Nest is shutting down the Works with Nest API

Lol that’s a great video.

It does raise the question, if Google believe Nest is a risk to people privacy and security and are pulling the plug from IFTTT and everyone else, then surely they would also pull the plug on APIs for such things as Gmail, Google Drive, Calendar, Contacts etc etc as these really do pose a privacy risk. I guess we shall see soon enough - if IFTTT starts scaling back Google integrations forced from Google then there really is the concern from Google for privacy. If they don’t, well, pretty obvious at that point what they are doing

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https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/03/22/most-ifttt-applets-using-gmail-will-break-this-month/

From March: “IFTTT says it discussed these changes with the Gmail team, but ultimately decided that it couldn't keep most of its existing functionality without "major infrastructure changes." As such, every IFTTT action and trigger for Gmail except 'Send an email' and 'Send yourself an email' are going away soon.”

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Wow. What a mess.

This is just a vague post from a Google social media person, but their response to me does at least hint to some more functionality being added to Works with GA.

But, I suspect that "similar integrations" are going to end up meaning one-way (from GA to devices).

I'm taking a wait and see approach. Sure, I could get all upset and spend a bunch of money replacing my Google hardware.. but if this is all a misunderstanding or if Google throws the industry a bone after all this backlash, I'll have spent a bunch of cash for no reason.

Things work for now. I'll revisit things later this year.

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I doubt that it's a misunderstanding. Google should have anticipated some backlash and likely weighed the risk versus the long term revenue benefit. This is a power-play to cripple access by competitive products.

My only investment in nest has been 5 nest protects. But I was looking at a couple of nest hello devices. And while I'm certainly not going to run out to replace the protects, I won't be buying a nest hello or any other nest product until there's more info about how this is all going to pan out.

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Oh I don't disagree at all. I'm just saying that we have very little information on how the Works with GA stuff will actually work. We have educated guesses, but they are just that. Maybe we're guessing wrong? Small chance, but still a chance. Maybe Google anticipated lower backlash? Perhaps, but I don't know for sure.

Some people in this thread seem ready to throw out their entire smarthome, burn their gmail account, and launch their Android phone into space. I just recommend waiting for more info before nuking your google existence.

Ecobee is supposedly working on a new thermostat and it has 900MHz radios in it:

Yeah, well, Ecobee has a vote of no confidence from me after their demonstrated cloud unreliability. Even if they make a more 'local' version now, they have lost my trust, which is not easy to gain back.

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Not for everyone, I get it, but HomeKit is local integration already available on Ecobee.

True - if you are an Apple disciple. Which I'm not. :slight_smile:

Don't get me wrong, more options are GOOD - and different solutions are the right choice for different people for very valid reasons.

I for one am glad there isn't only one viable option out there.

Let's be clear, Ecobee's integration is cloud dependent for authorization. So it does not work without an active internet connection.

@ritchierich

To be clear - their existing thermostats (ecobee3, ecobee4, ecobee3lite) also have 900 MHz radios in them (915 MHz to be precise). That's the radio used to communicate with the sensors.

Here are the FCC pages for their existing thermostats and sensors:

  1. ecobee3
  2. ecobee4
  3. ecobee3 lite
  4. wireless sensor

As you can see - they all have radios in the 908-927 MHz range.

FCC documents indicate the new thermostat is somewhat different. It will have dual-band WiFi and Bluetooth. The sensor radio is much narrower in bandwidth: 920-927 MHz, matching the new sensor

Based on this, I would think it is likely that the new sensor cannot be paired to older thermostats and vice-versa.

Fair enough l, but that’s not depending on a cloud instance for regular operations like Nest. There is a distinct difference.

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Bingo!

Look at this less abridged version of a quote already mentioned in this thread from an article on The Ambient:

“Moving forward, partners are no longer going to be able to access specific Nest data," Mike Soucie, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Google, and co-founder of Revolve (the smart home hub bought by Nest and shut down in 2015) tells The Ambient. "They're going to have to rely on the Works with Google Assistant platform to create routines with Nest products."

The reasons for this are security and simplicity, according to Soucie. WWN allowed many partners to access data about Nest products that today Google doesn’t feel they should have access to. These include Home/Away data, motion, and temperature set points from its thermostat, and the ability to turn on and off Nest Cameras based on external events.

“That’s sensitive data that we need to be sure we understand what partners are using it for,” says Soucie. “As much value as this is provided in the past it's been a bridge solution. I use the example of, you can't have multiple masters in the home, there's too many ecosystems today.”

Instead of having individual third-party devices control the same product, Google wants to be your smart home’s master. “What we were finding is that multiple ecosystems and multiple masters were trying to control the same Nest device. And there was a level of confusion,” he says. “Now, rather than having multiple platforms and ecosystems control Nest devices, we're bringing it all under the Works with Google Assistant ecosystem, a single controller for all your Nest, Google, and third-party devices.”

(Boldfaced emphasis added by me)

Yep, that's right. Voice control and routines is what we get. No cross-device automations. No access to your own detailed personal data.

These quotes from Soucie are evidence of Google's totally contradictory PR spin, including that carefully-worded response on Twitter.

Everybody simmer down. The dust hasn't settled yet. Two likely outcomes:

  1. The Works with Assistant integration will allow us to create routines that basically do what we could do before with IFTTT and other Works with Nest integrations (still unknown what this will look like exactly). With that, we should be able to setup routines that will allow virtual switches on HE to be controlled. So for example, your Nest Smoke/CO alarm goes off, your Google Assistant routine will turn on a virtual device on HE and RM will take over doing what we need.

  2. Alphabet bows to public pressure and back peddles

As for controlling Google products from HE, we are fine as long as they don't kill Google Assistant Relay. Can't speak for everyone else that doesn't have this capability. It's pretty awesome. Very worth the effort to setup the node.js server on a Raspberry Pi or an old computer.

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Not really, Ecobee could pull their homekit support or their servers could go down (which never happens) and it would fail to work or cease to work.

Of course not :laughing::laughing:

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I've done some pretty cool multi-month timelapses with the Nest API and this will almost certainly kill that off. Ex: A neighbors house being built, retaining wall being installed in my back yard. With Nest’s built in timelapse I can’t easily tell it to skip nighttime or weekends, and making timelapses that are longer than a week is effectively impossible without copy/pasting together a lot of them.

Also, with local snapshots, I don’t have to worry about putting the timelapse together before the video is erased from the cloud.

In my particular use case privacy was not a problem, as I controlled the integration from start to finish. I guess I could just sell the nest cam and pickup an el-cheapo local cam online for the same thing :man_shrugging:.