If in the recent days or weeks you’ve had your Nest smart thermostat go offline and you’re wondering if you’ve gotten a defective unit, there’s a very good chance that the problem is a software bug. This is according to a report from The New York Times’ Nick Bilton who reported a first-hand account of his Nest thermostat dying on him.
This is said to be due to a bug in the recent update to the thermostat that caused a massive battery drain, eventually killing it. There have been multiple posts made on the Nest forums with regards to the issue as it seems that Bilton is not alone in this. This has since been acknowledged by Nest’s co-founder and VP for engineering, Matt Rogers.
According to Rogers, “We had a bug that was introduced in the software update that didn’t show up for about two weeks.” The good news is that Nest claims that the issue has since been fixed for 99.5% of its customers, but just in case you’re hearing about this for the first time, don’t worry there are steps online to help you fix it.
There is a page on Nest’s website that teaches you what to do in the event your thermostat is unresponsive. If you were to follow the instructions, you should have your device back up and running in no time.
Filed in . Read more about Connected Objects, IoT (Internet of Things) and Nest.