Nest 1st gen and 2nd gen thermostats no longer supported from Oct 25

NEST protect has been a thorn in my side. Aside from just completely eating batteries - it constantly has to reconnect.

I wish the internet of things was soo much better than it is. There was a dream once of a world that worked efficiently, and then profit models came in and destroyed it.

You’ve got to use the one specific brand and type of battery they insist on. It’s some energizer lithium thing I’ll have to check for you and comment later. Anything else fails very fast, the correct ones last for years.

That parallel universe exists its just on aliexpress.com not amazon.com. Cheap hardware and open protocols as promised.

I used that one brand that the specified -- still died in 6 months.

Fair but how many hours of tinkering do you need to do to maintain them...

Not much at all. Setup is pretty easy with a lot of guides out there for setting up open hardware on open standards. Once its set up its rock solid forever unless you decide to change something for whatever reason. Way better than the alternative where the company decides to push an update no one asked for and breaks some feature you relied upon or enshittifies the device without your consent.