Trigger Questions

Posted on
Mon Aug 22, 2016 4:40 pm
dduff617 offline
Posts: 659
Joined: Jul 05, 2006
Location: Massachusetts, USA

Trigger Questions

It seems that the Nest Home Master Device has a state which indicates home/away status and I monitor that for changes in state if I want to trigger events based on change of status. It also appears that I can use an action to set home/away status.

I observe that my house occasionally seems to go into "away" mode sometimes when it shouldn't. My thermostats are not positioned in ideal locations to see motion, however my Nest Protect detectors generally are. Am I correct in thinking that any Nest Protect detecting motion should keep the Master Device's state set at home?

Also, I'm curious - is there any way to trigger withinIndigo when a particular device (thermostat or Protect) detects motion? Is there any action to makethe Protect ring to light up or change color?

Posted on
Thu Aug 25, 2016 2:50 am
Chameleon offline
Posts: 611
Joined: Oct 04, 2014

Re: Trigger Questions

dduff617 wrote:
It seems that the Nest Home Master Device has a state which indicates home/away status and I monitor that for changes in state if I want to trigger events based on change of status. It also appears that I can use an action to set home/away status.

I observe that my house occasionally seems to go into "away" mode sometimes when it shouldn't. My thermostats are not positioned in ideal locations to see motion, however my Nest Protect detectors generally are. Am I correct in thinking that any Nest Protect detecting motion should keep the Master Device's state set at home?

Also, I'm curious - is there any way to trigger withinIndigo when a particular device (thermostat or Protect) detects motion? Is there any action to makethe Protect ring to light up or change color?

Hey - sorry about the delayed response...

We have similar setups. My thermostat is in a terrible place to pick up presence information but my protects are in full view and should tell the thermostat that there's someone home. In reality they don't. You do need to check your NEST App though (the one from NEST not the plugin!). Click on your Protect (doesn't matter which one, tap on the gear icon in the top right corner then select Activity sensor and make sure the option is switched on. That said, it is on for me and I still get the problem - so I use NEST Home tell the thermostat to go to Home mode if a presence is detected in the house some other way (e.g. manual light switch, motion sensor, door sensor, etc... or if my iFindStuff plugin says one of our iPhones is actually in the house). That works pretty good for me. Let me know how it goes.

As for the second part the answer is not at the moment. The only way to access information on a NEST is to access the online account (which is what NEST Home does). Protects don't update the online account with motion sensor information as a matter of course and only 'calls home' to the account a couple of times a day. The thermostat is a lot more talkative but it doesn't have motion sensor information in the API. I say 'not at the moment' because Google (NEST's owners) are releasing WEAVE later this year. This will enable local wifi type access directly to the Protect and Thermostat and hence motion sensor information and colour codes. When WEAVE is released I'll be taking full advantage of it and you should see this functionality once that happens as it would be very useful to have 'Protect' motion sensors to supplement the dedicated ones.

Hope that helps

Mike

Posted on
Thu Aug 25, 2016 4:06 pm
dduff617 offline
Posts: 659
Joined: Jul 05, 2006
Location: Massachusetts, USA

Re: Trigger Questions

thanks for the suggestion to turn on the setting for NestProtect Activity Sensor. i had ignored or forgotten it and it seems to be off by default. this will make my nest system work better.

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