Home automation while it's hot: Winter warmth for lazy technophiles

El Reg has a shufti at hooking your heating up to the Internet of Stuff

Smart and simple

The newer generation of “smart” thermostats is streets ahead, however. The principal choices are Google's Nest, Hive from British Gas, the Heatmiser Neo, and Tado, all of which aim to make it much simpler to manage your heating and so, eventually, save you money.

The shape of things to come: Xcode features an Apple Homekit Accessory Simulator

How long that will take, of course, is open to question; typically it'll cost you around £200 to get switch over to a “smart” thermostat. If all you do after that is replicate the settings you had on your old controller, then you might not save a huge amount.

With some systems it's still possible that you will make savings with a more-of-the-same set-up, but when used to their full potential, you should be able to heat your home much more efficiently and cut down on waste if you get into the habit of using the apps provided.

Like Hive, Tado takes a three device approach: boiler control, hub and thermostat

Each of the systems has its own strengths and weaknesses,while working in slightly different ways. I've been trying to figure out the best options this really comes down to personal circumstances. In general, what's right for you depends on how many people there are in your home, and how regular your routine is, and what sort of control you want.

Hive

For a lot of non-techie people in the UK, Hive – backed by British Gas – is probably the first name that comes to mind, as it has been widely advertised on television. At £199 with installation, Hive has three separate parts to enable remote control.

The first component is the wireless thermostat that links to a hub. The hub is plugged into your broadband using Ethernet and the actual receiver that does all the switching is connected to the boiler to turn it on and off on demand. This configuration can also control the hot water system too, if you don't have a combi boiler.

Hive thermostat enables manual control for when your phone battery has died

So far, so good. There's an app, too, which allows you to turn the heating or hot water on or off remotely. If you enable its geolocation tricks on your handset, it can alert you when you're away from home to remind you to turn the heating on or off. As it's just a notification it doesn't automatically switch the boiler off for you, which makes sense if you're not the only one living there.

A neat touch for those homes where not everyone has a smartphone is the ability to control the system via text messages. Of course, you can simply get up and override settings on the thermostat. However, set against that is no support for multiple zones, or underfloor heating, which is enough to rule it out for quite a few people.

Hive app controls showing heating overview, hot water scheduling and text message options

Hive also lacks any learning facilities, although the web site helpfully explains how you can figure out how long it takes your house to warm up and change the programs accordingly. Hardly cutting edge, compared to the competition.