Pebble owners can now toggle the temperature at home thanks to an update to smart heating system Nest.
Owners of the sleek smart watch can now issue ‘home’ and ‘away’ commands from their wrists, allowing you to stop an empty house from being warmed up – or get it nice and toasty for your arrival. It has the added bonus of making you feel a bit more like you’re Lando Calrissian.
While this means that Nest has finally caught up with Honeywell’s rival Evohome system in the ‘works with Pebble’ stakes, for the Google-owned smart heating company, it’s the latest step towards putting Nest at the centre of an ever-growing web of Internet of Things things.
Matt Rogers, Nest’s founder and head of engineering said: “Today Nest works with everything from apps to whole-home automation systems, light bulbs to washing machines, garage doors to the cars that park in them.
“Together they can do all kinds of thoughtful things. Like how Nest works with Jawbone. When your UP24 fitness tracker notices you’re awake, it can tell your Nest Thermostat to start warming up the house before you even step out of bed.”
Smart sprinkler system Rachio now works in tandem with Nest. If your Nest Protect smoke alarms detect fire, they can be configured to send a message to the Rachio system which will turn on sprinklers round the house, potentially preventing or slowing the spread of fire.
Family group messaging service Life360 can also relay location information to Nest, meaning the heating can be turned off once everyone has left home for the day.
For customers who are part of Nest’s Rush Hour program you’ll now also be able to get a prompt from voice-activated home assistant Ivee when a rush hour is about to start or end.
Rush Hour Rewards is a system that heats or cools your house in anticipation of peak demand. The idea is that Nest will be able to adjust the temperature pre or post-rush and hopefully, as a result of less strain being placed on the energy grid, your supplier should pass on some savings to you.
Sadly for British penny-pinchers this service is currently US-only. Climote co-founder Derek Roddy is however convinced that programs similar to Rush Hour Rewards will make their way to this side of the Atlantic eventually – whether Nest gets on board or not.
The addition of Pebble, Rachio and Life360 to the Nest line-up is all part of the company’s Works With Nest developer program. Like Apple HomeKit, Samsung SmartHome and to an extent IFTTT (If This Then That), Nest’s umbrella approach allows the smart heating and smoke alarm system to expand way beyond its original remit without necessarily making any more hardware.
Both Climote and Hive makers British Gas have hinted at similar plans for their respective heating hubs to act as masters of the smart home, letting customers control a multitude of devices from one source.
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