ECO temperatures

[freshwuzhere]

Been getting a rash of errors when in AWAY mode.

Nest has added a new feature "ECO" temps when you set Thermostat to away - that reports a state that can't be interpreted by the plugin.

Like this :-

cannot update device state for key vac_ode to value eco (invalid enumeration value).

It can be avoided by NOT using away and just setting a low temperature - but a little cumbersome in my case where I have 8 thermostats.....

Thanks NEST!

[goneoffthegrid]

Yes, this change to create an Eco mode appears to have "broken" my integration to Nest.

When I programmatically set to Away status Nest doesn't enable the Eco temps. And I can't seem to see "Eco" as a mode through the plugin. What do you say Mike, can this be addressed in a new release?

[akimball]

I'm seeing the same broken ECO mode. Any work arounds other than don't use AWAY?

[Ramias]

Just adding my +1 to this. My log file fills up when I have the Nest set to Away.

Out of town this week but will try to look at the code next week. I took a peak and, well, my coding skills aren't what they used to be.

Nest API is here: https://developers.nest.com/documentation/api-reference if anybody wants to take a look at it.

[ZachBenz]

Hi all - here's a homemade patch for the Eco issue. Please note I'm not affiliated with the developer - just a user hacking his way to a fix.

NOTE! This is not a complete fix! Just a quick homemade patch for getting rid of the annoying errors in the Event Log.

To make this homemade patch, you will need to be comfortable with digging around in the XML files that configure the NEST Home plugin. That said, it's pretty straightforward.

First, you need to locate the plugin on the computer running your Indigo Server. These instructions assume you are running macOS Sierra and Indigo 7; the instructions should also work for recent older macOS and Indigo versions, just be sure to go to the right directory for the version of Indigo you are running.

• Open TextEdit, go to TextEdit->Preferences, and disable Smart Quotes

• On your hard drive on your computer running your Indigo Server, navigate to /Library/Application Support/Perceptive Automation/Indigo 7/Plugins

• Right-click the NEST Home plugin and select Show Package Contents

• Within the package contents, navigate to Contents/Server Plugin

You are going to be editing the Devices.xml file. Note that if you just double-click it, by default this will open it in Safari, which is not useful for editing. Instead, you will right-click the file and Open With->TextEdit. It's important you've turned off Smart Quotes because otherwise TextEdit will annoyingly change the " character to a smart quote, which Indigo can't parse. You could also simply Open With your favorite code editor (Xcode, TextWrangler, etc).

In Devices.xml, search for:

<State id="hvac_mode">

And to the list of options under that, add:

<Option value="eco">Eco</Option>

This will get rid of the annoying "cannot update device state for key hvac_mode" errors in your log.

Finally, open up the Indigo client, and select from the menu: Plugins->NEST Home->Reload and check your Event Log for any errors (due to typos, annoying smart quotes, etc)

That's it! Lather, rinse, repeat if you have additional homes you're controlling with the NEST Home 2 and NEST Home 3 editions of the plugin.

[ZachBenz]

Note I edited my above post to remove instructions about editing Actions.xml - after reviewing the Nest developers guide for the eco API change (https://developers.nest.com/documentati ... ion-guide/), I realized my suggested change to Actions.xml actually broke things!

[dduff617]

I'm trying to plot my current Nest HVAC settings (heat and cool set points, current temp, relative humidity). I don't use Nest Eco Mode very often, but last week, I was going to be away from my house for a few days, so I set it to Eco mode. I didn't see what I expected in the graphs, so I did some investigating... Now I'm confused because it looks like when I put my Nest thermostat in Eco Mode, I see the following:

• The setpoints displayed in the default Indigo thermostat interface in the Device Details pane show the previous set points of the system before it was put in Eco Mode (i.e., not the correct set points).
• The states "coolSetpoint_string" and heatSetpoint_string" similarly do not reflect the current (Eco)thermostat settings.
• The states target_temperature_high_f and target_temperature_low_f are similarly incorrect.
• The state "heatOrCool" is "Saving Energy" which seems like possibly the only visible sign that what I can see from Indigo are not actually the current correct values."
• The states eco_temperature_high and eco_temperature_low are both 0 which seems incorrect and also means that even if I wanted to add some logic like to detect which state value(s) reflect the current set points currently in effect, I seemingly can't.
• When I hit "send status request" on the device in Indigo, basically nothing changes, so I don't think what I'm observing is merely a communication glitch or short-lived synchronization issue.

In short, it seems like NestHome plugin is simply not compatible Eco or perhaps more accurately was simply not built with Eco in mind. (...which btw, it looks like I also could have figured out from the earlier comments in this thread.) If for example, my Nest system figures out that I am not home, and changes to Eco mode (via the "Home/Away Assist" feature from the larger Nest ecosystem, which I understand to include Nest Protect detectors and other products), there is basically NO reflection in the plugin that the set points of my thermostat are changed.

If I'm not mis-interpreting the above info, it would seem that the only "reasonable" way to utilize Nest Home plugin in any serious way for setting and monitoring thermostats would be to a) never invoke the Eco feature via the Nest app and b) to disable the Nest features that might automatically enable it (such as occupancy detection). I'm shocked that in long time I've been using Nest Home, I've not already noticed this... I have Grafana Home Plugin to thank for helping me see better how my system is behaving.

Am I misinterpreting things? If so, can someone explain how they are using Nest Home to control and monitor current set points? I know the plugin hasn't seen much development - has it just fallen out of sync with the state of the Nest API?

I suppose I could live comfortably with simply turning off or ignored all the Nest-side stuff and just implementing by own replacement for Eco mode by simply modifying setpoints. But that's not how I had previously thought Nest Home was working. Thoughts?

[dduff617]

I created issue #5 on GitHub cover (basically) the symptoms reported here.
https://github.com/IndigoDomotics/nest-home/issues/5