Control Nest (or other thermostat) via generic interface and sensors

Has anyone come across a good / simple solution for adding a generic thermostat layer on top of a Nest thermostat?

Basically, I want to be able to provide a general “house average” temperature sensor, and have my Nest, or any other thermostat, controlled via some preset temperatures in a generic thermostat that watches that average temp sensor.

I know I can trigger heat and cool modes for the Nest thermostat via Home Assistant, but if I have HA tell the Nest to run heat and the Nest is already at its preset temperature, I wouldn’t expect it to run… or there’s going to be a lot of kicking the HVAC on and off, which won’t be ideal for the machinery…

I just started using the awesome scheduler-component, and it works wonderfully for creating schedules directly in HA.
GitHub - nielsfaber/scheduler-component: Custom component for HA that enables the creation of scheduler entities

Now I just want to make sure my thermostat is generically controlled via my own custom temperature sensors, rather than just the one built-in sensor that the thermostat has (it’s only accurate for the one room).

I saw a few older topics on the matter, but they didn’t seem to meet my needs, or they are old enough that I assume there are now better ways to do it. I was just curious if anyone already has a good working solution they’d be willing to share.

In general you are correct, but HVAC hardware has been designed specifically for this behavior, which is why you can run your fan all day long without to much concern over blowing your fan out.

For a generic home-rolled solution, create a Generic Thermostat entity that controls things for you. Yes you will have to raise the set point of your Nest to match your house average but it will give you full control over when your thermostat kicks in. You’ll need to write some scripts to manipulate the Nest set points since you cannot override it.

Something like “when the house average is 68 and my nest is 72 and I want the average to come up, then set the Nest to 76”.

I use the Generic Thermostat for several things and it works well to give you full control.