SDG&E smart thermostat rebate

[spdrun]

They’re offering $75 off an Ecobee or Nest thermostat through tomorrow. One could always install it if they actually bother to inspect, then sell it on EBay the next day if they dislike the creep factor of a cloud thermostat.

[gzz]

I would hate it if the NSA knew I like it to be 67 at night!

Seriously though, I have yet to be impressed by any of these smart appliances. I just have never felt the need to adjust lights and my heater with a phone app. Nor spend hours setting it all up. (A lot of these items seem to be either very expensive VC products like Nest or Chinese companies who purchased disused US trademarks like Westinghouse and Zenith and have low build quality and very poor user interface, not to mention may have Chinese government spyware on them.)

And LED lights obviate the need to turn lights off. An 8w bulb can be on 24/7 at a cost of about $20 per year at the most expensive electricity tier. Setting up a program where it is only on 25% of the time thus saves $15 per year at most. Not even close to being worth the added up-front cash and time expense.

It looks like a lot of these smart devices are getting hacked and turned into botnet slaves to send out spam emails from your home internet connection.

The big improvement I saw in lighting next to LEDs is not smart timers but installing dimmers on every overhead light. It is quite nice to have a slight warm glow from overhead after 8pm.

[FlyerInHi]

I was an early adopter of the Nest. Not really useful in San Diego but it’s actually excellent in climate where HVAC is on all the time. With households where people come and go, it’s a huge energy saver with the auto-away feature.

I love home automation. At $40 a switch it’s still too expensive, but when they become commodities, they will make sense. Why would you not have them at the same cost as a mechanical switch?

gzz, i agree about LED lights. I like my home to be lit up like a well-designed hotel. It’s now possible for the consumer to that.

[spdrun]

Why not? Because a lot of the cheaper stuff is cloud-focused junk. Imagine not being able to control your lights if your Internet went down. Fun times.

Honestly, I’m not crippled — it’s not that hard to flip a switch when entering or leaving a room.

[FlyerInHi]

spd, actually replacing the old fashioned mechanical switches still allow you to manually activate.

These are the ones I get. If they were $10, then everyone will replace.

You can program your smart home so that when you’re away, everything shuts down including your water heaters. Keeping water hot when you’re away is a waste of energy.

Smart homes will give us more comfort while increasing security and lowering our carbon footprint.

Now i wish manufacturer would make Wi-Fi security cameras powered by door bell transformers. The ring doorbell is like that.

[bewildering]

I just got the Ring doorbell from Costco, along with the floodlight option. I already have Ecobee and I like it. SDGE will come and install the thermostat as well.

[spdrun]

An on-demand heater doesn’t use power when you’re away either, and it doesn’t require giving privacy-thieving cloud providers access to physical objects in one’s home.

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