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I am having a problem where my nest thermostat doesn’t pre-heat until someone is home because we are using the home/away assist feature that sets the heat level to an “eco” temperature when no one is home. I want to take advantage of home/away assist to save energy when no one is home, but I want scheduled temperatures to override this and begin pre heating on a schedule. As this support post mentions, this used to be the behavior, but a software update changed it.

I contacted nest support and asked them if I could use home/away assist and also have scheduled temperatures override the eco mode. They said no. I asked if I could downgrade the software on my thermostat. They said no - the software is automatically upgraded from the nest servers, and there is no way to turn this off.

I read on reddit about an option to do a factory reset and disconnecting from Wi-fi to disable automatic upgrades. However, I want to also be able to adjust my thermostat settings over the Internet.

Is there a way, perhaps involving some hardware hacking or a firewall, to achieve this by doing a factory reset and blocking the auto software updates?

Update

I found this description of the Nest Thermostat API from 2012. Not sure if it is current and also not sure how to block only software updates without blocking thermostat adjustments I send over the Internet.

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  • 1
    blacklist the nest server IP in your router config
    – jsotola
    Feb 21, 2019 at 7:40
  • You probably don't if you want it to continue to do anything remotely useful
    – hardillb
    Feb 21, 2019 at 15:53
  • @jsotola I still want to be able to adjust my thermostat settings remotely over the internet. How might I block only the software updates? I also updated the question with a link to a description of how the Nest Thermostat API works
    – Mike Eng
    Feb 21, 2019 at 19:01
  • From a general security point of view, firmware updates need to be automatic, and roll-back prevented. So even if there is a workaround for this specific product/version, that is just another security flaw that ought to be closed in the future.
    – Sean Houlihane
    Mar 5, 2019 at 19:30

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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I just used Stringify to up the house temperature one hour before I get home every day. Works good.

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    Please edit this answer to include a lot more context and may be a link to what ever Stringify is.
    – hardillb
    Feb 22, 2019 at 17:51

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