
A thermostat company shut down every thermostat in the middle of a cold night - pizza
https://twitter.com/jeremyphoward/status/1094681327297736705
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joezydeco
I own an Ecobee. The internet connection is only used for remote adjustment
and monitoring.

When the internet connection is down, the thermostat maintains the current
program. I'm not quite sure what the outrage is here. If the OP was home, he
could walk over and change the temperature. If OP was away, one would hope the
base program was set to something that didn't freeze the pipes.

The owner finally mentions that the thermostat is in a location that's not
accessible 24/7\. While that's a great use case for a net connected device,
it's puzzling why you would sleep in a place where you have no control over
your HVAC.

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sorokod
Not as puzzling as to why would one want to let "the internet" control their
HVAC in the first place.

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mvid
I understand this a popular opinion for IOT naysayers, but HVAC is one of the
few features where IOT seems to make sense. It can cause a noticeable change
in the cost of your utilities and general comfort.

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sorokod
But you do see that there is a downside - right?

Speaking of making sense, why does your thermostat needs to make a connection
to a computer that is not under your control?

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nonplus
I'm with mvid. The benefits to the average user far outweigh the negatives.

It's unfortunate that for me using something like an ecobee requires a
sandboxed network connection to protect my other devices from the ecobee and
vis-a-vis, but that's how it goes in 2019. We are not as security
conscientious as we need to be yet. Or we can all live in caves in isolation.
That's okay too I guess.

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rolph
I think this is germaine to the comments

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/fashion/nest-
thermostat-g...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/fashion/nest-thermostat-
glitch-battery-dies-software-freeze.html)

when convieniences are affected thats one thing but when it goes into
potentially life threatening or extremely destructive, like the IoT
refrigerators [~7000] found to have a default password, prone to mal usage
such as remotely putteing them all into THAW mode, thats a black eye. Please
lets find some way of purging the default password, and developing a non
damaging default mode that persists during power or command & control outages.

Unfortunately landlords want to skrimp on utilities so, they lock thermostats
and hot water tank shunts away in a service chase or closet. Ive lived in a
place like this as a kid and it was always freezing in winter and luke warm
showers had to be supplemented with stove top hot water.

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dkoston
As mentioned, your internet connected thermostat works based on settings that
are stored locally. It’s not making a http request every second asking “should
i change the temperature?” The original poster clearly woke up angry and
wanted someone to blame but is misrepresenting the situation and that’s why
the tweet was removed. Let’s let logic prevail here instead of getting up in
arms over penny press headlines.

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pizza
sorry, the tweet has since been deleted

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21
This guy complains, but he is the one who bought a Internet connecting
thermostat. Darwin effect at work here.

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gmiller123456
Letting the public know about your experience is what helps others not make
the same mistake.

