Nest is finally getting remote sensors! (And their doorbell is finally shipping)

For us Nest owners, this is the one thing really missing. While I use NST Manager to do this logic now with other temperature sensors, I’d much rather not rely on Smartthings for such an important task. One thing to note is that the sensors only work up to 50 feet away from the thermostat which seems kind of short ranged.

Also, it only works with third generation or E Nest thermostats.

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Yeah! But the Nest sensor doesn’t do occupancy like ecobee. Too bad.

Waiting for the Nest APIs to be changed in order to expose the Nest sensor to ST (just like I did for the ecobee more than 3 years ago).

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The Nest x Yale Lock is also now available for purchase. I guess they skipped the whole pre-order phase.

https://www.shopyalehome.com/NestYaleLock

It’s also available on Nest as well

https://store.nest.com

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The sensors use Bluetooth, not Nest Thread. So point to point, not mesh. Hence the distance limitation: it’s a single hop.

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Thanks. I find this very limited. 50 Feet pretty much limits you to next one or two rooms only. They also might be airing on the side of caution. I will buy some and test it out.

Looks like the 3 packs for $99 pre-order are unavailable already.

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It’s a 360° signal, though, so it’s quite likely that you could have a sensor upstairs and get two zones that way. So I think that something that a lot of people would find useful. I agree, though, it does seem pretty limited for big houses.

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Kind of bizarre that they didn’t use Thread and Wifi for this and allow it to establish the connection through the Connect and then to the Thermostat. I’m sure it has something to do with needing to directly connect to the Thermostat for the functionality that has been built, but with the Secure (Guard has Connect built in) and the Nest x Yale Lock requiring a Connect to be present to establish it’s connection, I just wonder why they aren’t going to implement this the same way. Hmmmmmmm.

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Hmmmmm indeed! :wink:

I have no inside knowledge at all, but speaking as an engineer, my guess would be that this was a marketing decision. They want to be able to sell the nest with an extra sensor at a specific price point, and that price point didn’t stretch to the connect. But totally a guess.

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And perhaps a different development team not in sync with how Nest x Yale would establish it’s connection to the ecosystem. The Hello on the other hand is treated just like a camera and establishes it’s connection just like the indoor and outdoor cameras, so that device doesn’t change. Who knows.

For larger houses though, I am going to assume they would have more than 1 Thermostat so that gives a little bit more range, but maybe not reaching the furthest regions of the home depending on the central location of those thermostats. I’m only in 2100sq foot, but I have upstairs and downstairs thermostats and my layout for any bedroom is 25 to 30 feet at the max.

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Judging by the marketing material below, the Nest remote sensors won’t balance out temperatures only help you prioritize which rooms get heating and cooling and when. If so, this is disappointing.

Most homes aren’t the same temperature in every room. Maybe the living room gets too warm or the baby’s room is too cold. With the Nest Temperature Sensor, you can let your Nest thermostat know which room should be a certain temperature at a certain time of day. And that room will always be the most comfortable.

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I got one of these NEST temp sensor add-ons, and I like its limited ability to select, time-of-day-wise, which temp sensor to use for heating/cooling control, i.e. either the one in the thermostat, or the remote sensor. That said, the NEST’s features for using the sensor are extremely limited, and could be vastly improved if the sensor could be integrated into the Smartthings universe of things. Any news on whether the API to control it either via the Smartthings Hub, or directly over BT, has been discovered?

@tonesto7 I just wanted to bump this thread. Has Nest released any API’s to access the remote thermostat?

I have a home office and a bedroom. The main thermostat is in my bedroom and the remote sensor is in my office. I work from home on a sporadic schedule. I’d like to implement a routine/rule/schedule where I can tell ST that I’m working from home and use the remote sensor as the main temperature instead of the bedroom.

Of course, this is all dependent upon Nest first. :slight_smile:

Hi,

The NEST APIs have not released anything new for more than a year…so, no luck on that side.

However, you can use any ST connected temp/motion sensors to adjust the Nest thermostat’s setpoints with the proper DTHs and smartapps.

I’ve developed My Next Manager and several automations for the Nest, so I’m closely following the NEST APIs.

The NEST APIs program has made a lot of people angry as it’s really slow to any NEST releases.

Refer to

https://nestdevelopers.io/t/temperature-sensor-api/1317

Regards.

Support for the Nest sensors here: