Can this be used to prevent a Nest from going to Auto-away instead of just bringing it out of auto-away? Our downstairs Nest is not in an area that would see motion all the time.
just set the option on the nest to disable auto-away, but yes. however, nest will keep putting it in away, and ST will keep sensing motion somewhere and turn it off.
It is easier to do this with auto-away off and just trigger away and back off via ST. Been doing this for over a year with my other HA system, works great.
You could even use a schedule to automatically turn off away at 4pm on weekdays, for example and put it in away at 8am on weekdays.
Updated my smartapp code to add a simple day scheduler for days to turn on/off away and for the hours for on/off on those days
https://github.com/pstuart/smartthings/blob/master/set%20tstat%20to%20not%20away.groovy
So, I love my Nest but it is indeed limited in some regards. I have a building controls background and know way too much about HVAC controls. I currently utilize this:
To create my own humidity reset schedule based on outside air temp only used during the heating season and it works great. A basic controls function that the Nest simply doesnāt do. The colder it is outside, the lower humidity I call for from my HVAC system to avoid condensation on the windows and other terribleness.
Having said that, I recently (3 days ago) invested in SmartThings and have been playing around with it. I had hoped to use the Mobile App presence to set the Nest to Away and let it come back on, on itās own based on the Early On feature and my schedule. Relying on the presence to come back is not acceptable and ends up in a warm or cold house, like others mentioned. I cannot utilize the motion sensor on the Nest because, as well as others, have a Nest in a location that receives little traffic and would therefore, constantly have false positives and negatives on presence.
Looking through that PHP API, it appears there is some abilities to play around with Auto Away so Iām going to try and get that going. Iāll likely incorporate it with my humidity reset schedule which polls the Nest every 10 minutes or so. Iāll report back when Iām done but Iām confident it would solve this problem.
The only issue with this solution is you need a server/computer somewhere running apache/PHP to execute these things 24/7. I happen to be a bit of a geek, never turn off my computer, and have Linux VMs to handle this already so itās no big deal for me. That might be a deal breaker for others.
I actually have lower expectations on the official Nest API than the unofficial one I just linked as everything Iāve read from the official one so far has significantly fewer options. Hopefully itāll increase but only time will tell.
1 Like
I donāt see anything that even sets the Auto-Away. People are clearly misunderstanding the logic of Auto-Away. IT JUST SETS IT TO AWAY WHEN NEST WANTS TO and SETS IT NOT TO AWAY WHEN IT WANTS TO.
Why not control this in ST? I wrote a motion, location mode (away vs home) and a schedule by day and hour.
Eventually Nest will have Trips and other location awareness tied to Google Account so it will know you are heading home, much like Google Now knows.
But for now, its easy to turn the Away on or off, based on events.
Still on this, huh? 
I love a good debate!
Remember, as per the FAQ on their site, away is like vacation and auto-away is like at work for the dayā¦my analogy for the last paragraph. It stops all schedules while in Away mode, but they still will work when in Auto-away. My home warms up/cools down before I get home based on schedules and the Time-to-temp Nest Sense setting. So, based on inside temp, outside temp, etc, it knows when to start cooling/heating my house so that it is the exact temp it needs to be when I walk in the doorā¦and that time varies from day to day. That is something that ST canāt do, nor should it, and is high on the family approval factor!
No it doesnāt. It exits auto-away at night. There is no honoring schedules during the Away period triggered by Auto-Away.
This is why I wrote the daily scheduler so you can automatically take it out of Away mode at 4pm instead of night time in Auto-Away.
If it is in Away mode is triggered by Auto-Away during the day, the schedule is not in effect.
As the FAQ states, donāt believe me, put a bookshelf in front of the nest. set the temp for away to be 85, set a scheduled temp for 75 at 5pm. See what happens. It will go to Away mode in the day and even though a scheduled temp is set for 75, because it will not sense activity, it will stay in Away mode until night time or someone removes it from away.
My fault then for assuming the Nest behaved in the way it probably should as most of the time Auto Away is temporary and not a Vacation mode. Your response however needs to have less CAPS in the future.
For what itās worth, it used to operate this way:
https://community.nest.com/thread/1798
[quote]Just thought Iād jump in here. It looks like youāre having an issue where Auto-Away is staying active through scheduled set points throughout the day.
Auto-Away has been changed a little in the recent 3.5 update. It will now use the motion sensor data to determine the probability of detecting someone there around each set point. If it has determined no one will be there for set points set during the day, it will completely skip them and stay in Auto-Away until a time it has determined a high likely hood of detecting someone.
Before this update, Nest would always leave Auto-Away for scheduled set points, and then go back into away if no one is detected for half an hour after the set point.
Thanks
-Calvin C.[/quote]
So, a lame kind of workaround for this is to not actually set it into Away mode at all. Iāve got it set to relax the temperature setpoints to the same setpoints of my Nest (when it is in Away mode) when my presence sensors are gone.
The schedule, including Early On, will just react like normal on any given day since Away mode hasnāt actually been engaged.
The gotcha here is I canāt think of a way to āset back to scheduleā setpoints when we arrive, if weāre only gone for a couple hours on a Saturday where the schedule hasnāt changed yet. This is more useful for the M-F work schedule then short trips.
1 Like
Did you guys ever figure this out?
How come there isnāt an official Nest support yet? Just figure out how to make it appropriately sync the presence sensors (preferably bidirectionally) and move on.
Somewhere on a wish list, I think it would be great if Nest could also take better behavior when someone opens a door. I have the contact sensor that turns it off, but it seems kind of heavy handed. Particularly, certain doors have different effects on the system, which I would think makes sense for Nest to figure out.
Given that the Nest API is effectively open, someone should be able to write the appropriate classes for the lazy bums at Google. Then everybody wins.
Nothing has changed as far as I know. If you read my last post, relaxing the setpoints to āawayā temperatures, is just as effective though. Just because the Nest doesnāt physically say āAwayā it still operates in my desired manner. If a schedule update happens, it still updates the temps, or if presence is returned, it will update the temps so again, it is doing exactly the same thing. Extended period trips like ~12h on a hot summer day (that doesnāt have a schedul) can still cause issues as by the time it senses presence again, the house will be rather warm so this requires you to mentally set it before you head back home. This issue is an entirely different problem though and wouldnāt be fixed by anything mentioned in this thread.
Iām not sure Iād utilize any sort of door closures myself to be honest, thereād be way too many false positives as there is no door in my house that if opened, ALWAYS means we are coming or going and itād have to do be effective. If you are just trying to get it to āwake upā to notify you are still present because it detected an event, thatās a little different I suppose.
Honestly, I really donāt understand why this is a point of contention. Auto-Away leaves your presence TBD by the Nest, allowing for early heating/cooling based on Nestās algorithmic best guess for your imminent arrival. Manually setting away takes all control away from the Nest, requiring you to manually return the Nest back on. Nest stops looking for your presence when you manually set it away.
Either the Nest is in controlā¦
Or you (or your SmartThings hub) are.
Thank You very much for this. Iāve been trying to figure out how to make my nest come out of away mode automatically. How can I make this work with a presence sensor rather than motion?
hey man, so I just started using your smartapp, thanks btw! I noticed when I left the house this morning that it set my thermostat to away, which i love. I was originally under the impression that your smartapp only puts it back to home. Just want to verify that this is indeed supposed to change the tstat to away when all presence from ST is away. I will be turning off auto-away if this is the case. This is not clear in the description of the app. Thanks!!
@marker220 and @Bsyde The code doesnāt use presence sensors, but could. I never wired that up, but feel free to do a git push and I can incorporate the code or feel free to fork the code to your liking.
Honestly, I donāt use this SmartApp, just wrote it as a proof of concept that ST can control the away state when the presence feature of the Nest isnāt good enough.
Iām having trouble getting this smartapp to work. I set 3 motions around the house to it. When I get home and come out of Away mode on ST the Nest is still staying in Away.
Like I said, it was a proof of concept. I really canāt support it but encourage you to look at the logs and see if there might be some logic to why it isnāt working.
Itās a pretty straightforward app, but with all the ST platform issues, I have no idea why it wouldnāt work.
As I also said before, Iām not even using this code, so you will have to figure it out or at least post more info then it isnāt working.
Interesting. I guess it must be the device type that put it into away mode when i left this morning. Do you let your Nest take itself out of away mode?
i dont use away mode. just schedules. II dontdonāt like telling Google when Iām not home 
1 Like