Nest Thermostat

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thedak

Member
Oct 29, 2011
119
Smoke em if u got em'
Anyone hook a Nest up to their pellet stove ?

I would really like to have control of my stove with my iPhone.

Fire the stove up about an hour before I get home, etc...

Keep my Harman XXV in Room Temp mode and wire the probe into this thermostat.

Any ideas ?

 
No idea, but I am interested as well. I am getting the Accentra insert installed and that would be great if it could control that. I will be closely watching this post.
 
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Cool! Please let me know if it works. I'll order the same day.
 
My guess...no. Don't believe the Nest is millivolt compatible. That and you still need a 24 volt power source to keep it going. Some day...
 
Nice toy, but I can think of a lot of other things to do with $230, when a $35, 7 day programmable stat will do almost as much.

Just my 2cents.
 
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Nice toy, but I can think of a lot of other things to do with $230, when a $35, 7 day programmable stat will do almost as much.

Just my 2cents.
I won't learn....that's what my wife tells me anyway! doh! Maybe she's talking about me!
 
Nice toy, but I can think of a lot of other things to do with $230, when a $35, 7 day programmable stat will do almost as much.

Just my 2cents.
A Big Yes to that + cuts into Beer Funds
 
In a couple of years, I doubt the price will be $235, probably less than $100

Tom C.
 
You can do this yourself if handy with electronics for maybe $30. AVR or PIC, Ethernet interface, temperature probe, display, few lines of code, done. It's sinful that they're selling it for $230. I'm sure in a year or two we'll see half a dozen versions of this under $100 and in three or four years it'll be hard to buy a thermostat that DOESN'T talk to your smartphone.
 
There is a easy way to make a setup to run any stove on a 24v tstat w/ a transformer and a relay. I did it w/ my p-38. I will try to draw up a diagrahm and post it.
 
What model will do same as the Nest?

All the internet controllable units I looked at where in the $175-300 range.

Nice toy, but I can think of a lot of other things to do with $230, when a $35, 7 day programmable stat will do almost as much.

Just my 2cents.
 
I'm just entering the third week of using a Nest thermostat with a pellet stove as if it were a three stage furnace. I've got a QuadraFire Santa Fe, I made some modifications to essentially automate the high/medium/low switch on the back. My blog posting with the methods that I used and a schematic of my wiring: http://www.twobraids.com/2014/01/hacking-pellet-stove-to-work-with-nest.html

This system didn't work very well for the first week. However, like the Nest manual says, give it a week to "learn" the requirements. Suddenly on day eight, the Nest thermostat sudden seemed understand the pellet stove and it started working perfectly. I can watch the thermostat turn the heat up and down throughout the day.

Now I just need to automate loading and cleaning the stove.
 
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Nest was just bought by Google. 3.2 billion. Guess they want to know how you heat your home too.
 
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Now don't you think if you power up your internet tool of choice that a message of "Did you fill your pellet stove today? Go to HD and buy their *&% pellets" wouldn't be right? I've been looking at a new coffee maker and now been getting banners of coffee makers for days.:(
 
Now I just need to automate loading and cleaning the stove.
Let me know when you get that part working!

Nice job on the Nest hookup... that ought to work on any "Control Box" Quad. Are your room temperatures more consistent than before?
 
Are your room temperatures more consistent than before?

The yurt is a tough place to heat, the temperatures are volatile, after all it is just a fancy tent. The temperatures are now more stable that during the first week of the Nest. I can see that the Nest still claims to be in "learning mode" when it comes to learning how long it takes to raise the temperature. So I'm hoping it will get better. Right now, it is clearly better than if I use a regular thermostat and just leave the stove on high all the time. I'm enjoying not having to set the heat level myself.

Could it be even better? Yes, I think the strategy that Nest is using will not ever get to the point of best possible heating for the yurt. The Nest seems to favor staged startups and abrupt shutdowns. In cold weather, I can see that starting on stage 1 isn't going to gain ground in heating, but Nest has to try before graduating to stage 2 and stage 3. When it achieves its target, it abruptly shuts the pellet stove down. The puts the yurt temperature into freefall. Once Nest determines that it has to start the stove again, it has to go through the stages again even though stage 1 is demonstrably insufficient and lets the temperature fall even further.

I'd like to try that reversed: start on high, get the room up to temperature quickly, then ramp down until a stable state is found. If I can't find a way to get Nest to do this, then I will build another circuit that will do the staged shutdown automatically. This is the TTL circuit that I refer to in my blog posting.
 
The yurt is a tough place to heat, the temperatures are volatile, after all it is just a fancy tent. The temperatures are now more stable that during the first week of the Nest. I can see that the Nest still claims to be in "learning mode" when it comes to learning how long it takes to raise the temperature. So I'm hoping it will get better. Right now, it is clearly better than if I use a regular thermostat and just leave the stove on high all the time. I'm enjoying not having to set the heat level myself.

Could it be even better? Yes, I think the strategy that Nest is using will not ever get to the point of best possible heating for the yurt. The Nest seems to favor staged startups and abrupt shutdowns. In cold weather, I can see that starting on stage 1 isn't going to gain ground in heating, but Nest has to try before graduating to stage 2 and stage 3. When it achieves its target, it abruptly shuts the pellet stove down. The puts the yurt temperature into freefall. Once Nest determines that it has to start the stove again, it has to go through the stages again even though stage 1 is demonstrably insufficient and lets the temperature fall even further.

I'd like to try that reversed: start on high, get the room up to temperature quickly, then ramp down until a stable state is found. If I can't find a way to get Nest to do this, then I will build another circuit that will do the staged shutdown automatically. This is the TTL circuit that I refer to in my blog posting.
Does your one switch reverting to normal operation just kill the power to the relays and then use the nc contacts for the three position switch?
 
I have a regular wood burning stove, and I love the NEST for letting me know how the air circulates throughout the house. I hope Google does not mess with it too much. Here is their wiring specs page.

As a side note, there is a Honeywell wireless out there for quite a bit less.