I used to do something similar with my CT-30 before I got the Nest. However, it seems that even if I remove ST altogether and just use the Nest Away and Nest scheduling, my problem will be the same. Once it comes out of Eco, it goes to the original temp and not the scheduled one.
That seems wrong to me. Is that really how it’s supposed to work?
Yes, when it comes out of ECO it returns to the previously defined settings, whether that be Heat, Cool or Auto with those previous setpoints. But as I documented above, you have full control of being able to take Nest out of ECO and set whichever HVAC Mode you want with the New Setpoints in one schedule. It accomplishes exactly what you want all while keeping your Nest in Away or Home Mode appropriately.
Does no one really see that as a bug then (apparently in the Nest software)? If my Nest schedule says it should be 65F after 10pm and then I get home at 11pm at it sets it back to 70F. wtf
How would the user expectation be that the schedule be ignored?
Nope, don’t see it as a bug at all. ECO Mode is an economically predefined Heating / Cooling setpoint and it’s a specific HVAC Mode in Nest. If the Nest system is in ECO Mode, you cannot set a different Heating / Cooling setpoint until you return Nest itself to Heat, Cool or Auto and then you can set whatever setpoint you want. No bug whatsoever.
is there a way to export Nest thermostat history to an excel sheet or google sheet?
Except the idea of an automated thermostat is that it’s… automated. Having to manually set a temperature when I get back is the opposite of a smart home. Especially since it seems like it wouldn’t be difficult for the thermostat to check and see if it missed a schedule while it was in Eco mode.
That’s just crazy to me.
You don’t have to manually set a temp when you get Home so long as you don’t force the thermostat into ECO Mode while you are Away. If you leave the Thermostat in Auto (Heat / Cool) mode all the time, you can set as many schedules as you want including the equivalent temps of what ECO is set to between those specific hours. You don’t need to use ECO period to achieve the same results.
If you do use ECO, you are locked into that mode period, until the HVAC mode is changed back to either Heat, Cool, or Auto.
If you look at what your ECO temps are set to ie: 69 and 78:
Leave your Thermostat on Heat / Cool period.
Schedule 1: 6pm Set Points 70 and 78
Schedule 2: 7pm and Mode Away set points (whatever your current ECO settings are now without using ECO)
Schedule 3: 10pm and Mode Away set points 65 and 78
Schedule 4: 11pm and Mode home set points 70 and 78
ECO is just a convenient way to set a predefined set of temps when you are Away or Home without having to do anything else, but if it is in this HVAC mode, you are not going to have the ability to override the temps
Temp selection can only occur on Heat, Cool, or Heat/Cool, period.
Not sure why you would want to allow the temp to drop to 65 degrees at 10pm, only to return it to 70 when you get home. That’s not really efficient, unless your current ECO temp is below that at 64 or lower.
Bear with me, I’m fairly new to ST… I’ve added NST Manager to my SmartThings with the intention of using my thermostat’s presence to trigger things. I see that I now have mulitple nest devices as “things”:
A) Nest Presence Device
B) Nest Thermostat
C) Nest Weather
Both A and B appear to have “presence” and also “nestPresence.”
If you open your Nest App up and set the mode to Away, it will set both Nest Presence and the tile in Nest Thermostat to Away.
For NST Manager Automations / Modes, if you create/set this up to syncronize between ST and your Nest Thermostat, it uses the ST Modes (Home, Away, Night) to send to your Nest Thermostat so your Nest environment goes to Away when ST goes to Away and vice versa (this is how I use Nest and have Phone Location turned off in Nest).
So if you are using WebCoRE (Pistons) or Routines that arms/disarms ST (SHM armed status and changes the Mode, you don’t have to do anything else if you have the Modes Automation setup in NST Manager. This will automatically change your Nest Thermostat in and out of Home and Away based on the Mode in ST.
You don’t need to utilize the Nest Presence or Thermostat devices to do anything else with this setup.
You can also setup Thermostat schedules directly in NST Manager which you can see some of what is being discussed above based on ST mode, time, etc…
Now perhaps you don’t want to use the NST Manager schedules and maybe have some sort of unique or more complex set of requirements (a lot of ifs / ands or if/ors) where you want to define certain things to happen with the Thermostat, then you could leverage the Nest Presence sensor as the device that you base your qualifications on (Present / Away). As for the Tile in the Thermostat that shows Away or Home - direct reflection of Nest), that is used as a visual representation of the Status of Nest only. Not used in Automations.
FYI - The Nest Presence represents Present (which is Home) and Away which is away. The Present is misleading.
I would leverage the Mode / Thermostat Automations (it’s pretty robust what you can schedule things for or base things off of) as much as you can. If you find that your use case cannot be satisfied using the internal Automations, then and only then would I venture off in creating Routines or Pistons that satisfy those requirements.
Hopefully that answers some of your questions and clears things up a bit.
Some screenshots for the Modes Automations if you haven’t looked at it in NST Manager yet:
Thanks for the very detailed reply. I’ll have to play with it when I get home, but in the mean time, perhaps if I describe a little more of what I’m trying to accomplish then it will make more sense. I’m trying to use phones as presence sensors for family members, and the nest presence sensor as a catch-all sensor for anyone else that might be there, be it guests or intruders. I have a “Guest Mode” virtual switch. What I want to happen is:
I’m attempting to keep all my automations in webcore if I can, that way it’s all in one place, it’s easier (for me) to look at and troubleshoot if something isn’t working the way I expect.
The Nest Presence device is the actual Thermostat and it’s Home / Away Status.
Based on what I know you are looking to do, I will write something else up later.
Questions:
Are your Pistons doing anything with the Thermostat?
Is NST Manager currently doing anything with your Nest Thermostat?
What are your goals with the Thermostat and temp settings while Home or Away?
How is your Nest Thermostat currently being set to Away and Home?
Forget the Nest Presence device in this equation. Forget it exists as a device for now.
I need clarification on the following statements. When you said “ANY presence sensor” are you referring to the ST Arrival Sensor (Zigbee device) and by “any PHONE presence sensor”, you mean Mobile Presence (GPS). Do I have your terminology correct?
When guest mode is on, and ANY presence sensor leaves, then if ALL presence sensors are gone, then turn off lights and set mode to away.
When guest mode is off, and any PHONE presence sensor leaves, then if all PHONE presence sensors are gone, then turn off lights and set mode to away
With those questions answered, I can give you a straight shot at whether you can or even should incorporate trying to use Nest Presence as anything or if based on your Pistons already setup, your Nest environment can stay in sync with ST and it’s Mode by passing Home or Away to Nest when appropriate so that you have everything enabling / disabling in your environment in the correct order.
I feel like we’re not communicating well…
Eco should only happen when I’m away. I used the times as examples, as I might leave at any point. Upon return, I think the thermostat should come out of it energy saving Eco mode and set the thermostat to the last scheduled temperature (the temperature it would be set to if I had been there the entire time). It should be a quick call to the Nest cloud to determine what that scheduled temperature is.
I can set all this up with variables and such in WebCoRE (or NST). While that was a requirement for my $30 CT-30, I was hoping that my $300 Nest could tackle that on it’s own.
/rant
Take NST Manager and SmartThings out of the entire conversation for a minute.
When your Nest Thermostat comes out of Eco Mode (when it sets Thermostat back to Home), it is supposed to return it to the previous HVAC Mode that you had it in prior to setting it to Eco (Heat, Cool, Heat / Cool) and whatever the Setpoints were at.
Verify that is what your Nest Thermostat does.
Then:
As for changing and doing this in SmartThings via schedules within NST Manager, if you were to simply create a schedule that Returns from Eco if in Eco, you select the Setpoints at that time for what you want them to be when it comes out of Eco and if you leave the Setpoints blank it will simply take the Nest out of Eco and whatever it was set at before, that’s what it will be set at as described up above in the first paragraph on the Nest directly.
FYI: You cannot set any sort of new schedule on the Nest while it is in Eco Mode. So if that’s what you meant that when it comes out of Eco it is going to recognize something you tried to push to it while it was already in Eco mode.
Maybe this is an added disconnect we are having. Although we are saying setting a schedule from ST whether it be via Pistons or NST Manager, you aren’t creating an actual schedule stored on the thermostat. You are scheduling times to modify Setpoints on certain days of the week at certain times based on specific conditions. It’s not writing this to the schedules inside of Nest. If you want actual set schedules that Nest will recognize and run off of, then you need to define those directly in Nest. If you are trying to perform changes to the setpoints from ST, you cannot change the TStat Setpoints until it is out of Eco Mode.
If you have set schedules at specific times and days of the week directly on your Nest, I’m making the assumption that when Nest comes out of Eco Mode it would revert to the Setpoints of the last actual time of the saved / stored schedule. I have never tested using direct schedules so that would be something you can try. Is this possibly the reason for all the confusion?
/No rant 
We work through everything until we are on the same page.
No, not currently. I just haven’t gotten that far in setting up automations.
No, not currently
I’m not too sure, but the fact that it takes an hour of no activity for Nest to go into Away makes me think I could improve this with ST. Also, I currently have a Stringify flow that sends Nest my ETA when I leave work (which I expect to turn on and get the house to my programmed temperature by the time I get there, but I’m not entirely sure it’s working). If I could move this into ST/webcore that would probably be better.
I’ve turned on Home/Away Assist and told it to use my Android’s location, as well as my wife’s iPhone location. In addition, I’ve set the “Should the thermostat use its activity sensors to figure out if anyone’s home?” to Yes.
Not quite, and I think this is where I probably misunderstood how nest’s presence works. I don’t own a ST Arrival Sensor Fob. By “any presence sensor” I meant any of these 3 things: 1. my phone (GPS), 2. wife’s phone (GPS), and 3. the physical Nest device on my wall, which I thought uses several sensors that we don’t have direct access to, to determine “presence”.
Since all I really care about is motion, I am beginning to wonder if I should simply buy a motion sensor (or 2 or 3) and use that instead… in which case, I probably should not have posted in your thread 
trying to create a Nest developer account which i have done but i get the error
could this be because i am in the UK and i am using this link
Nope that’s not the issue. That callback url is used globally.
More than likely you have a leading or trailing space in that field with the callback url. This happens when copying/pasting sometimes.
Check that first.
Second, make sure there are no leading or trailing spaces in the settings where you pasted the clientID and clientSecret. This is supposed to be taken care of with NST Manager now as it is supposed to parse blank spaces, but check it anyway.
Ok so you stated one thing that stands out and that is it takes the Nest an hour to go into Away.
This is exactly what I would do.
In the Nest App turn off Home Away Assist for “Phone Location” - That means not using GPS with Nest directly.
Go into NST Manager and create an Automation for Modes. Select which ST Mode(s) returns the Nest to Home and then which Mode(s) in ST sets Nest to Away.
Now that you have that part set.
In webCoRE, you have the following Pistons (this could all be done in one, but for simplicity sake, I am breaking this down so it is easier).
The second that ST changes the Mode to Home, then the NST Manager Mode Automation will immediately send a command to Nest to set Mode to Home.
If anyone else shows up later, the house is already Disarmed and Mode is Home so it won’t do anything more, but maybe you want a separate Piston that when they arrive and the garage door is closed, open it.
You don’t need to mess with the Nest Presence device as this is reading from Nest directly, whereas all of your other Presence devices are based directly on their statuses within ST.
You don’t need any Motion sensors if you are using mobile presence sensors to dictate what happens with the ST system. Additional motion sensors could be used for other things like walking down the hallway in the middle of the night and it’s pitch black so when motion is triggered, turn on the hallway lights.
Did this help? Trying to give you a very condensed version of what I think your requirements are and how to satisfy them in the most simplistic way. Or am I missing something and not understanding exactly what you are tying to accomplish?
With this, your Nest is using the Mode of ST to determine whether it gets set to Home or Away. It’s the exact way that I keep my system in sync (from left to right). I do this because I also have Nest cameras and I don’t want specific cameras to turn on until my ST is Armed first, so this ensures that ST is all set, and then my Nest is set appropriately which then turns cameras on or off based in Nest Mode Away or Home.
thanks , i copied into notepad and then pasted in and it worked
