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

(community.hubitat.com)
280 points RyanShook | 1 comments | 05 Sep 25 21:33 UTC | HN request time: 0.2s | source
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briHass ◴[06 Sep 25 01:31 UTC] No.45145753[source]▶
I got burned recently by Ecobee in the same way. The problem with 'smart' interfaces for traditionally mechanical devices is that the useable lifetime (support period) of low-end microprocessors and software, especially online APIs, is often far shorter than the mechanical device it's attached to.

Similar to how people that keep cars around for 10+ years are stuck with dated and worthless 'infotainment' systems, Google and Ecobee can't even honor their product for long enough to outlast the HVAC units.

What burns me is that it wouldn't be much of an ask for them to push one final (optional) update that would open LAN-only access to core functionality. I and many others in the HA/ESPHome community have written hardware integrations to devices over RS485/UART with unpublished/black-box protocols, so a simple HTTP API would have an integration within days.

It would maybe cost an engineer at Nest/Ecobee a day or two of work, and the goodwill would make me far more likely to purchase a newer model. As it is, I've committed to avoiding (where possible) devices that aren't local-first.

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1. gizmo686 ◴[06 Sep 25 07:08 UTC] No.45147255[source]▶
At least HVAC systems have a mostly standard control system and thermostats are easy to swap out. If a thermostat goes out of support and looses functionality, you do not need to replace the entire HVAC system; only the relatively cheap thermostat.

I'm contrast, while it is often possible to replace an infotainment system, the replacement needs to have been designed for a fairly specific set of cars, and actually installing it requires paying a mechanic for most people.