Wi-Fi Thermostat Gives Us Another Reason to Remain Motionless

Sitting around while moving nothing but your fingers all day can leave you with the shivers. Well, now you can continue your marathon of inactivity by controlling your thermostat from your phone! Oh, America.

I shouldn’t be quite so flippant about what actually sounds like a pretty useful application. Available for computers as well as iPhones (no word on an Android app), the Filtrete program is designed to set “temperature changes, four times a day, every day of the week. That’s 56 individual data points to configure on a small display with a minimum of input options.” Which might be a bit much to deal with on a phone’s touch screen. But think of it as a remote start for your car – if you’re coming back from the airport in the dead of winter (say from a warm, sunny environment) the least you deserve is coming home to a warm house. So this would allow you to turn up the heat in the cab on the way home or even before that.

But what about setting up your furnace to Wi-Fi? Bet you didn’t think about that. How many apartment buildings and houses were built before the Internet even existed? Quite a few. Probably most of them. Wired’s Christopher Null explains how he had to “connect an ugly, wired transformer to wall power in order to power the Wi-Fi module.” Ugh, effort. So much effort to rid ourselves of effort sometimes. He got it to work, eventually finding out that Filtrete’s claims that his utility bill would shrink was bunk. But ultimately, he admitted the extra body fat he’d gain from avoiding the stairs to go raise the thermostat would keep him warm. Ohhhhh, I get it now …

So, good: Being able to control your thermostat remotely so you can enter a warm home. Bad: Seriously, you can’t just go upstairs when you’re already home?

(via Wired)