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I have a Nest Thermostat and live in the UK. I have a radiator based heating system.

When I leave the house, some time later the Nest realises this and sets my house to Away. From this point onwards the thermostat does not obey any of my schedules. I have a schedule set to change the temperature at 5pm, but the nest ignores this because I don't arrive home until 5:30pm. At this point the house is cold.

I know that I can set the Nest to Home manually before I start my Journey, but is there any way to automatically have the Nest warm my home prior to arrival without disabling the Home/Away Assist or manually intervening?

Chris Terry
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  • If the Nest can't handle following your programmed schedule, how do you expect it to anticipate when you are coming home? This sounds like a Nest support issue. The reason I say that is asking on internet forums cannot help with the likely terminus of this chain: a warranty claim on a defective unit. – Harper - Reinstate Monica Nov 16 '17 at 14:55
  • I don't think there's a problem with the thermostat, I believe the fact that ignores the schedules while in Eco mode is by design. What i'm trying to do is coax the thing out of Eco mode automatically or on schedule. The only way I have found to do that so far is to set it manually or walk through the front door. – Chris Terry Nov 17 '17 at 21:49
  • That's something Nest could answer for sure. Have you been using it long enough - and consistently enough - for it to figure out on its own your habitual schedule? – Harper - Reinstate Monica Nov 17 '17 at 23:01

1 Answers1

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You can use an application like Stringify on your phone to do this.

The application can be configured with a geofence around your home. As the phone is detected entering the fenced zone, i.e. you are approaching home, it can switch your Nest to home mode. Alternatively, set a fence around work and have it set Nest to home mode as you leave work.

There is a "Flow" to do this on their website. You can play with this to adapt it to your needs.

Alternative such phone apps include IFTTT and Zapier.

(Of course, you could also replace Nest with one of the competitor smart thermostats that do all this GPS phone integration automatically anyway.)

Chenmunka
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  • Thanks. I had been experimenting with this approach. It seems IFTTT is incapable of altering the home/away state of the Nest. It can change temperature, but this is ignored if the Nest is set to away. I'm not sure if the others have more tricks up their sleeves so i'll check them out thanks. I find it frankly unbeleivable that Nest has no solution to this themselves. – Chris Terry Nov 17 '17 at 13:31