I am in the process of replacing my 2 Nest Gen2 thermostats with Gen 4 models due to googles removing support of the older models.
I have successfully integrated one. It is installed with the matter integration and a thermostat icon on the dashboard. It indicates current temp and set point with on/off switches. It shows “Heat” above the temp dial but when heat is called it does not tally HEATING, the older models showed “Idle” or “Heating” .
In addition, the older devices have “Humidity” sensors available to HA in addition to Temp.
I assume that Google has decided not to add these features to this model/integration? The Google Home app on my iPad has indoor temp (from both the stat and remote sensor), indoor humidity, and outdoor temp. It also shows when the heat is on.
Is this the best Google can do with an “improved” model?
I believe it’s the Matter integration at fault for the differences noted.
I have Nests (Hardware v1.4) integrated through the Starling hub, but just found that I could use Thread/Matter to have the Nests seen in HA from the Google Home link. The plan is to shed the Starling Hub. I really don’t know what I"m doing with Thread/Matter, but somehow got all 7 thermostats connected via Matter.
The point is, I still have the Starling integration working and I have two versions of the same thermostat(s) to compare notes. The Matter integrated ones don’t have a Humidity sensor, and I miss the same visual status indicators on the thermostat card as you (No heating indicator on the icon when actively heating, and the word “Heat” doesn’t change color and exhibit “Heating” as the original did).
I have the same issue. What’s interesting is that Google’s Android Home Client shows the humidity and heating status, but when I log into the Google Home webpage it only shows the temperature. Similarly, my understanding is that the Android client provides fan speeds, but that is also not available via Matter.
It was also interesting (at least to me) that I could not commission (first install) the thermostat directly using Home Assistant. I had to commission the device first through the Google Home client, and then enable HA to control the thermostat through the Home client. However this could have been a HA issue, as the thermostat’s passcode was 14 characters, and HA was (if I remember correctly) looking for more standard 8 or 11 characters. (The matter protocol does allow for variable length passcodes >= 8 characters, but I believe that most devices have adopted 11).
I suspect that all of this is just Matter learning pains, rather than nefarious behavior by Google (e.g., we’re only going to do a bare bones matter integration so we can claim matter interoperability, but we’ll keep most of the data/control to ourselves), but I could be wrong (e.g., the presence sensor’s status on Nest Thermostat’s was never published by Nest in their third party integrations prior to Matter).