HomeKit Nest Thermostat Replacement

[mk313]

Have & have been reapply happy with a Second Generation Nest Thermostat for a long time now, but recently got a notice from Google that they will be deprecating those & I'll have to upgrade in order to use it in any way other than as a dumb thermostat.

My mom had a nest thermostat (not the learning one, but the basic one) that never did work for her (worked with heating, but not cooling & even had an HVAC guy over to try to fix it). So it was basically brand new. I installed it over the weekend, and while the device is fine, the new Google Home App is garbage compared to the nest app.

To give one example, we have a lot of temperature presets, and in the Nest App, you could set them all by clicking on a chart of the day, it was really fast & really easy to do & graphically was easy to see how your days looked. In Google Home, there is no chart, it's just a list of temps, so you need to scroll through each of them & to add any, it's like a 10 step process (maybe not exactly, but it feels like it, and each one has to have a different name, or else you get a message that that already exists.

Plus, I can't find any way to set up different temps for Heating vs Cooling vs Heating/ Cooling, so I have to pick one set of temps year round. Not liking this at all & looking for a replacement, I'd be happy with HomeKit, but also happy with anything better than this trash app.

Any advice on HomeKit (or other) thermostats that work better/simpler than the ones using the Google Home App. Thanks in advance.

 

[markphil1424]

Check out Ecobee - I replaced my Nest thermostat and my HVAC tech recommended the Ecobee. I'm very satisfied with the upgrade.

 

[mk313]

Thanks, will check it out.

 

[MacAndMic]

Recent 2nd gen. Nest to Ecobee convert. I am very happy with the Ecobee, I went with the premium version for the extra sensor. All is working well and I feel the house maintains temps better now. It also integrates with HomeKit and Siri. I don’t use that aspect much, I typically just control it from the native app but it’s nice to have choices.

 

[rsonnens]

Was in the same situation but I upgraded to the Gen 4 Nest. It is an improvement and it does directly integrate with HomeKit via Matter but you don’t have as much control as you do with the Google Home app (I also have it integrated with home assistant, again via Matter).

One thing I like is it comes with an extra temperature sensor that give a lot of nice options.

 

[mk313]

Was in the same situation but I upgraded to the Gen 4 Nest. It is an improvement and it does directly integrate with HomeKit via Matter but you don’t have as much control as you do with the Google Home app (I also have it integrated with home assistant, again via Matter).

One thing I like is it comes with an extra temperature sensor that give a lot of nice options.

interesting. I didn't realize the new Nests worked with HomeKit. I do have an email from Google that I can get one of the Gen 4's for $150 or something like that. I'll have to check it out. Thanks for the heads up on that.

 

[TonyC28]

I think I'll be giving Ecobee a try. No way I'm giving Google more money because they're killing my thermostat for no reason.
Can anyone with the Ecobee tell me if you can run the fan for a certain amount of time (for example, turn the fan on for 30 minutes and it turns itself off)?

 

[rsonnens]

interesting. I didn't realize the new Nests worked with HomeKit.

Looks like this inside Apple Home app. Shows the connect to Google, Home Assistant and HomeKit. It first connected to Google Home when I set it up. It was all done with the Matter support. One thing I don’t see is my separate Nest temp sensor and I think the temp that shows in HimeKit is the average of the 2 sensors (which is how I set it up in Google Home.)

[[I was able to get my old one connected but it was very hard to do, I had to create a Google services developer account and expose my Nest so that Home Assistant could connect to it and then Home Assistant was able to expose it as a HomeKit device via its bridge. It took weeks to do because of bugs in Googles APIs. It was nice with the new gen 4 to do it all directly without guru magic.]]

 

[mk313]

Looks like this inside Apple Home app. Shows the connect to Google, Home Assistant and HomeKit. It first connected to Google Home when I set it up. It was all done with the Matter support. One thing I don’t see is my separate Nest temp sensor and I think the temp that shows in HimeKit is the average of the 2 sensors (which is how I set it up in Google Home.)

[[I was able to get my old one connected but it was very hard to do, I had to create a Google services developer account and expose my Nest so that Home Assistant could connect to it and then Home Assistant was able to expose it as a HomeKit device via its bridge. It took weeks to do because of bugs in Googles APIs. It was nice with the new gen 4 to do it all directly without guru magic.]]

Thanks for the screen shots.

 

[MisterSavage]

Thanks for posting this because I've been wondering what I'll do in this scenario also. No way in hell I'm sticking with Google.

 

[Arran]

…Can anyone with the Ecobee tell me if you can run the fan for a certain amount of time (for example, turn the fan on for 30 minutes and it turns itself off)?

Yes, you can. I have two Ecobeee premiums and i use that feature often. I can turn the fan on manually for 15, 30 or 45 mins or 1 or 2 hours. I use it in heating season on sunny days to pull too-hot air from the sunny side of my house to the cooler side of my house for an hour or two before the sun sets. You can turn it on from the thermostat itself or the ecobee app - but not in HomeKit.

You can also set the fan to turn itself on and off automatically for a set number of minutes per hour. I haven’t tried that.

Been with Ecobee for five or six years after my original nests failed. Started with the basic Ecobee and upgraded to the premium about three years ago. Can recommend.

 

[SCP]

Honeywell T9. Nest still refuses to allow you to completely manually override the set schedule, not a problem with T9.

 

[mk313]

FYI, for anyone that is looking for an ecobee & uses T Mobile, one of the T Mobile Tuesday deals this week (I was still able to activate it today) is 30% off on select ecobee devices. Not sure if it includes the thermostats, but they are displayed in the ad for the deal.

 

[eclipse01]

I went from Nest to Ecobee, although I love my Ecobee now, it was a huge learning curve coming from Nest. Geofencing is handled completely different, as is "programs" which are now setting up comfort settings and applying them to schedules.

I can't see myself using any other thermostat now since switching but like i said...way different!