[REMOVED] Nest Manager 3.1

I’m in Monroe MI area and have Michigan Gas Utilities for natural gas service.

Nest cost me $250.74 (after Lowes credit card -5% discount)
-$100 for Michigan Gas Utilities rebate
-$50 for online audit
-$100 for being a customer of Mich Gas Utilities
= $0.74 for a Copper Nest Gen 3 Thermostat!

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That’s awesome. I’ve been wanting to update my second gen nest. What’s the online audit?

BTW!!! I live in the southern part of Ypsi so you live really close. :slight_smile:

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The online audit was ridiculous - all it asked was how old my house was, how big my house was, how much insulation was in the attic, which energy source my hot water heater and HVAC systems used, how many refrigerators and how many freezers I have. Then it gave a list of possible improvements (weather proofing, programmable thermostats, etc.) that I could complete to reduce energy costs. It was well worth the 3 minutes it took me to fill out the info to get the code number to get that extra $50!

The funny thing was - my energy reducing efforts are not just steps ahead of what they suggested, but leaps ahead of what they suggested! Like my hot water heater has an exhaust fan interlock on it, if there’s no power to the fan, then the hot water heater doesn’t run. I have that fan plugged into a smart outlet, then through ST I turn it off when ever I’m out of the house, at night, etc., then it turns back on when the ST Good Morning or I’m Back routines fire. My gas usage was down 15% this summer over the past 2 summers I have data for.

I noticed you said something about DTE and figured you couldn’t be too far away from me!

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@tonesto7
Just sent you a donation in appreciation for all your hard work on this. For my purposes, Nest Manager is 100% working and an outstanding free resource for this community. I look forward to its continued development!

melbo

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Thanks @melbo it’s appreciated I’m glad you are getting great use from it.

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Question that’s probably outside the scope of Nest Manager but is there a way to set which PWS the Nest uses for weather? My Nest seems to prefer (90% of the time) a station that’s at a greater elevation than my house yet there’s a station at my elevation just down the street. Both are ~1 mile from me but the higher elevation is often incorrect in temperature and wind speed for my home.

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yes you can, there is a setting you can use pws:stationID

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@E_Sch where would I set this ?

nest manager smart app -> Preferences (see under Devices) -> Weather Device -> Customize weather location

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Worked great. Thank you
Should I disable weather on my Nest thermostat so they don’t fight each other?

I’m not sure what you are suggesting to disable - can you say more?

Maybe I’m not understanding how this works but my physical Nest t-stat is displaying weather based on my zip code (Station26) and now Nest Manager is polling the pws:stationID (Station7) that I set in the SmartApp. The 2 are displaying different temperatures at the moment due to the difference in elevation between the 2 stations. I don’t think I’d expect the SmartApp to actually set the station on the Nest itself so thought maybe I should disable the Nest’s native weather.

I live in a climate (central Washington) where we have large nightly temperature inversions. It can be 90F during the day and drop down to 50F overnight. We don’t have AC and use the nightly lows to cool the house down and then close the house up as the outside ambient begins to rise. I’m ultimately looking for a way to get a notification when the outside temp is =/> than the inside temp as a prompt to close all windows and doors.

You are correct we do not control what Nest displays on the thermostat

The automation external temperature “Turn off if external temperature is near” will turn the hvac system off when temps get below your desired, and re-enable when it gets above. This may presume you have ac available on your system.

If this automation is on, it can send you notifications (SMS, txt) when it turns the system off or on. It can also send voice if you have voice devices available.

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Alright - stupid question time …

How do I get to the Nest Automations?

I have Nest Manager 3.1.4 installed (dated 10-1-16).

I have my new Nest Thermostat, Nest Presence and Nest Weather installed. I can see the Thermostat and Presence in ST THINGS. I have confirmed that I can control the Thermostat from ST.

I don’t see where I configure the Nest Automations? I’ve looked in SmartApps on the Nest Thermostat - all that is there is the Nest icon with the current temp and “Nest Location Home Watchdog”. I have tried Nest Manager (Marketplace > SmartApps > My Apps) but all it has there is options for WatchDog as well - to configure Push/Voice Notifications.

I know it’s probably right in plain sight, but I’m not seeing it.

Walked through the Watchdog setup and hit REMOVE at the end. After I did that, Nest Manager allowed me to install Automations. Finally got it figured out.

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Hi everyone,

I installed my new nest 3rd gen yesterday and installed this app. I’m just struggling to understand some of the settings.

Could someone explain, maybe with some example Temperature numbers, what the action threshold temp and change temp increment settings do?

From what I can gather it works like this:

Threshold is 1 Celsius.

Change temp is 2 Celsius.

Desired temperature is 20 Celsius.

The sensor detects the temperature as 20 Celsius and over time it drops to 19 Celsius.

The 1 degree threshold is hit so the temperature is adjusted by 2 degrees to 21 Celsius.

The house warms up to 20 and again the 1 degree threshold is hit so the temperature is adjusted 2 degrees to 18 Celsius.

The cycle repeats…

Is this correct?

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That sounds about right.

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So anyone experiencing any polling issues? I was able to get the nest protect all discovered and everything looks good however I have a total of 5 protects in respective rooms and using the IOS app under recently tab the time stamp on the polling is not updating… its stuck on the time of the first discovery. I changed the polling timers to 5 minutes and now 10 minutes but the time stamp is still 20 minutes old.

the protect is showing as if everything is ok and no errors

Please advise

That’s normal… The protects don’t check in very often. Now if 12hrs go by and no change than something might be wrong

So I believe its been almost 24 hours since I discovered these devices and have seen no activity updated since then I suppose how do i validate that the nest protect are indeed working in smartthings rather showing a cache data?