I noticed that in my Automations, to set my Nest thermostats, that these automations do not work when HVAC mode is set to Auto.
I changed it to Cool which is is fine as we are in South Florida, but it is probably a bug in the Integration.
Your Nest thermostat knows nothing about Home Assistant. So sometimes the programming may conflict or API calls from HA to Nest would be ignored under certain circumstances, it does get a little whacky. How about changing each of your related automations, when triggered, to then check to see if the HVAC mode is Auto and if so, first change the HVAC mode to cool - before the rest of the actions within each automation?
It is very flexible, I actually have ours set such that each time any of us leaves the home, if the others are also not home, first save the state to a helper and then turn the HVAC to OFF. Then when one of us comes home, if nobody else was already home, using the aforementioned helpers, change the HVAC (on or off and fan cool/heat/auto and temp settings) back to the state it was before it was shut off.
I’ll give it a try but, as mentioned, it is very rare for it getting so cold in South Florida that we need the A/C to be set to heating. Therefore cool will work, at least till I figure out your suggestion.
I am more intrigued by your location/temperature automations. I have tried these but the locations of our Iphones with the Icloud Integration (s) fail too often.
I had trouble with that too. There is an icloud3 or something but I never got very far into that black hole, instead, I install the HA app on our iphones and androids and give them permission/setting to share locations, works very well.
Also I had scheduling set up on the nest which is ignorant of HA of course, so sometimes the HVAC would come on while we are not home, so I essentially have an automation that if it comes on when nobody is here it is triggered to just shut it off. Of course I need to enhance that such that there wouldn’t be frozen pipes etc. but that hasn’t really been required. I was thinking of adding a guest mode helper (which would override it in case everyone who lives here leaves and a guest is still in the house, and that would have to be done manually as there is no way to tell via HA if a guest is visiting).
Icloud3 is more complex but it has the same imprecision. We also have the HA Companion App on our phones but for one reson or another it gives issues as well.
It may well be something i n the Iphone settings .
In the iphone settings (and android) there are several places to check. One annoying thing about the IOS is, once you tell the phone to allow location to be turned on all the time for the HA app, then you are asked over and over again every so often if you still want that turned on. Answer “No” once and it turns it off an never asks you again. Annoying, that is probably your issue. Once you have that turned back on, make everyone aware they have to answer the question correctly when asked.
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