Nest is introducing two new features for owners this week – Family accounts and Home/Away Assist. For those who live in a household with others, and not just themselves, it makes sense that you would want others in your home to have the ability to control Nest. With that said, Nest now allows 10 individuals to control Nest via the Nest app for iOS and Android. All you have to worry about now is a fight over the thermostat.
While the above new feature is cool, Nest’s new Home/Away Assist is where the learning thermostat really shines. With this feature, the thermostat will employ new methods and algorithms to hopefully learn about your family’s movement habits better. The endgame is to better predict when someone is actually home or not, adjusting the temperature of a home as needed.
For those with a family who all opt-in to a family account, Home/Away Assist should be extremely smart. As more data from various sensors and people’s locations is gathered, Nest should become better at deciding when the heat should be cranked or not. As the Nest team writes, “Family Accounts provides a critical piece of the puzzle. When family members opt in, it lets Home/Away Assist use data from their phones. We’ve wanted to do Home/Away Assist for a long time now. But more importantly, we wanted to do it right. By combining sensor data, algorithms and multiple phones, we think we’ve nailed it.”
To make these changes, simply update the Nest app via your respective app store.
Update: Listed on Google Play as a new feature is Android Wear support, allowing Nest owners to control the temperature in their home from a Android Wear smartwatch. Sweetness.
[responsive_vid]
Via: Nest
This post was last modified on March 10, 2016 12:29 pm