The Nest integration with Home Assistant is back (kind of)

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A digital illustration of a circuit board in a glass.
YouTube video

Proceed with caution: limitations ahead

Before you break out the champagne, it's important to be aware of a few limitations that might give you pause when considering this integration.

  • Firstly, accessing the Smart Device Management API comes at a cost. A $5 fee is required, and unfortunately, there's no trial available. Additionally, not all Nest devices are currently supported. While cameras, displays, doorbells, and thermostats made the cut, the popular Nest Protect smoke and CO alarm remains unsupported.
  • As it stands, setting up this integration is far from a walk in the park. Brace yourself for executing commands in the terminal and editing JSON files. While the aforementioned YouTube video sheds light on the process, you may prefer to wait for a more user-friendly method to emerge.
  • The issue of needing to refresh the access token every hour is mentioned in the video. However, there's a silver lining: Reddit user /u/zoommicrowave discovered a solution to this problem using Node-RED. You can find their proposed fix in a Reddit thread.

About Liam Alexander Colman

is an experienced Home Assistant user who has been utilizing the platform for a variety of projects over an extended period. His journey began with a Raspberry Pi, which quickly grew to three Raspberry Pis and eventually a full-fledged server. Liam's current operating system of choice is Unraid, with Home Assistant comfortably running in a Docker container.
With a deep understanding of the intricacies of Home Assistant, Liam has an impressive setup, consisting of various Zigbee devices, and seamless integrations with existing products such as his Android TV box. For those interested in learning more about Liam's experience with Home Assistant, he shares his insights on how he first started using the platform and his subsequent journey.

2 thoughts on “The Nest integration with Home Assistant is back (kind of)”

  1. Thanks for featuring my video on the blog! I also made another video on node-red following zoom-microwave’s reddit article

    Reply
  2. Thanks for the videos, I have used your NodeRed solution until Home Assistant made the integration available. It now does the same in a supported way using an automation like the one I set up with a separate datetime titled picture for each person event:

    alias: Person Picture
    description: ”
    trigger:
    – platform: device
    device_id:
    domain: nest
    type: camera_person
    condition: []
    action:
    – service: camera.snapshot
    data:
    entity_id: camera.frontdoor
    filename: >-
    /config/www/person/{{now().strftime(‘%Y, %-d %B –
    %Hu%Mm%Ss’)}}.jpg
    entity_id: camera.frontdoor
    mode: single

    Reply

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