November 16, 2018 • 33 mins
What are the parts of a thermostat? How do bimetallic thermometers work? What is a mercury switch? In this episode, Chris and Jonathan break down the mechanics of thermostats. Tune in to learn what happens when you flip that mysterious switch on the wall.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from half
stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer and
I love all things tech, including reruns about technology. Yep,
it's Friday. It's time for a classic episode. This episode
(00:26):
of tech Stuff originally published on November two thousand and eleven.
I was such a young, fresh faced talent back then.
Chris Pillette and I decided we were going to crank
up the heat and talk about thermostat technology. So now
we present to you tech Stuff, Adjust the thermostat. We're
(00:46):
going to take the temperature today in our podcast. Yeah,
we're gonna talk about the thermostat. Now, we've already talked
about air conditioning we have on the show, so but
we didn't didn't cover thermostats at all when we talked
about air conditioning, not really. And the thermost that, of course,
is that handy dandy little device that helps you maintain
the right temperature. Because you know, there are air conditioner
(01:08):
and heater or units out there that don't use thermostats.
You manually have to turn it on or turn it off.
So when you're like thinking galy g the house shore
is cold. Now I don't need that air conditioner on anymore.
You can go and switch it off. But most of
them tend to have some sort of thermostat in there
which helps maintain a comfortable temperature. You set the temperature
(01:30):
you want, it starts whatever the process is that needs
to get to that temperature, whether that's cooling the air
down or heating it up, and then once it reaches
that temperature, ideally it shuts off so that you don't
continue on the pathway to reach the other side of uncomfortable.
Well yeah, and uh it's also I think the second
(01:52):
largest lead leading cause of divorce. I wanted their degrees colder.
Are you done? Okay? Yeah? No. Uh. Thermostats are not
not exclusive to houses, of course, or or buildings or
or keeping people comfortable. They're also in many other devices
(02:13):
for keeping those devices comfortable, like say a car for instance,
um anything that that where you need to measure temperature
and switch on a cooling or a heating um in
your In your car, it might turn on the cooling
fan when it senses the engine might be nearing overheating um.
And if you look at a house thermostat. And you
(02:36):
see one of those digital, high tech programmable models on
the wall, you might get the idea that they are
super duper sophisticated. But thermostats don't have to be that sophisticated,
and in fact actually use physics to um determine or
you know, just set off the switch inside that makes
things hotter or cooler. Yeah, it's actually pretty cool in
(02:57):
a way. You know, I don't mean that in a
temperature way, but I see what you did there. These
things are hot. Uh. Now, they, like Chris was saying, yeah,
uses physics. If you're looking at Let's say, let's talk
about one of the old thermostats. Okay, So so it's
like that little beige box that's sitting on the wall,
and it's got a little up got a dial, yeah,
(03:18):
either a dial or a lever, and it has a
little physical read out that you look at, and it's
got a little red needle in that that read out,
and by turning the dial or moving the lever to
the left or to the right, you move the needle
up and down this temperature range to set it to
whatever you want. So let's say we're gonna say that
(03:39):
the temperature inside the house right now is a is
a chilly sixty five because because we're in the dead
of winter in Georgia and so so we want to
we want to boost that up to about seventy two.
Let's say we want we wanted to be a little warmer,
maybe a little warmer than we normally would, because it's
kind of chilly, and we want to I want to
have a nice little day and side, so we moved
(04:01):
the the lever so that it moves up to seventy
two and then magically the heater comes on until it
hits around seventy two degrees and then shuts off. But
what's going on inside, well, inside the thermostat is at
the very heart of it is a mercury switch. Mercury. Yeah,
don't drink it, no, No, mercury is pretty cool stuff.
(04:23):
It's uh, you know, it's a it's a metal which
at room temperature is liquid. Yea. As a matter of fact,
my family, for some reason, when they broke an old
mercury thermometer, decided to keep the mercury in a baby
food jar, which oddly enough, we still have. Of course,
it's sealed up, you know, touch mercury is highly toxic. Yes, yes,
(04:45):
you do not want to have any contact with mercury.
But um mad as a header. But sealing it up
inside a jar, you know, I got to see, you know,
move it, and it's it's really neat to watch it
break apart into little metal falls and then reform. Yeah,
it's like, yes, exactly, it's the one when the t
(05:06):
in the documentary Terminator Too would come apart. You know,
you would see it kind of turn these liquid shapes
and then reform. Well that's essentially, you know, that's mercury.
That's what mercury does. Although mercury rarely will take essentience
and then chase after Sarah Connor, that part, Yeah, that
part doesn't happen that frequently. Um. But but it is
(05:28):
a liquid metal. And uh, and here's the thing about it.
Here's where we get into some physics. We're gonna you know,
we'll get into more in a little bit, but metals
um actually pretty much everything will tend to expand when
exposed to heat. Now, what's really happening is that you're
adding energy into a system and the atoms in that
(05:49):
system start to move around. And this is what in
effect causes expansion. And of course if you add enough
heat to something, depending on what it is, not everything
will well they urize, but a lot of stuff vaporizes
will turn into a gas form. Uh. That's really when
the atoms are have so much energy and they're moving
around so much, they're no longer cohesive as a liquid um.
(06:11):
So mercury, it takes a lot of It takes way
more heat than it would then we would generate to
turn mercury into a gas. But all right, in its
liquid form, what happens is you put it into an
enclosed space, you add heat, it's going to the liquid
inside that enclosed space is going to expand. The volume
increases as the temperature increases. So if you were to
(06:34):
put mercury, say in a glass bulb, that one side
is elongated into a tube, very thin tube. As the
heat increases, the mercury would appear to climb that tube.
It's because the mercury itself is expanding, the volumes increasing
as the temperature increases. And that's the basis of a thermometer.
(06:57):
The old mercury thermometers, you would have this class to
tube that was filled with mercury. You would have numbers
that would correspond to whatever the temperature was, and then
as the temperature rises, you'd see the little level of
mercury increase inside that glass tube. You know, suddenly I
want to ride my bicycle. That's a different kind of mercury.
You want to ride your bike? Yes, that would be nice,
(07:20):
fat bottom girls, you make the rock and wood, alright, alright,
the same song does reference it anyway, that's true. That's true.
So and a thermometer that you've got the mercury expanding
to tell you what temperature it is. Yes, but there's
a mercury switch, as you said, inside the thermostat right now.
In this case, the mercury switch is it's a little different.
(07:41):
It's not it's not acting as a thermometer. It's a
glass vial and it has three wires in it. There's
a wire that goes along the bottom of the glass vial,
which is in constant contact with the liquid mercury, and
then you have wires on the left and right side
of the vial that are just out of contact with
(08:01):
the mercury. But the vial itself can tilt to the
left or to the right, and when it does tilt,
the mercury then comes in contact with the wire that's
on that particular side of the glass vial and then
completes a circuit between the bottom wire and the wire
that's on the respective side. So let's arguably say the
(08:23):
the vial tilts to the left, the mercury now is
in contact with both the wire along the bottom of
the vial and on the left side of the VISal,
and now you've got a circuit. So this gives us
some opportunities here if we create a system that will
tilt the vial one way or the other based upon
certain parameters we haven't. We have a switch, and we
have a switch that can either be off or it
(08:44):
can be on on two different directions, which is great
for heating and cooling. Yes, so now we think, okay, well,
you've got the switch. Uh let's say that you you
want to adjust the heat and you want to turn
up the heat, and you you move that that uh,
that lever over that's going to tilt that glass vial. Right.
The mercury is gonna move over to the correct side,
(09:07):
and that's going to initiate it's going to complete a
circuit and then send electricity to the heater, which will
get the heater going and the fan will start to
turn and you'll start to have warm air pumped throughout
the house or whatever it is that you're in. Right, Okay,
So how does the thermostat know when to stop? Well,
(09:29):
more physics. Now, you know we've we've talked about how
mercury is used in thermometers. And you might say, oh,
so it's sort of acting like a thermometer, right, because
it can tell if it's hot or cold. No, in
this case, mercury is just acting as a conductor. And
because it's it's useful because it's liquid in this case,
(09:50):
and it will make it will flash into the and
and touch the two contacts together in the appropriate case
get a little steamy. In this podcast, I think we
need to take a quick break to thank our sponsor.
(10:12):
Using a thermometer called bimetallic thermometer, and based on its name,
you may be able to discern what's special about this
kind of thermometer. Yes, it's got to to two metals
and one actually it's not in one. They're laminated together, yes,
to make a strip. So so yeah, on on one
side of the strip you have one metal and on
(10:32):
the other side of the strip is another metal. They're
joined together. And here's why you want this. You see,
different metals will expand at different rates in in reaction
to a change in temperature. So one metal, when you
when you apply heat to it, might expand rather rapidly,
while a second medal, in relation to the first one,
(10:53):
will go more slowly. And you put these two different
pieces of metal together, and as one expands an at
a rate that's faster than the other, it's going to
change the shape of that sheet of metal. Now, in
the case of these thermostats, these bimetallic thermometers tend to
be arranged in a coil, and so you've got a
(11:15):
coil of this material where on the outer edge and
the inner edge it's two different metals. The inner edge
is usually the one that expands faster um when when
heat is applied. You've got it in this coiled shape.
And uh, the way this works is that when it
when the temperature rises, the the expansion on the inner
(11:38):
layer of this coil will cause the coil to uncoil,
start to unwind. When it unwinds enough, it actually presses
up against the mercury switch and puts it back into
its central configuration. Okay, I don't need to be on anymore.
I'll turn off exactly. The mercury no longer is in
contact with both wires, because once it is set back
(12:00):
to its central location, only the bottom wire is connected,
the circuit is broken and the heater stops working. Uh.
And in general, usually there's a system in place where
this will actually shut off before you reach that full temperature,
because depending on where you are in the house, like
you don't want the thermostat to be right next to
(12:21):
the heating vent no, because it'll the temperature of the
thermostat will change too quickly, right, so you would you
might be in a situation where if the hot air
were right next to the thermostat, the thermostatic goes, oh, okay,
it's already seventy two degrees. Meanwhile you're in the living
room going why is it so cold in here? Right?
So you want the thermostat to be someplace where it
will be exposed to the flow of air, but won't
(12:43):
be right there at e vent So the thinking here
is that, well, if we we may want the thermostat
to shut off a couple of degrees cooler than what
you said, it at because the room that's going to
be closer to the actual event is going to be
warmer than where over the thermostat is, and the heat
will disperse throughout the house. So it's kind of a
(13:05):
way of making sure you don't get too warm, because
then you're gonna be saying, they're thinking, I said it
to seventy two, and now it feels like it's like
seventy six. What's going on? So um to do that,
they have a resistor inside the thermostat, No, I'm not
going so. Resistors will actually heat up as electricity goes
through them, and the resistor itself acts as a heater
(13:29):
for that coil that's inside the thermostat, so it will
expand a little faster than it would if it were
just measuring the ambient temperature of the air. Right, so uh,
that will cause the heater to to shut down a
little more quickly than it would if if it were
just reacting to the ambient air temperature. So um, of course,
(13:50):
if the house cools down, you know, after you've heated
it up, then that coil is going to slowly start
to contract, you know as as it's uh uh, as
that temperature drops and if it contracts enough, then the
mercury vial is going to tilt again, and that's going
to start the system all over again. You get that
completed circuit, sends the electricity to the heater, and you
(14:12):
start up again. The same thing is true by the
way of air conditioning, except you know, you're talking about
contracting instead of expanding. That's the it's just tilting the
mercury vile the other way, and as the temperature goes down,
the coil contracts, and then the vial will eventually be
set back to its central configuration. Uh. Now that this
(14:33):
is your basic analog thermostat. That it's not the way
all thermostats work. It's the way the older ones work.
So if you ever in a building that has that
and you hear that clicking noise, that's the sound of
the vile actually turning and uh and and the circuit completing. Um,
that's that's what you're hearing there. Some thermostats are using thermistors,
(14:56):
which are sort of digital thermometers. It's a little different.
That's that's not UM based on the mercury switch necessarily,
although some are kind of a hybrid between the two. Yeah,
I actually think that that that system is brilliant because
it's relying on the laws of physics. You know what,
you're not going to change for the thermostat, So it's
(15:17):
not like neutrinos are suddenly going to go faster than
the speed of light. Right, um. And that was a joke, people,
I know, I'm reading up on the whole story. That
was just a me playing playing a joke about the
laws of physics not changing. Right. No, But it's a
it's a brilliant system because it's so simple and it's
design um and very frankly, I've I've found that the
(15:39):
manual thermostats, while they don't necessarily save you as much
energy as a programmable uh, some programmable thermostats are real
painting the neck to you, especially if you don't realize
what what setting it's on, or you take a week
of vacation and you're at home and you're thinking it's
so warm, and oh it's on the programmed one as
opposed to a constant I almost always turned the program off,
(16:01):
which is not terribly um efficient and and actually one
could argue irresponsible of me because it means I'm wasting
electricity and uh uh, that's probably no, that's I can't
really argue with that, right. Well, um, well, the digital
ones that use the thermistors. In case you're wondering how
the thermistor works, it actually is um allowing uh. It
(16:22):
changes the electrical resistance of the material inside as the
temperature changes. That's how it determines, uh, if it's at
the right temperature or not, or whether you know, the
the heating or cooling device needs to be still going. Um.
And of course the programmable thermostat still use still need
to be able to identify what temperature it is because um,
(16:44):
you know, it's it's simply adding a layer of electronics
to the simplicity of the thermostat, because you know, you're
just saying, okay, at six in the morning, I wanted
at this temperature at you know, two in the afternoon,
and I wanted at this temperature on the weekend, I
wanted to be this. You know, Once you do that
and it has uh the clock in it internally set correctly,
(17:07):
assuming that your batteries don't die. Um, you know, it's
it's just adding a layer of complexity. But the thermostat
at its heart it's still using uh you know, basically
measuring the temperature and using the switch to turn the
heat or cooling system on or off. Yeah. Yeah, so yeah,
there's certain components that are gonna be uh common across
(17:27):
all thermostats. They may not take the exact same form,
but they follow the same function. Yeah, even in a
system where you have zoning. Yeah, zoning can be important
if you're in a well, if you're in the build
office built in an office building, clearly you're gonna need
zones because the especially if it's say it's a high
rise um or a skyscraper, that's the temperature is going
(17:48):
to vary quite a bit from the very top to
the very bottom. Especially if you imagine that there was
no heating or cooling system in there at all, you
would know, you know, well, it's gonna feel a lot
different on floor number one than it is on floor
number fifty. So so you've gotta have special zoning in there.
But even some houses will have it, especially depending on
the the layout of the house. You know, some houses
(18:10):
are if they're like a flat style where it's it's
multiple floors, it may be that the the bottom floor
is always much cooler than the top floor, and you
might want special zoning there so that the entire domicile
remains and a comfortable temperature. Um. So yeah, I mean
(18:31):
that's also fairly common. And we're also seeing some web
connected thermostats these days where you can even you know,
manage your home's climate remotely the Internet of Things, Yeah,
which is interesting and frustrating in the sense that it's
frustrating in the sense that there's not really a standard
(18:53):
way to approach this yet. So it's all proprietary. Yeah,
but you can, you can. There's several different companies that
offer home automation systems and basically what you do is
you set the UH different systems up and we're talking
things like locking and unlocking the doors, turning lights off
and on, um, the thermostat, and all sorts of other things,
(19:14):
perhaps UM camera security system some you know, the different things,
and you can have the system set up to where
you can manage all these things through a computer or
even your smartphone now um. And yeah, I mean it's
it's it's pretty simple. It's just uh, you're right. I
mean a lot of the times the hardware UH is proprietary.
So let's say you have one company and their billing
(19:37):
has gotten out of control, and I could I could
get a cheaper system. Um, you're likely to have to
have the new company come in and install their equipment,
because it won't they can't go, oh, well, you know,
I can, I can use so and So's equipment. You're
probably not. Now that's not necessarily true, but it is
in in some cases. There's also the possibility. There's also
(19:59):
the possibility that whatever company you go with ends up
going out of business. And if that happens, if your
commands are sent through corporate servers before they get to
your house to make whatever the changes are, if that
company goes out of business, then you're out of luck.
I mean, most of these systems still have the way
you know, you can still program it manually, so that
(20:20):
it's not like all functionality is gonna disappear. It's just
that the extra stuff you pay for might not stick around.
But that does bring us to an interesting development, something
that has made the news recently. Uh, and it's it's
kind of interesting that that's such a you would normally
think thermostats those are fairly mundane. Yeah, I mean the
sort of thing that usually makes waves in the tech world.
(20:43):
I could guarantee you that that the thermostat you were
describing earlier in the episode is something that just about
everybody we're talking to on this podcast has seen in
somebody's house at some point. Yeah, simply because um it's
so reliable. Thermostats don't just break in a lot of instances.
So I've seen, you know, the old mechanical thermostats last
(21:06):
years and years and years and years. Um so, and
I could just about guarantee that people have seen the
type that you were talking about before, the pre digital variety. Okay,
now I've been chilling out to this podcast tool and
now it's too cold in here, all right, I gotta
make another adjustment. In the meantime, let's take a quick
break to thank our sponsor. So, you know, other than
(21:33):
the programmable thermostat, there hasn't been I would say, a
massive surge in thermostat technology. Yeah, the web connection is
probably the closest thing that we can come to. But
even then you're just adding some sort of connectivity to
the device. In this case, we're talking about something that
that goes a step beyond just connectivity. And we owe
(21:54):
thanks to Mr Tony Fidel, who made a real name
for him self developing being one of the developers on
a truly iconic product, which is the iPod. And in fact,
it's so iconic that we have podcasting. Uh. And yeah,
there are people who refer to it as netcasting or
(22:14):
or webcasting, but but truth you know, the podcasting is
like the common that's different. Podcasting is is the common
term for what what it is that Chris and I
are doing right now. Um, and we you know, it
owes everything to the Apple iPod. It was the MP
three player that it was not the first MP three
(22:34):
player to hit the market, but it was a huge
success and it essentially defined in the market once once
the iPod hit and people started to adopt it, all
other MP three players at that point for moving forward
were essentially guided by the iPod. Either they were trying
to do what the iPod did but do it better,
(22:55):
or to try and completely depart from the way the
iPod did things in a way to differentiate the the
product from the standard bearer. Really so well, I was
gonna say one of the things that made the iPod
great and it's time was the simplicity of its controls.
And you'll remember, just a couple of minutes ago, I
(23:18):
was talking about how some digital thermostats can be a
real pain in the neck to use UM because the
controls aren't necessarily UM aren't necessarily straightforward in their labeling. Yeah,
or it may it may take multiple steps just for
you to go. Like if you want to get really
granular with your programming, so that you know, for instance, uh,
(23:42):
you might tell a work one day out of the week,
and so you want that one day out of the
week to have a slightly different program than all the
other work days that you have. You know, so let's
say that you let's say you work from home on Tuesdays,
and so, uh, you know, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday
you want to set up so that's going to save
as much electricity as possible while you're away. But on
(24:04):
Tuesday's you're going to be home. So you're gotta make
sure that when you program your your thermostat that the
Tuesday is the exception and your weekends are exceptions because
you know your weekend you're not gonna be away from
your home the way you are during the work week.
So getting this program in a typical digital thermostat can
(24:25):
sometimes be frustrating. It's like setting an old VCR you're
put kids, ask your parents what VCRs were. But Monday, Tuesday, right, okay,
Wednesday two pm, three pm too late, gott to go
around the horn. Yeah so yeah, back, it could be
a little bit of a frustration, a little bit of
an exercise and frustration. So the Mr Fidel, who now
(24:50):
works for a company called Nest Labs, decided to try
and develop a thermostat that would be easy to program,
and not just easy to program, but could learn how
to program your climate control system in your home based
upon your activities. Yeah. Yeah, now, I mean Nest Labs
(25:10):
is a fairly new company. Um uh Matt Rodgers, who
worked on the the iPod and iPad, was the co
founder and vice president of engineering for Nest Labs. Um
and he uh. He interviewed with uh Martin Lamonica at
uh C net, which was an interesting interview. I'm just
(25:31):
talking about how the point is to make a very
simple and easy to use thermostat that picks up, uh,
picks up what you're trying to lay down. Man. Yeah,
it's it's paying attention to the way you like things.
It's called the the it's the Nest thermostat, the and
the nest learning thermostat in fact, uh so uh very
(25:52):
simple looking designs, a little round thermostat has has the
temperature and nice big digits so it's easy to need. UM.
It even has a little leaf icon that will pop
up whenever you're using the thermostat to its to its
best efficiency, so that you're saving power and you're conserving electricity.
We've seen that actually in other products as well, particularly
(26:13):
in cars. Cars that are supposed to be energy efficient,
now many of them, Yeah they have a little leaf icon,
the Nissan Leaf being the leading example. But yeah, seeing
this pop up in other products now and in this case, yeah,
it has this feature where not to you have the
remote control that you have with other web enabled thermostats,
(26:36):
but in this case it actually starts to um follow
what you do and it will start to proactively make
adjustments based upon what you have done in the past,
and it will even do things like connect to the
web and look at things like weather reports. So you
(26:57):
know you've set up the system, you have a web
enabled to some it knows where you are based upon
the information you've put in. It's not like there's a
GPS or anything in it. It's that you are entering
this information. So in our case, we'd say Atlanta, Georgia.
And then because it knows we're in Atlanta, Georgia, let's
say there's a heat wave that's moving through Atlanta, Georgia,
it already knows proactively that the temperature outside is going
(27:19):
to to go up, and it starts to prepare everything
so that the air conditioning system is going to be
more active during those times than it would be if
the temperature were, you know, more moderate. So it's kind
of interesting in that it's not just learning how you work,
Like maybe it learns, you know what, he likes it
(27:40):
pretty cool at night, but by the time it starts
getting to the morning and wants a little bit warmer,
it starts to make those adjustments based upon how you
adjust the thermostat yourself. Um, it also will anticipate your
needs based upon what's going on outside. It's pretty cool.
It is very cool. It is also very pricey. It's
around two and fifty dollars, and here here in the
(28:02):
United States, that's quite a bit more than most programmable
thermostats i've seen. That being said, two fifty dollars when
you look at personal electronics is really reasonable. I mean, like,
like I'm looking, I'm I'm When I heard two hundred
fifty dollars, my reaction was wow, that's all. But that
(28:22):
was because I was thinking about the smart technology and
the programmability and and how it does this anticipation, and
how much money it would, at least in theory or
could save you. Because that's the big thing is that
up to fifty of the typical American electric bill goes
(28:42):
to heating and cooling, So if you were to improve efficiencies,
you could theoretically save money. In fact, there are some
estimates I saw where you could save up to a
thousand dollars a year with the right system in place,
which means that in a quarter of a year you've
already paid off the purchase price of the Nest. Yeah.
That being said, Nest is not sponsoring this podcast. This
(29:04):
isn't an advertisement for Nest. It just was one of
the points that they brought up, at least in their
marketing speak. Yeah, and and it's important to note too
that this system isn't so firmly ingrained in another system
to the point where it can't be used as a
standalone device. As a matter of fact, that it's uh
um even though the creators are are formal former appollites. UM.
(29:27):
The Nest can be used with an iOS device or
an Android device so that you can actually uh make
contact with it and change the temperature if you need
to UM. And it uses WiFi on its own, so UM.
You know, it doesn't have to be hooked into some
brain somewhere else in the building as as some other systems.
(29:47):
And I want to point out to it's not all
home automation technology that requires those systems, but some of
them do. UM. So there are some that just hook
up directly to your home network, and this is one
of those examples. This links directly into your home wireless network. Earlier,
I was thinking of the home automation system that is
offered through my alarm company, and if I wanted just
(30:09):
a centralized operating so yeah, exactly, and if I wanted
to take advantage of that uh and and later on
switch providers, they would end up not being able to
use that equipment. But yeah, there there's other stuff you
can use now. According to Nest Labs, it takes about
a week for this thermostat to learn what you like
based upon you know what what you tell it during
during that first week, which is kind of interesting to
(30:30):
me too, that the algorithms are so so um sophisticated
that you can pick up on your activities that quickly.
Um raisins he likes. It makes me wanna. It makes
me think that there's gotta be ways where you can
screw with it. Like I would just imagine going to
someone's house who has this and just like they're just
(30:51):
gonna think that he wanted at ninety two degrees at
three in the morning. Well, and and yesterday, um, literally
yesterday for then they were recording this. Uh, the uh
maintenance guy came to do our semi annual uh check
up on my furnace and you know, does the heating
and air conditioning thing. And of course to do that
they have to crank up the thermostat to something that's
(31:12):
ridiculously higher to make sure the heat or the air
conditioning comes on so they can check it. And so
I wonder what the nest would do. It's like, wait
a minute, why does he suddenly wanted at eighty five degrees? Uh,
that's kind of strange anyway, Uh, it's interesting to see
that they're just it's interesting interesting to see some some
real development in this field. When you know, when you
(31:35):
consider that again, like Chris was saying, this is not
exactly one of those technologies that has had you know,
a meteoric rise in sophistication over the last several decades,
and for the for many years, it just kind of
the old the old analog systems were that was that
was what you saw. Yeah, but you know, they're all
still based on the same principle of trying to to
(31:58):
get the climate at the right perture and then maintaining
that until you change the settings. So some thing's never change.
By the way, if you are interested in reading more
about the thermostats and exactly how these these systems work
and things like the bimetallic thermometers, um, we have some
articles on how stuff works that cover this, including how
(32:21):
home thermostats work, which is a very comprehensive article about
the whole system. And then we have how thermometers work,
which was written by our very own martial brain uh
that will go on into more detail about things like
the bimetallic thermometers if you want, if you're interested and
want to learn more about that, you want to get
deeper into the physics of it. I recommend both of those, alright, guys.
(32:44):
That wraps up this classic episode of tech Stuff where
we talked about thermostats. It was always enjoyed to revisit
those episodes I recorded with Chris Palette so long ago.
Hope you guys enjoyed it as well. If you want
to learn more about the show, including ways to contact us,
hey it on over to tech Stuff podcast dot com.
That there's all the information right over there, and go
(33:05):
to t public dot com slash tech stuff to visit
our merchandise store. That's where you're going to find all
the cool tech stuff stuff like tope bags and T
shirts and stickers, things like that. Check that out and
I'll talk to you again really soon for more on
(33:27):
this and thousands of other topics because it how stuff
works dot com
Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from half
stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer and
I love all things tech, including reruns about technology. Yep,
it's Friday. It's time for a classic episode. This episode
(00:26):
of tech Stuff originally published on November two thousand and eleven.
I was such a young, fresh faced talent back then.
Chris Pillette and I decided we were going to crank
up the heat and talk about thermostat technology. So now
we present to you tech Stuff, Adjust the thermostat. We're
(00:46):
going to take the temperature today in our podcast. Yeah,
we're gonna talk about the thermostat. Now, we've already talked
about air conditioning we have on the show, so but
we didn't didn't cover thermostats at all when we talked
about air conditioning, not really. And the thermost that, of course,
is that handy dandy little device that helps you maintain
the right temperature. Because you know, there are air conditioner
(01:08):
and heater or units out there that don't use thermostats.
You manually have to turn it on or turn it off.
So when you're like thinking galy g the house shore
is cold. Now I don't need that air conditioner on anymore.
You can go and switch it off. But most of
them tend to have some sort of thermostat in there
which helps maintain a comfortable temperature. You set the temperature
(01:30):
you want, it starts whatever the process is that needs
to get to that temperature, whether that's cooling the air
down or heating it up, and then once it reaches
that temperature, ideally it shuts off so that you don't
continue on the pathway to reach the other side of uncomfortable.
Well yeah, and uh it's also I think the second
(01:52):
largest lead leading cause of divorce. I wanted their degrees colder.
Are you done? Okay? Yeah? No. Uh. Thermostats are not
not exclusive to houses, of course, or or buildings or
or keeping people comfortable. They're also in many other devices
(02:13):
for keeping those devices comfortable, like say a car for instance,
um anything that that where you need to measure temperature
and switch on a cooling or a heating um in
your In your car, it might turn on the cooling
fan when it senses the engine might be nearing overheating um.
And if you look at a house thermostat. And you
(02:36):
see one of those digital, high tech programmable models on
the wall, you might get the idea that they are
super duper sophisticated. But thermostats don't have to be that sophisticated,
and in fact actually use physics to um determine or
you know, just set off the switch inside that makes
things hotter or cooler. Yeah, it's actually pretty cool in
(02:57):
a way. You know, I don't mean that in a
temperature way, but I see what you did there. These
things are hot. Uh. Now, they, like Chris was saying, yeah,
uses physics. If you're looking at Let's say, let's talk
about one of the old thermostats. Okay, So so it's
like that little beige box that's sitting on the wall,
and it's got a little up got a dial, yeah,
(03:18):
either a dial or a lever, and it has a
little physical read out that you look at, and it's
got a little red needle in that that read out,
and by turning the dial or moving the lever to
the left or to the right, you move the needle
up and down this temperature range to set it to
whatever you want. So let's say we're gonna say that
(03:39):
the temperature inside the house right now is a is
a chilly sixty five because because we're in the dead
of winter in Georgia and so so we want to
we want to boost that up to about seventy two.
Let's say we want we wanted to be a little warmer,
maybe a little warmer than we normally would, because it's
kind of chilly, and we want to I want to
have a nice little day and side, so we moved
(04:01):
the the lever so that it moves up to seventy
two and then magically the heater comes on until it
hits around seventy two degrees and then shuts off. But
what's going on inside, well, inside the thermostat is at
the very heart of it is a mercury switch. Mercury. Yeah,
don't drink it, no, No, mercury is pretty cool stuff.
(04:23):
It's uh, you know, it's a it's a metal which
at room temperature is liquid. Yea. As a matter of fact,
my family, for some reason, when they broke an old
mercury thermometer, decided to keep the mercury in a baby
food jar, which oddly enough, we still have. Of course,
it's sealed up, you know, touch mercury is highly toxic. Yes, yes,
(04:45):
you do not want to have any contact with mercury.
But um mad as a header. But sealing it up
inside a jar, you know, I got to see, you know,
move it, and it's it's really neat to watch it
break apart into little metal falls and then reform. Yeah,
it's like, yes, exactly, it's the one when the t
(05:06):
in the documentary Terminator Too would come apart. You know,
you would see it kind of turn these liquid shapes
and then reform. Well that's essentially, you know, that's mercury.
That's what mercury does. Although mercury rarely will take essentience
and then chase after Sarah Connor, that part, Yeah, that
part doesn't happen that frequently. Um. But but it is
(05:28):
a liquid metal. And uh, and here's the thing about it.
Here's where we get into some physics. We're gonna you know,
we'll get into more in a little bit, but metals
um actually pretty much everything will tend to expand when
exposed to heat. Now, what's really happening is that you're
adding energy into a system and the atoms in that
(05:49):
system start to move around. And this is what in
effect causes expansion. And of course if you add enough
heat to something, depending on what it is, not everything
will well they urize, but a lot of stuff vaporizes
will turn into a gas form. Uh. That's really when
the atoms are have so much energy and they're moving
around so much, they're no longer cohesive as a liquid um.
(06:11):
So mercury, it takes a lot of It takes way
more heat than it would then we would generate to
turn mercury into a gas. But all right, in its
liquid form, what happens is you put it into an
enclosed space, you add heat, it's going to the liquid
inside that enclosed space is going to expand. The volume
increases as the temperature increases. So if you were to
(06:34):
put mercury, say in a glass bulb, that one side
is elongated into a tube, very thin tube. As the
heat increases, the mercury would appear to climb that tube.
It's because the mercury itself is expanding, the volumes increasing
as the temperature increases. And that's the basis of a thermometer.
(06:57):
The old mercury thermometers, you would have this class to
tube that was filled with mercury. You would have numbers
that would correspond to whatever the temperature was, and then
as the temperature rises, you'd see the little level of
mercury increase inside that glass tube. You know, suddenly I
want to ride my bicycle. That's a different kind of mercury.
You want to ride your bike? Yes, that would be nice,
(07:20):
fat bottom girls, you make the rock and wood, alright, alright,
the same song does reference it anyway, that's true. That's true.
So and a thermometer that you've got the mercury expanding
to tell you what temperature it is. Yes, but there's
a mercury switch, as you said, inside the thermostat right now.
In this case, the mercury switch is it's a little different.
(07:41):
It's not it's not acting as a thermometer. It's a
glass vial and it has three wires in it. There's
a wire that goes along the bottom of the glass vial,
which is in constant contact with the liquid mercury, and
then you have wires on the left and right side
of the vial that are just out of contact with
(08:01):
the mercury. But the vial itself can tilt to the
left or to the right, and when it does tilt,
the mercury then comes in contact with the wire that's
on that particular side of the glass vial and then
completes a circuit between the bottom wire and the wire
that's on the respective side. So let's arguably say the
(08:23):
the vial tilts to the left, the mercury now is
in contact with both the wire along the bottom of
the vial and on the left side of the VISal,
and now you've got a circuit. So this gives us
some opportunities here if we create a system that will
tilt the vial one way or the other based upon
certain parameters we haven't. We have a switch, and we
have a switch that can either be off or it
(08:44):
can be on on two different directions, which is great
for heating and cooling. Yes, so now we think, okay, well,
you've got the switch. Uh let's say that you you
want to adjust the heat and you want to turn
up the heat, and you you move that that uh,
that lever over that's going to tilt that glass vial. Right.
The mercury is gonna move over to the correct side,
(09:07):
and that's going to initiate it's going to complete a
circuit and then send electricity to the heater, which will
get the heater going and the fan will start to
turn and you'll start to have warm air pumped throughout
the house or whatever it is that you're in. Right, Okay,
So how does the thermostat know when to stop? Well,
(09:29):
more physics. Now, you know we've we've talked about how
mercury is used in thermometers. And you might say, oh,
so it's sort of acting like a thermometer, right, because
it can tell if it's hot or cold. No, in
this case, mercury is just acting as a conductor. And
because it's it's useful because it's liquid in this case,
(09:50):
and it will make it will flash into the and
and touch the two contacts together in the appropriate case
get a little steamy. In this podcast, I think we
need to take a quick break to thank our sponsor.
(10:12):
Using a thermometer called bimetallic thermometer, and based on its name,
you may be able to discern what's special about this
kind of thermometer. Yes, it's got to to two metals
and one actually it's not in one. They're laminated together, yes,
to make a strip. So so yeah, on on one
side of the strip you have one metal and on
(10:32):
the other side of the strip is another metal. They're
joined together. And here's why you want this. You see,
different metals will expand at different rates in in reaction
to a change in temperature. So one metal, when you
when you apply heat to it, might expand rather rapidly,
while a second medal, in relation to the first one,
(10:53):
will go more slowly. And you put these two different
pieces of metal together, and as one expands an at
a rate that's faster than the other, it's going to
change the shape of that sheet of metal. Now, in
the case of these thermostats, these bimetallic thermometers tend to
be arranged in a coil, and so you've got a
(11:15):
coil of this material where on the outer edge and
the inner edge it's two different metals. The inner edge
is usually the one that expands faster um when when
heat is applied. You've got it in this coiled shape.
And uh, the way this works is that when it
when the temperature rises, the the expansion on the inner
(11:38):
layer of this coil will cause the coil to uncoil,
start to unwind. When it unwinds enough, it actually presses
up against the mercury switch and puts it back into
its central configuration. Okay, I don't need to be on anymore.
I'll turn off exactly. The mercury no longer is in
contact with both wires, because once it is set back
(12:00):
to its central location, only the bottom wire is connected,
the circuit is broken and the heater stops working. Uh.
And in general, usually there's a system in place where
this will actually shut off before you reach that full temperature,
because depending on where you are in the house, like
you don't want the thermostat to be right next to
(12:21):
the heating vent no, because it'll the temperature of the
thermostat will change too quickly, right, so you would you
might be in a situation where if the hot air
were right next to the thermostat, the thermostatic goes, oh, okay,
it's already seventy two degrees. Meanwhile you're in the living
room going why is it so cold in here? Right?
So you want the thermostat to be someplace where it
will be exposed to the flow of air, but won't
(12:43):
be right there at e vent So the thinking here
is that, well, if we we may want the thermostat
to shut off a couple of degrees cooler than what
you said, it at because the room that's going to
be closer to the actual event is going to be
warmer than where over the thermostat is, and the heat
will disperse throughout the house. So it's kind of a
(13:05):
way of making sure you don't get too warm, because
then you're gonna be saying, they're thinking, I said it
to seventy two, and now it feels like it's like
seventy six. What's going on? So um to do that,
they have a resistor inside the thermostat, No, I'm not
going so. Resistors will actually heat up as electricity goes
through them, and the resistor itself acts as a heater
(13:29):
for that coil that's inside the thermostat, so it will
expand a little faster than it would if it were
just measuring the ambient temperature of the air. Right, so uh,
that will cause the heater to to shut down a
little more quickly than it would if if it were
just reacting to the ambient air temperature. So um, of course,
(13:50):
if the house cools down, you know, after you've heated
it up, then that coil is going to slowly start
to contract, you know as as it's uh uh, as
that temperature drops and if it contracts enough, then the
mercury vial is going to tilt again, and that's going
to start the system all over again. You get that
completed circuit, sends the electricity to the heater, and you
(14:12):
start up again. The same thing is true by the
way of air conditioning, except you know, you're talking about
contracting instead of expanding. That's the it's just tilting the
mercury vile the other way, and as the temperature goes down,
the coil contracts, and then the vial will eventually be
set back to its central configuration. Uh. Now that this
(14:33):
is your basic analog thermostat. That it's not the way
all thermostats work. It's the way the older ones work.
So if you ever in a building that has that
and you hear that clicking noise, that's the sound of
the vile actually turning and uh and and the circuit completing. Um,
that's that's what you're hearing there. Some thermostats are using thermistors,
(14:56):
which are sort of digital thermometers. It's a little different.
That's that's not UM based on the mercury switch necessarily,
although some are kind of a hybrid between the two. Yeah,
I actually think that that that system is brilliant because
it's relying on the laws of physics. You know what,
you're not going to change for the thermostat, So it's
(15:17):
not like neutrinos are suddenly going to go faster than
the speed of light. Right, um. And that was a joke, people,
I know, I'm reading up on the whole story. That
was just a me playing playing a joke about the
laws of physics not changing. Right. No, But it's a
it's a brilliant system because it's so simple and it's
design um and very frankly, I've I've found that the
(15:39):
manual thermostats, while they don't necessarily save you as much
energy as a programmable uh, some programmable thermostats are real
painting the neck to you, especially if you don't realize
what what setting it's on, or you take a week
of vacation and you're at home and you're thinking it's
so warm, and oh it's on the programmed one as
opposed to a constant I almost always turned the program off,
(16:01):
which is not terribly um efficient and and actually one
could argue irresponsible of me because it means I'm wasting
electricity and uh uh, that's probably no, that's I can't
really argue with that, right. Well, um, well, the digital
ones that use the thermistors. In case you're wondering how
the thermistor works, it actually is um allowing uh. It
(16:22):
changes the electrical resistance of the material inside as the
temperature changes. That's how it determines, uh, if it's at
the right temperature or not, or whether you know, the
the heating or cooling device needs to be still going. Um.
And of course the programmable thermostat still use still need
to be able to identify what temperature it is because um,
(16:44):
you know, it's it's simply adding a layer of electronics
to the simplicity of the thermostat, because you know, you're
just saying, okay, at six in the morning, I wanted
at this temperature at you know, two in the afternoon,
and I wanted at this temperature on the weekend, I
wanted to be this. You know, Once you do that
and it has uh the clock in it internally set correctly,
(17:07):
assuming that your batteries don't die. Um, you know, it's
it's just adding a layer of complexity. But the thermostat
at its heart it's still using uh you know, basically
measuring the temperature and using the switch to turn the
heat or cooling system on or off. Yeah. Yeah, so yeah,
there's certain components that are gonna be uh common across
(17:27):
all thermostats. They may not take the exact same form,
but they follow the same function. Yeah, even in a
system where you have zoning. Yeah, zoning can be important
if you're in a well, if you're in the build
office built in an office building, clearly you're gonna need
zones because the especially if it's say it's a high
rise um or a skyscraper, that's the temperature is going
(17:48):
to vary quite a bit from the very top to
the very bottom. Especially if you imagine that there was
no heating or cooling system in there at all, you
would know, you know, well, it's gonna feel a lot
different on floor number one than it is on floor
number fifty. So so you've gotta have special zoning in there.
But even some houses will have it, especially depending on
the the layout of the house. You know, some houses
(18:10):
are if they're like a flat style where it's it's
multiple floors, it may be that the the bottom floor
is always much cooler than the top floor, and you
might want special zoning there so that the entire domicile
remains and a comfortable temperature. Um. So yeah, I mean
(18:31):
that's also fairly common. And we're also seeing some web
connected thermostats these days where you can even you know,
manage your home's climate remotely the Internet of Things, Yeah,
which is interesting and frustrating in the sense that it's
frustrating in the sense that there's not really a standard
(18:53):
way to approach this yet. So it's all proprietary. Yeah,
but you can, you can. There's several different companies that
offer home automation systems and basically what you do is
you set the UH different systems up and we're talking
things like locking and unlocking the doors, turning lights off
and on, um, the thermostat, and all sorts of other things,
(19:14):
perhaps UM camera security system some you know, the different things,
and you can have the system set up to where
you can manage all these things through a computer or
even your smartphone now um. And yeah, I mean it's
it's it's pretty simple. It's just uh, you're right. I
mean a lot of the times the hardware UH is proprietary.
So let's say you have one company and their billing
(19:37):
has gotten out of control, and I could I could
get a cheaper system. Um, you're likely to have to
have the new company come in and install their equipment,
because it won't they can't go, oh, well, you know,
I can, I can use so and So's equipment. You're
probably not. Now that's not necessarily true, but it is
in in some cases. There's also the possibility. There's also
(19:59):
the possibility that whatever company you go with ends up
going out of business. And if that happens, if your
commands are sent through corporate servers before they get to
your house to make whatever the changes are, if that
company goes out of business, then you're out of luck.
I mean, most of these systems still have the way
you know, you can still program it manually, so that
(20:20):
it's not like all functionality is gonna disappear. It's just
that the extra stuff you pay for might not stick around.
But that does bring us to an interesting development, something
that has made the news recently. Uh, and it's it's
kind of interesting that that's such a you would normally
think thermostats those are fairly mundane. Yeah, I mean the
sort of thing that usually makes waves in the tech world.
(20:43):
I could guarantee you that that the thermostat you were
describing earlier in the episode is something that just about
everybody we're talking to on this podcast has seen in
somebody's house at some point. Yeah, simply because um it's
so reliable. Thermostats don't just break in a lot of instances.
So I've seen, you know, the old mechanical thermostats last
(21:06):
years and years and years and years. Um so, and
I could just about guarantee that people have seen the
type that you were talking about before, the pre digital variety. Okay,
now I've been chilling out to this podcast tool and
now it's too cold in here, all right, I gotta
make another adjustment. In the meantime, let's take a quick
break to thank our sponsor. So, you know, other than
(21:33):
the programmable thermostat, there hasn't been I would say, a
massive surge in thermostat technology. Yeah, the web connection is
probably the closest thing that we can come to. But
even then you're just adding some sort of connectivity to
the device. In this case, we're talking about something that
that goes a step beyond just connectivity. And we owe
(21:54):
thanks to Mr Tony Fidel, who made a real name
for him self developing being one of the developers on
a truly iconic product, which is the iPod. And in fact,
it's so iconic that we have podcasting. Uh. And yeah,
there are people who refer to it as netcasting or
(22:14):
or webcasting, but but truth you know, the podcasting is
like the common that's different. Podcasting is is the common
term for what what it is that Chris and I
are doing right now. Um, and we you know, it
owes everything to the Apple iPod. It was the MP
three player that it was not the first MP three
(22:34):
player to hit the market, but it was a huge
success and it essentially defined in the market once once
the iPod hit and people started to adopt it, all
other MP three players at that point for moving forward
were essentially guided by the iPod. Either they were trying
to do what the iPod did but do it better,
(22:55):
or to try and completely depart from the way the
iPod did things in a way to differentiate the the
product from the standard bearer. Really so well, I was
gonna say one of the things that made the iPod
great and it's time was the simplicity of its controls.
And you'll remember, just a couple of minutes ago, I
(23:18):
was talking about how some digital thermostats can be a
real pain in the neck to use UM because the
controls aren't necessarily UM aren't necessarily straightforward in their labeling. Yeah,
or it may it may take multiple steps just for
you to go. Like if you want to get really
granular with your programming, so that you know, for instance, uh,
(23:42):
you might tell a work one day out of the week,
and so you want that one day out of the
week to have a slightly different program than all the
other work days that you have. You know, so let's
say that you let's say you work from home on Tuesdays,
and so, uh, you know, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday
you want to set up so that's going to save
as much electricity as possible while you're away. But on
(24:04):
Tuesday's you're going to be home. So you're gotta make
sure that when you program your your thermostat that the
Tuesday is the exception and your weekends are exceptions because
you know your weekend you're not gonna be away from
your home the way you are during the work week.
So getting this program in a typical digital thermostat can
(24:25):
sometimes be frustrating. It's like setting an old VCR you're
put kids, ask your parents what VCRs were. But Monday, Tuesday, right, okay,
Wednesday two pm, three pm too late, gott to go
around the horn. Yeah so yeah, back, it could be
a little bit of a frustration, a little bit of
an exercise and frustration. So the Mr Fidel, who now
(24:50):
works for a company called Nest Labs, decided to try
and develop a thermostat that would be easy to program,
and not just easy to program, but could learn how
to program your climate control system in your home based
upon your activities. Yeah. Yeah, now, I mean Nest Labs
(25:10):
is a fairly new company. Um uh Matt Rodgers, who
worked on the the iPod and iPad, was the co
founder and vice president of engineering for Nest Labs. Um
and he uh. He interviewed with uh Martin Lamonica at
uh C net, which was an interesting interview. I'm just
(25:31):
talking about how the point is to make a very
simple and easy to use thermostat that picks up, uh,
picks up what you're trying to lay down. Man. Yeah,
it's it's paying attention to the way you like things.
It's called the the it's the Nest thermostat, the and
the nest learning thermostat in fact, uh so uh very
(25:52):
simple looking designs, a little round thermostat has has the
temperature and nice big digits so it's easy to need. UM.
It even has a little leaf icon that will pop
up whenever you're using the thermostat to its to its
best efficiency, so that you're saving power and you're conserving electricity.
We've seen that actually in other products as well, particularly
(26:13):
in cars. Cars that are supposed to be energy efficient,
now many of them, Yeah they have a little leaf icon,
the Nissan Leaf being the leading example. But yeah, seeing
this pop up in other products now and in this case, yeah,
it has this feature where not to you have the
remote control that you have with other web enabled thermostats,
(26:36):
but in this case it actually starts to um follow
what you do and it will start to proactively make
adjustments based upon what you have done in the past,
and it will even do things like connect to the
web and look at things like weather reports. So you
(26:57):
know you've set up the system, you have a web
enabled to some it knows where you are based upon
the information you've put in. It's not like there's a
GPS or anything in it. It's that you are entering
this information. So in our case, we'd say Atlanta, Georgia.
And then because it knows we're in Atlanta, Georgia, let's
say there's a heat wave that's moving through Atlanta, Georgia,
it already knows proactively that the temperature outside is going
(27:19):
to to go up, and it starts to prepare everything
so that the air conditioning system is going to be
more active during those times than it would be if
the temperature were, you know, more moderate. So it's kind
of interesting in that it's not just learning how you work,
Like maybe it learns, you know what, he likes it
(27:40):
pretty cool at night, but by the time it starts
getting to the morning and wants a little bit warmer,
it starts to make those adjustments based upon how you
adjust the thermostat yourself. Um, it also will anticipate your
needs based upon what's going on outside. It's pretty cool.
It is very cool. It is also very pricey. It's
around two and fifty dollars, and here here in the
(28:02):
United States, that's quite a bit more than most programmable
thermostats i've seen. That being said, two fifty dollars when
you look at personal electronics is really reasonable. I mean, like,
like I'm looking, I'm I'm When I heard two hundred
fifty dollars, my reaction was wow, that's all. But that
(28:22):
was because I was thinking about the smart technology and
the programmability and and how it does this anticipation, and
how much money it would, at least in theory or
could save you. Because that's the big thing is that
up to fifty of the typical American electric bill goes
(28:42):
to heating and cooling, So if you were to improve efficiencies,
you could theoretically save money. In fact, there are some
estimates I saw where you could save up to a
thousand dollars a year with the right system in place,
which means that in a quarter of a year you've
already paid off the purchase price of the Nest. Yeah.
That being said, Nest is not sponsoring this podcast. This
(29:04):
isn't an advertisement for Nest. It just was one of
the points that they brought up, at least in their
marketing speak. Yeah, and and it's important to note too
that this system isn't so firmly ingrained in another system
to the point where it can't be used as a
standalone device. As a matter of fact, that it's uh
um even though the creators are are formal former appollites. UM.
(29:27):
The Nest can be used with an iOS device or
an Android device so that you can actually uh make
contact with it and change the temperature if you need
to UM. And it uses WiFi on its own, so UM.
You know, it doesn't have to be hooked into some
brain somewhere else in the building as as some other systems.
(29:47):
And I want to point out to it's not all
home automation technology that requires those systems, but some of
them do. UM. So there are some that just hook
up directly to your home network, and this is one
of those examples. This links directly into your home wireless network. Earlier,
I was thinking of the home automation system that is
offered through my alarm company, and if I wanted just
(30:09):
a centralized operating so yeah, exactly, and if I wanted
to take advantage of that uh and and later on
switch providers, they would end up not being able to
use that equipment. But yeah, there there's other stuff you
can use now. According to Nest Labs, it takes about
a week for this thermostat to learn what you like
based upon you know what what you tell it during
during that first week, which is kind of interesting to
(30:30):
me too, that the algorithms are so so um sophisticated
that you can pick up on your activities that quickly.
Um raisins he likes. It makes me wanna. It makes
me think that there's gotta be ways where you can
screw with it. Like I would just imagine going to
someone's house who has this and just like they're just
(30:51):
gonna think that he wanted at ninety two degrees at
three in the morning. Well, and and yesterday, um, literally
yesterday for then they were recording this. Uh, the uh
maintenance guy came to do our semi annual uh check
up on my furnace and you know, does the heating
and air conditioning thing. And of course to do that
they have to crank up the thermostat to something that's
(31:12):
ridiculously higher to make sure the heat or the air
conditioning comes on so they can check it. And so
I wonder what the nest would do. It's like, wait
a minute, why does he suddenly wanted at eighty five degrees? Uh,
that's kind of strange anyway, Uh, it's interesting to see
that they're just it's interesting interesting to see some some
real development in this field. When you know, when you
(31:35):
consider that again, like Chris was saying, this is not
exactly one of those technologies that has had you know,
a meteoric rise in sophistication over the last several decades,
and for the for many years, it just kind of
the old the old analog systems were that was that
was what you saw. Yeah, but you know, they're all
still based on the same principle of trying to to
(31:58):
get the climate at the right perture and then maintaining
that until you change the settings. So some thing's never change.
By the way, if you are interested in reading more
about the thermostats and exactly how these these systems work
and things like the bimetallic thermometers, um, we have some
articles on how stuff works that cover this, including how
(32:21):
home thermostats work, which is a very comprehensive article about
the whole system. And then we have how thermometers work,
which was written by our very own martial brain uh
that will go on into more detail about things like
the bimetallic thermometers if you want, if you're interested and
want to learn more about that, you want to get
deeper into the physics of it. I recommend both of those, alright, guys.
(32:44):
That wraps up this classic episode of tech Stuff where
we talked about thermostats. It was always enjoyed to revisit
those episodes I recorded with Chris Palette so long ago.
Hope you guys enjoyed it as well. If you want
to learn more about the show, including ways to contact us,
hey it on over to tech Stuff podcast dot com.
That there's all the information right over there, and go
(33:05):
to t public dot com slash tech stuff to visit
our merchandise store. That's where you're going to find all
the cool tech stuff stuff like tope bags and T
shirts and stickers, things like that. Check that out and
I'll talk to you again really soon for more on
(33:27):
this and thousands of other topics because it how stuff
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