term sexy thermostats- it is however fitting.
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