topic Re: Home / Away not working properly with mobile phones in Nest Thermostats

Home / Away not working properly with mobile phones

Jipper — Sat, 29 Jan 2022 08:32:38 GMT

Hey,

We're having issues with our Nest thermostat not picking up that we're home, despite having the system set up, I believe, properly.

We have a 3rd Gen Thermostat connected via Wi-Fi to a Virgin Media Hub 3. We also have Virgins new mesh network points (which might be causing the issue) around the house to extend the Wi-Fi. The thermostat is connected to the main Hub 3. We use the Nest app on both android and apple phones.

What we're finding is that the Thermostat frequently goes in to Eco mode even when we're in the house. We can be in different rooms to the thermostat (with phones still on and connected) and it'll go in to eco. We can be sat in the same room (working on laptops and not moving much) and it'll go in to Eco. I've even noticed that my phone will say that I'm away when I'm sat in the home office.

I've tried removing the phones from the Home/Away assist options and it hasn't made any difference. I'm getting annoyed at waking up to a cold house as the Eco mode seems to override the saved heating schedule (as I guess it should?)

Help!

Re: Home / Away not working properly with mobile phones

MelbaDT — Sat, 05 Feb 2022 00:12:41 GMT

Hi Jipper,

Thanks for the posting a detailed description of your concern and sorry for the delayed response.

A few questions — when was your thermostat setup? Aside from this nest Learning Thermostat and your phones, do you have other devices that could be contributing to the Home/Away settings like a Nest Protect? Also, are you signed in to the same account on the Nest app or different email addresses on your mobile phones? Please try to check your Nest App (Settings > Home/Away Assist > Activity History), or the Activity feed in the Home app (lower right hand tab) — this should provide an explanation of when and why the home state changed over the previous 10 days.

Keep me posted.

Best,

Melba

Re: Home / Away not working properly with mobile phones

MelbaDT — Wed, 09 Feb 2022 05:48:53 GMT

Hey there,

Checking back in if you still need our help with your Nest thermostat.

Best,

Melba

Re: Home / Away not working properly with mobile phones

Jipper — Wed, 09 Feb 2022 10:14:17 GMT

Hey, thanks for getting back to me!

The thermostat was purchased years ago (it's a Gen 3 UK) but has been reset since. I did have some help directly from Google a while back as we had issues with accounts following the purchase of Nest by Google.

The only other products on the network that could be assisting the Home / Away function are an Android phone and an iPhone, but we've disabled these to see if we can fix the issue. The Android phone (P2 Pro, soon to be swapped out for an S21) uses the same Google account as the Google Home system and Nest account, but the iPhone has been "invited" to join the "Home" using a different Google account.

Regarding activity history, the Thermostat quite often goes in to Eco while we're in and out of the room it's located in. We've turned off location tracking on the phones recently to see if we can isolate the problem. Might be useful to know the detection parameters on the thermostat to reposition it to a more appropriate position.

Re: Home / Away not working properly with mobile phones

DragosC — Fri, 11 Feb 2022 11:48:58 GMT

Understood, thanks for letting me know @Jipper . Could you tell me please if you're using the Home/Away assist from both the Google Home app and the Nest app?

Re: Home / Away not working properly with mobile phones

CristianC — Mon, 14 Feb 2022 13:56:18 GMT

Hi there. Just checking in. How's it going with your thermostat?

Re: Home / Away not working properly with mobile phones

Jipper — Mon, 14 Feb 2022 16:48:21 GMT

Hey,

The Apple is using the Nest app, the Android is using the Google Home app.

Both phones are in the house right now and connected to the WiFi, but the system is set to away on both devices.

We do have Virgin Media's Intelligent WiFi pods (mesh style network, I believe)and both devices are connected to remote nodes - would this make a difference? Do we have to be connected to the main router for the apps to see that we're "Home"?

Re: Home / Away not working properly with mobile phones

george_t — Thu, 17 Feb 2022 13:37:18 GMT

Thanks for letting me know, @Jipper. Phones can only use geofence from one app at a time. Enabling geofence in one app will automatically disable it in the other app. Let's try disabling the Google Home app and just leave the Nest app to see how it goes. You can disable Google Home app by going into the app > Settings > Presence Sensing and switch the google from allow this home to use phone location to off.

Re: Home / Away not working properly with mobile phones

Jipper — Thu, 17 Feb 2022 13:45:13 GMT

Ok, interesting. Will try just using the Nest app for location for now. Incidentally, how would this affect our Google Home routines etc?

Re: Home / Away not working properly with mobile phones

george_t — Thu, 17 Feb 2022 14:12:17 GMT

As far as we can tell, disabling Presence Sensing should not affect your Home routines. For testing purposes, leave only the Nest app enabled and monitor the behavior. Let us know how it goes.

Re: Home / Away not working properly with mobile phones

CristianC — Mon, 21 Feb 2022 12:41:30 GMT

Hello again. Just checking in. How's it going with your Home/Away Assist feature?

Re: Home / Away not working properly with mobile phones

Jipper — Mon, 21 Feb 2022 13:09:57 GMT

Hi Christian,

Seems to be working better, but we've been hiding from the weather over the past few days, so hard to tell. Will keep you guys updated. Thanks for all your help so far!

Re: Home / Away not working properly with mobile phones

CristianC — Mon, 21 Feb 2022 13:13:44 GMT

Thanks for getting back to me. I'll be waiting for your updates.

Re: Home / Away not working properly with mobile phones

Jipper — Mon, 21 Feb 2022 13:18:29 GMT

And as I read your response, the Nest app has flipped over to say we're not home and as expected, dropped the thermostat in to Eco mode. Both devices are in the house, connected to WiFi.

Re: Home / Away not working properly with mobile phones

AnaM — Mon, 21 Feb 2022 17:21:10 GMT

Thank you for letting us know @Jipper.

Can you send me a picture of what you have in the Settings> Tech Info> Network? Also, on 'What decides if you're home' are you only using the phone location or the thermostat's sensor also?

Re: Home / Away not working properly with mobile phones

Jipper — Mon, 21 Feb 2022 19:45:56 GMT

Hey. Getting a bit irked with the settings now. It WAS set to use the Nest app for location, but that now appears to be off for both phones. Presence sensing in the Home app as a whole is off, but for my phone, is apparently on. See attached screenshot.

I'm turning off presence sensing on the iphone and leaving it on, in the Nest app on my Android.

Re: Home / Away not working properly with mobile phones

Jipper — Mon, 21 Feb 2022 19:46:43 GMT

Also - can't navigate to the location you've requested as there is no "Tech Info" option.

Re: Home / Away not working properly with mobile phones

Jipper — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 08:08:29 GMT

So, location services have been turned off on the iphone entirely since 8ish last night to remove that from the equation.

Woke up this morning to find a cold house and the thermostat in Eco mode, with my phone telling me I was "Away". Have checked app settings and there are no battery restrictions (optimisations) and GPS has full permission to be run whenever the app demands.

I turned it to "Home" mode and went about my day. As I entered the room with the thermostat, I noticed a notification saying Nest was updating my phone location. This could have been before I entered the room, but it does seem coincidental.

Re: Home / Away not working properly with mobile phones

AlexD — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 13:03:35 GMT

Thank you for the information. Also try this. Switch the home to Away mode manually and leave it for a bit, to see if it switches the thermostat to Eco, as you would expect. After switch it back to Home and see if after a bit of time the thermostat switches out of Eco to heating. Just to see if manually switching the structures shows the expected behavior or not.

Re: Home / Away not working properly with mobile phones

Jipper — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 16:10:13 GMT

Hey Alex,

Switching manually works just fine.