NEST Integration: What works, works best, and what does not?

Third party integrations
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Hi everyone. I’m trying to figure out options for integrating Nest devices, in particular thermostats. Many posts talk about specific methods but few provide a comprehensive guide to the different options. Here is a list of the primary options I have come across. Please let me know your feedback and experience with them or if there are others that I have missed. I’m hoping to get to the best method without having to try them all out!

Aside from the “official” Home Assistant native integration it seems like “everything else” is basically using a third app/integration to bring in the devices. Let’s talk about them individually…

  • OFFICIAL - This is the “pay $5 to google” option and you get access to the Works with Google API or something. I’ve heard anecdotal stories about this integration breaking, needing to re authenticate if you restart Home Assistant, and that some sensors/devices may not be available. And the setup is not trivial, especially when you are trying to help a third party like your older parents.
  • GOOGLE ASSISTANT - If this worked as a middleware relay and was a good option, I assume there would be no need for the official integration above. Is this a fair assessment?
  • SMARTTHINGS - I bought a SmartThings hub hoping I could get my Nest thermostats from that integration but this appears to NOT WORK. Or can this work if I get local SmartThings working better with MQTT? I can see many devices from SmartThings in my Home Assistant, but not all and not Nest. I don’t currently see my Home Assistant devices back in SmartThings.
  • HOMEKIT INTEGRATION - Can you access Nest devices via the official HomeKit integration? The next item on the list is HomeBRIDGE but I’m wondering… what’s wrong with HomeKit official integration + nest devices?
  • HOMEBRIDGE INTEGRATION - Some people say this is the best integration method and you get greatest compatibility with Nest devices. Is this a general consensus? This feels like a lot of middleware complexity to break but OTOH if there is more effort being put into their Nest integration or if it is at a more advanced state than the direct Nest integration on Home Assistant, it may be worth it.

Please let me know your feedback on the above or any other options! I can’t find such a comparison so hopefully this will help out other people too, as many must have these questions. Thanks!

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Hi,
Lots of folks still use badnest with success.

If folks see issues with the official integration breaking regularly, see the troubleshooting instructions. It means you need to fix the oauth consent flow settings. Agreed, setup overall is not trivial, but it works fine as far as I know. I’d it unable bugs let me know. The main integration page says which decides work and which don’t (e.g. external temp sensors)

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Thanks. I guess I should have googled that but I heard the original had gone away but I didn’t research the forks. A few details in this post on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/ioec2y/is_badnest_the_current_state_of_the_art_for_nest/

How about the Homekit or Homebridge options? Or, maybe just Homebridge as I have not been able to discern if Homekit standard integration brings in Nest devices. These seem potentially better supported than badnest (unless Google changes it up to break them).

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Ah, no idea of the current status, i don’t use it.

Not sure. For what its worth, I recently updated the official instructions to make them a bit easier to follow, broken down into smaller “chunks” of steps: Nest - Home Assistant – same number of underlying setup steps, but hopefully slightly less frustrating.

If you run into problems with the official integration let me know and i can help.

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Any chance anyone got this working via Smartthings? I have SmartThings working with Nest and can control the thermostat and see its sensor readings from within the SmartThings app, so I was surprised that I don’t see that device listed in HA via the SmartThings integration. I see every other device in my SmartThings config except the Nest device and my Harmony Hub. Any suggestions on how to enable any debugging that might give me a clue about what’s wrong, or does this just not work any you have to go direct from HA to Nest?

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Anyone figure the SmartThings integration out with Nest?