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Nest 1st gen and 2nd gen thermostats no longer supported from Oct 25

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This is one of the reasons I am working on an enclosure-compatible open-source version of the 2nd gen Nest thermostat. It reuses the enclosure, encoder ring, display, and mounts of the Nest but replaces the "thinking" part with an open-source PCB that can interact with Home Assistant. Nest has been pretty-badly supported in Home Assistant for over a year anyway, missing important connected features.

I've got the faceplate PCB done and working; the rotary encoder and ring working; and the display working but with terrible code with a low refresh rate.

I need to ship at the end of October to beat the retirement date. Plans to get some regular development report-outs and pre-orders are coming quite soon.

It's open source, and uses ESP32-C6 so it can be Wifi, BLE, or Zigbee, whatever software you intend to load onto it.

5 months agoby z3ugma

https://www.sinopetech.com/en/collections/temperature-contro...

I replaced all my thermostats for both of my homes with Sinopé products. Smart, allows integration with locally hosted home automation, and compatible with ZigBee networks. Purchased my first batch in late 2021 and haven't had any issues. Physical temperature controls if the LAN goes offline. Highly recommend.

Here's the hardware installed for on-prem home automation using the open-source Home Assistant software:

* Raspberry Pi[1] CPU, heatsink, A/C adapter, and case

* ConBee II Zigbee USB gateway[2]

* USB ADATA Micro SD card reader and USB cable

* Micro SD card (for operating system and Home Assistant)

* Ethernet cable (optional if using onboard WiFi)

There's a tutorial walking through the setup:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJEwrSSFe9s

It takes a little more labour to make it remotely accessible via smart phone, but once you have it locally hosted, that world is your oyster.

[1]: https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-4-model-b/

[2]: https://phoscon.de/en/conbee2

5 months agoby thangalin

Anything that requires a cloud account and does not offer a self hosted option, even a limited one, should be considered throw away. Would be nice if google released a self hosted server for these as a nod and thanks to the early customers.

5 months agoby nwellinghoff

Connected thermostats are great in theory! But they should not have to rely on a cloud connection. A local network with the option of internet connectivity would be awesome; but, it seems, no company is going to become uber successful if there isn't the option of forced upgrades and cloud subscriptions. Look at Ring...

5 months agoby zahirbmirza

I got burned recently by Ecobee in the same way. The problem with 'smart' interfaces for traditionally mechanical devices is that the useable lifetime (support period) of low-end microprocessors and software, especially online APIs, is often far shorter than the mechanical device it's attached to.

Similar to how people that keep cars around for 10+ years are stuck with dated and worthless 'infotainment' systems, Google and Ecobee can't even honor their product for long enough to outlast the HVAC units.

What burns me is that it wouldn't be much of an ask for them to push one final (optional) update that would open LAN-only access to core functionality. I and many others in the HA/ESPHome community have written hardware integrations to devices over RS485/UART with unpublished/black-box protocols, so a simple HTTP API would have an integration within days.

It would maybe cost an engineer at Nest/Ecobee a day or two of work, and the goodwill would make me far more likely to purchase a newer model. As it is, I've committed to avoiding (where possible) devices that aren't local-first.

5 months agoby briHass

To each their own, but the idea of an internet connected thermostat (at great expense!) never made sense to me. A $20 Honeywell lets you program 4 regions per day (waking, day, evening, night) and will be fine almost every day of the year. Has a battery backup and never failed me.

I guess it would be cute to get some analytics dashboard, but that’s about where my interest ends.

5 months agoby 0cf8612b2e1e

The shameful part is that the only thing that even remotely (no pun intended) needs a server to even be online, is the out-of-home control, just for NAT traversal. It should be free to Google for these to have at least in-home smart functionality forever.

Well, that, and the moving target of updating an "app" every year for all the breaking changes Google and (especially) Apple do to the mobile OS. Although honestly I'd rather have a QR code that links you to a PWA hosted on the thermostat itself.

5 months agoby xp84

API access is being ended as well, so third-party apps and services will not work.

5 months agoby RyanShook

Is there a list of devices which have been rescued or extended by open-source software?

Lyrion Music Server (formerly Logitech Media Server) is open-source server software for Squeezebox audio players, https://lyrion.org/

Tasmota is open-source firmware for ESP8266 and ESP32-based devices, https://templates.blakadder.com/preflashed-stand.html & https://github.com/tasmota

Some IP cameras have open firmware replacements.

Some Chromebooks are supported by mainline Linux.

5 months agoby walterbell

So, this will happen to ANYTHING that requires a server that you don't control eventually, including cars, smart-anything, smarthome stuff etc. I find this quite obvious to be true, yet the market seems to ignore this, from the consumer and manufacturers side. Why is that?

5 months agoby IlikeKitties

NEST protect has been a thorn in my side. Aside from just completely eating batteries - it constantly has to reconnect.

I wish the internet of things was soo much better than it is. There was a dream once of a world that worked efficiently, and then profit models came in and destroyed it.

5 months agoby boringg

Can someone at Google explain why the company can’t end formal support for the thermostat but make the API open? It’s a thermostat. It has 3 real functions - cool, heat, fan. What could it possibly hurt to let owners access the endpoints without touching Google servers?

5 months agoby RyanShook

As a wise man once said, “Anything plus computer equals computer.”

5 months agoby drob518

A rule of thumb when dealing with anything Google: never become too reliant on anything made by Google. They tend to depreciate almost everything eventually.

5 months agoby IAmGraydon

This pisses me off to no end. I paid a lot... I expected my Nest gear to work for as long as I own my house. I paid extra to get someone to install it with my home system. Now I see that my Nest Protect is saying it needs to be changed... not some small module... the whole thing. Next will be my thermostats... I can't understand why I'd pay for them again.

5 months agoby xutopia

Marketing/brand question: How do brands like Google (Alphabet) get away with moves like breaking products like this?

Is it because they continue to offer valued other services?

Is it because the affected people of any untrustworthy move are acceptable casualties?

Is it because they've been cashing in goodwill created by earlier generations of leadership?

Something else?

5 months agoby neilv

Gonna shill Venstar's colortouch line despite not having any financial relationship with them. Only because I don't see anyone else mentioning them, and I've had good luck with them for the past ~10(?) years in multiple houses. They are AFAIK the only "smart" wifi thermostat that both provides a standalone local JSON API (https://developer.venstar.com/documentation/) , and have a pretty wide ecosystem of devices and supporting infra that covers as much if not more than what some of the larger players do.

They are pretty niche, so much so that it took me maybe a year of half-hearted searching before I found a smart thermostat that wasn't dependent on an internet connection. And of course there is a home assist integration/etc https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/venstar/

Read some reviews before you buy them, or you might be surprised by the resistive touch on some models (which works fine with the UI), audible click when the relays go on/off (this is actually a big advantage in failure modes), and other features some people might not like.

5 months agoby StillBored

I don't understand why anyone would buy these things. Any device that requires a connection to a remote server is doomed to being bricked sooner.

5 months agoby WalterBright

Wyze is asking folks on Reddit if they’re willing to pay monthly for RTSP access.

5 months agoby testbjjl

I'm gonna flip a table, our Nest 2nd gen I got for my girlfriend was a gift and we love it so much, she had always wanted one. We bought newer ones and they were complete trash so we went back to it. It has been such a struggle even dealing with everything after Google acquired them. We are exiting the Google thermostat Home Assistant world and never looking back. Way to ruin another quality thing you assholes.

5 months agoby Mistletoe

A Nest E thermostat and a video doorbell came with the house.

Already replaced the doorbell with a Eufy, but I'll ride the thermostat into the ground, which might be around 6 years at this rate.

Another hurdle is that the Nest thermostat is tied into the local electricity co-op's peak-time usage reduction rebate program. They currently only support by Google (Nest), ecobee, Amazon, and Honeywell.

5 months agoby burnt-resistor

OTOH, lack of ongoing support means a greatly diminished, but not eliminated, risk that they push a firmware update in the middle of an extreme weather event, disabling your hvac and endangering the occupants lives.

5 months agoby nullc

My "smart" thermostat was past being supported when I bought it from Home Depot, lol, I put back the mercury switch thingie from 60 years ago because I had no idea how to get rid of it anyway.

5 months agoby BryanA

I don’t understand the appeal of smart home devices. My Honeywell thermostat may not be as optimal as the nest but I’ve had it for thirty years and it just works without thought.

5 months agoby natnatenathan

If you want IoT...ensure it's home assistant compatible.

5 months agoby Havoc

My 92 year old mom still lives in the house we moved into in 1965. It still has the original thermostat. And it’ll probably keep working another 60 years.

5 months agoby fortran77

Classic "internet-of-shit" material.

Worse are all these home-automation IoT devices etc. that "need" to re-route and ping servers outside even to get commands sent from devices on the same subnet! How absurd is this design ?

This ads-ification and "productization" of the user is the bane of tech industry. Such a scummy practice...

5 months agoby th2o344234234

If I am looking to get something that works with Home Assistant or esphome to replace my first gen nest thermostat, what should I get?

5 months agoby ryankshaw

They must have found some really bad security issues in the old backend they can't fix, or something. It's a bad look.

5 months agoby winrid

Serious question: how long do you expect cloud hardware vendors to support the servers for their products? 10 years? 20? 30?

5 months agoby sneak

Is there a stated reason for this EOLing?

5 months agoby apparent

They were barely "supported" by google at all. I've been locked out for years at this point

5 months agoby casey2

Google have the gaul to "offer" their newer devices at a discount - yes I want to pay you again for something I've already paid for...trusting that you don't this again in 10 years. I have 3 of these devices.

Fuck you Google.

5 months agoby GiorgioG

This crap is exactly why I do not ever purchase devices like these.

Yeah, I don't have a smart home, but all my old stuff works great and that will continue until after I have left this place.

Maybe I do have a smart home.

5 months agoby ddingus

Imagine if Google, which presents itself as a supporter of open source, had clear support policies so that when it ended support for a product, the open source community could take over. Think about how much e-waste that could prevent and how quickly it could make Google the default recommendation.

At this point I’ve thrown out so much Google hardware that was end of life but still operating I’ve become just the opposite — I constantly suggest people don’t use their hardware.

5 months agoby datahack

Meanwhile, my old Honeywell thermostat is still working!

5 months agoby corranh

Only if they can enable local home assistant access !

5 months agoby sciencesama

Gotta love proprietary software.

Not your code, not your property.

Example #17,859 of Stallman being right yet again.

5 months agoby anonym29

I feel so good about never connecting the previous owners' Nest to my WiFi.

5 months agoby aaron_m04

I highly recommend Ecobee if you want an alternative to Google Nest.