Nest Plug in

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  • Last Post 21 June 2015
arichter5 posted this 07 October 2014

Does the Nest plugin allow the home/away status to be used as a trigger/condition for Scenes? E.g., be used to change scene timing/function depending on whether the Nest scenses you are home or away.

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Ryan-Scott posted this 07 October 2014

Does the Nest plugin allow the home/away status to be used as a trigger/condition for Scenes? E.g., be used to change scene timing/function depending on whether the Nest scenses you are home or away.


InControl will create a separate device (a NestController) for your "home" and that device has the option to go into Away mode, "home" mode or "Auto Away." This can be triggered as part of a scene.

Additionally (and I believe in direct answer to your question), the same NestController device will have a reading called "Away Status" that you can "break" out into it's own device (click the blue icon next to it). It'll have a level of 0 when you are away and a level of 255 when home. You can use that device as a scene trigger.

jeremy.craven@gmail.com posted this 29 October 2014

Is there a list of sensors for the Nest plugin? The Nest itself has temp, humidity and motion detection. Are those all available as sensors?

Ryan-Scott posted this 29 October 2014

Is there a list of sensors for the Nest plugin? The Nest itself has temp, humidity and motion detection. Are those all available as sensors?


Unfortunately Nest hasn't exposed those values through their API yet. Hopefully sometime in the near future they will.

jeremy.craven@gmail.com posted this 30 October 2014

Bummer. That means I need to buy multi-sensors instead of just using my Nest with the plugin. Thanks for the info.

arichter5 posted this 24 November 2014

Just bought the Nest plug-in and found it useful right away. I use it to modify the behavior of several scenes depending on the home's home/away status.

I do have a question. When it was installed, it created devices for the 'house' and separate devices for each of the two thermostats in the house. Since I did not need to use the individual thermostat devices at the moment, I deleted them. If I want to use them in the future, is there any way to add them back?

arichter5 posted this 07 January 2015

I have had the Nest plugin running for a number of weeks now with no issues until recently. Yesterday and again today at about the same time (1:45PM EST) the plugin changed Nest from "Away" to "Home" without any action on my part. I have no scenes that are programed to change the Nest status and did not use my mobile app anywhere near that time. I know command to change the status came from the plugin because the Nest energy history shows the change and says it came from "inControlHA".

Does anyone have any idea why that would happen? I am using Version 3.157 of inControl and 1.2 of the NestController plugin.

Ryan-Scott posted this 07 January 2015

I have had the Nest plugin running for a number of weeks now with no issues until recently. Yesterday and again today at about the same time (1:45PM EST) the plugin changed Nest from "Away" to "Home" without any action on my part. I have no scenes that are programed to change the Nest status and did not use my mobile app anywhere near that time. I know command to change the status came from the plugin because the Nest energy history shows the change and says it came from "inControlHA".

Does anyone have any idea why that would happen? I am using Version 3.157 of inControl and 1.2 of the NestController plugin.


That's very curious - I can't think of anything in the code that would do that change without some sort of user intervention such as manually pressing it or a scene trigger. I know you mentioned that you don't have have a scene programmed to change it - but do you have any scenes setup to trigger at around that time? Or do you have any scenes that even have the Nest home device added to it?

arichter5 posted this 07 January 2015

I have one scene that sets the Nest to "AWAY" (along with turning a bunch of lights off and locking the door). It is not set to any time trigger, only manual. There is one scene that turns several devices off that is triggered when the Nest is set to "AWAY". Again, it is not time triggered. I have no scenes that are programmed to set the Nest to "HOME". Also, none of my other scenes have time triggers that occur before sunset. Nothing in the middle of the afternoon. All of these have been working fine since I got the plugin until yesterday.

Does the plugin communicate directly with NEST, or does it interact with an inControl server that in turns communicates with NEST?

Ryan-Scott posted this 07 January 2015

I have one scene that sets the Nest to "AWAY" (along with turning a bunch of lights off and locking the door). It is not set to any time trigger, only manual. There is one scene that turns several devices off that is triggered when the Nest is set to "AWAY". Again, it is not time triggered. I have no scenes that are programmed to set the Nest to "HOME". Also, none of my other scenes have time triggers that occur before sunset. Nothing in the middle of the afternoon. All of these have been working fine since I got the plugin until yesterday.

Does the plugin communicate directly with NEST, or does it interact with an inControl server that in turns communicates with NEST?



The plugin communicates directly with Nest.com.

The reason I was asking about the HOME device in a scene is that sometimes it can unintentionally change states if you don't have it marked as "no change" when you click that little gear icon.

Can you go to options and make sure the option to enable extra scene logging is checked? If it happens again, shoot us that logfile.txt.

One other thought - if you look in your logfile.txt, do you see anything that could be suggesting a change happened with Nest around that time?

arichter5 posted this 21 June 2015

Does InControl still "work with nest"? I no longer see it listed on the Nest website. Also, my system no longer seems to respond to changes in my Nest status (e.g., if I change from home to away on Nest, InControl does not pick up this change) and the Nest does not respond to level changes initiated by InControl. I have rebooted the InControl server and I still see the Nest devices (but they do not have level information). I was going to try to disconnect then reconnect InControl via the Next website, but that is when I discovered that I could not see InControl in the listing of supported systems. Maybe its because I am already connected? But, I did not want to disconnect only to find that I could not reconnect.

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