This simple feature has yet to be addressed is still a feature required to stay competitive and should be looked at seriously by the Nest developers.
"The Nest Temperature Sensors seemed like the perfect add-on to the Nest Thermostat to help me ensure that the right part of the house (i.e. the downstairs) was a comfortable temperature when I wanted it to be. The idea was that a user would place the Temperature Sensors in different rooms/floors, and then select which sensor the thermostat would base its heating/cooling activities on... so I could make sure my downstairs was warmer during the day in winter, but then in the evening make sure my upstairs with the bedrooms were warm. But there's a major flaw that kills my ability to make this all happen:
A user cannot customize or adjust the Temperature Sensor schedule beyond pre-defined hourly blocks. So if your life and schedules doesn't happen to perfectly align with the 4 arbitrary windows of time that Google/Nest defined as Morning (7 AM - 11 AM), Midday (11 AM - 4 PM), Evening (4 PM - 9 PM), Night (9 PM - 7 AM)... you can't make any adjustment at all to the sensor schedule (see image below):
The Problem:
Many homes/townhomes/condos are like mine -- imbalanced heating/cooling of certain areas, and a single zone for the thermostat. For example, my main floor is quite cold in the winter, and by the time the Thermostat has finished heating the main floor, the upstairs (which is always warmer than the main floor) has become uncomfortably hot, like a sauna.
My goal is to have the thermostat focus on controlling the temperature on the main floor for certain hours of the day - like the hours that my daughter is awake and playing down there - but then focus on controlling the temperature in her nursery for her nap and when she's sleeping at night by automatically switching which sensor it's operating off of at the time that I need it to switch.
But my daughter's sleeping/nap schedule doesn't fit with the pre-defined sensor schedule... let's take the cold months of the year as an example (we live in Utah, and it's cold for 4+ months of the year). My daughter always sleeps until about 8:30 AM every day; until 8:30 AM, I need Nest to operate based off of the sensor in my daughter's room. But after 8:30 AM, I need Nest to operate based on the sensor in my living room in order to to be able to start heating the main floor (think of life in the winter in a cold state like mine) so she can play down there, eat breakfast, etc... but right now the only option is to automatically change the sensor is 7:00 AM (the "Morning" block), or we have to wait until 11:00 AM. So we have to manually adjust the sensor at 8:30 AM every day.
Then, my daughter takes a nap at 12:30 PM every day - so again, I need to be able to switch to the sensor in her room at 12:30 PM (and my only option right now is 11:00 AM for the "Midday" block), and then switch the sensor again automatically to the one on the main floor at 3 PM when she wakes up. If it has to switch the to main floor sensor at 11:00 AM to heat things up, which is the pre-defined schedule, her room will be too hot for her nap.
As such -- because of these predefined/arbitrary time blocks - I just literally can't use the sensor schedule function. I have to manually adjust the thermostat 3-4 times a day, just to get my home's temperatures more comfortable for my toddler. There's nothing "smart" or automated about that.
The Solution:
I simply need the ability to define what hours constitute each of the 4 blocks of time in order to automatically switch to the correct sensor at the right time. Every "dumb" thermostat I've ever used can do this -- from Honeywell to GE -- and most "smart" thermostats that I'm aware of let a user do this as well. Just not Nest.
For example, this is what I would need to define the 4 blocks of the day as to make this fit my needs and use case perfectly:
- Morning: 8:30 AM - 12:30 PM
- Midday: 12:30 PM - 3:00 PM
- "Evening": 3:00 PM - 7:00 PM
- Night: 7:00 PM - 8:30 AM
This will be different for each of your users/customers based on their home, their HVAC setup, their families, etc. -- so just let us choose the times ourselves for sensor switching, and this would be perfect.
Would someone from Google please let me know if they want to talk this through, and indicate if this is something that can be worked on or will be worked on?
I'd prefer to stay a Google customer... but I just can't justify it when every competitive option I'm looking at does this very simple customization, and we just don't want another uncomfortable winter in our home."
