Nest’s latest update promises to fine tune Auto-Away by finally bringing geolocation support to the table.
Even better, flatmates and family members will be able to access the service more easily thanks to a new Family Account mode.
Once updated with the new app, your Nest system will soon be able to start doing things like heating up your home ahead of your arrival once it detects via your phone’s GPS, that you’re on your way home.
While part of the Nest thermostat’s selling point is that it attempts to get a handle on your routine and heat up your home in anticipation of your presence anyway, adding geolocation support fine tunes this.
Previously Nest’s Auto-Away feature used the thermostat’s motion detectors to work out whether you were in or not.
Obviously, depending on where you’d set the thing up, this could be pretty impractical, so by letting you tell Nest you’re in via GPS you’re saved the hassle of having to get up and walk in front of the thing every five minutes.
As well as this, Family Account means that multiple people can share one login and take control of things remotely; previously if anyone wanted to remotely control the Nest, you’d have to get them to set up a Nest Account as well.
Lack of GPS support and the temperamental nature of the Auto-Away setting was one of the few gripes we raised in our review of the 3rd gen thermostat, so we’re delighted to see that Nest has rolled out an update for this. Once we’ve spent a bit of time getting to grips with the new geolocation feature we’ll update our review.
You can download the latest version of Nest’s apps for iOS and Android now.
Leave a Reply