Set Nest to Temperature based on geofence

Devices & Integrations
1

My wife has an hour commute and so far, I’ve simply programmed our Nest thermostat to just schedule the home to be heated at the time she’s usually home. However, she often has to stay over because of emergencies (she’s a vet), etc. I was trying to find a way to set up a geofence around her work so that when she left, her phone leaving the area would trigger setting the temperature on the Nest and bringing it out of Auto Away mode and by the time she was home, the house would be warmed or cooled. Has anyone had any success with something like this? I have tried IFTTT, but that doesn’t seem to bring the Nest out of Auto Away mode. I’ve read a bunch of articles related to not being able to do much with Auto Away in the API. So a few questions:

  1. Does ST have a geofence feature for someplace other than your home? I don’t really want to put a hub at her office and link it to our Nest, that’s the only thing I could figure out how to set up a geofence and trigger the Nest.
  2. Does the Nest API support setting the temperature and/or tricking Auto Away to think that someone is home?
  3. Any other ideas on how to accomplish the first paragraph?

Thanks,
Drew

2

@drewsonian you may want to take a look at creating an IFTTT account. IFTTT (if this then that) has Geofences and Nest integration. You should be able to accomplish what you want using IFTTT. IFTTT also has excellent SmartThings integration to allow you to create some interesting possibilities. Hope this helps!

3

I’ve already tried IFTTT - it doesn’t allow you to set the temperature if the home is set to Away or Auto Away. I want the to set the Nest to come out of Auto Away, but IFTTT’s recipes don’t support this.

4

@drewsonian Smartthings can absolutely do what you’re asking, but you’ll need to do a bit of Smart App work.

In broad terms: I would disable AutoAway on the Nest, and set up Smart Apps to set the nest to Home/Away based on ST presence for you and your wife (or with motion detectors, or whatever).

Then, add a location for your wife’s work.

Then, make a hello, home action that fires when your wife leaves work. The hello, home action should set the nest to Home and set the heating setpoint.

Let us know if you need more guidance.

5

Apparently, Nest will soon support geofencig as part of the integration with Google Now. "Coming this fall"

6

Thanks for the help - I’ve got the Nest set up as a device with the github code (although I hear there is an official version coming out sometime soon) and I also have the Google Now set up (but that doesn’t seem to “know” when I’m going home, etc, yet - not sure how that works).

7

@drewsonian skylarkios.com addresses your exact concern. You can set an arriving and leaving geofence around your home and update your Nest accordingly. It supports multiple phones at your house too, only turning off the heat/cooling once everyone has left.

IFTTT integration was recently added, too. I see that you use IFTTT already, so you might be able to come up with some useful recipes off of the included triggers in the channel.

If it wasn’t apparent yet, we are the makers of this app. Just in the interest of full disclosure :slightly_smiling:. Happy to answer any questions here regarding the Nest, Skylark, and/or hacking (the good kind!) in general.