Nest Cam won't turn on and off in response to Home / Away Assist

[P1neapple]

I have two Next Cam (Batteries) set up inside, and I want them to automatically turn on when I leave the home and turn off when I return home. This was working perfectly ~4 months ago, but then we moved to a new home. In that time the Google Home app updated, and when I created my new "Home" and set everything up, this functionality seems to be gone?

I have presence sensing on, and I know it works because the app correctly switches from "Home" to "Away" mode and back when I leave/return to the home. But the cameras don't turn on/off in response. During camera set up, one of the final stages is to turn on this feature. I've done so with both cameras I'm trying to set up. I get to a screen that says like "Done. Your camera will automatically turn on while you're away and turn off when you return." But it doesn't.

I also can't set it up in "Automations" like a few posts/people have mentioned. I go to Automations > Add > Household Routine > and here I can set actions for the cameras to turn on / off, but I can't set an appropriate Starter. My only "Starter" options are "When I say to Google Assistant, At a Specific Time, At Sunrise/Sunset, or When a Device Does Something (like unplug, charge, etc). I can't choose anything resembling location / presence sensing / when I come Home / Go Away. I've tried using the Normal Release & Public Preview version of the Google Home app. I'm on a Samsung S23 Ultra, but my wife has the iPhone 14 and also can't set it.

What am I missing? I can't be the only person that lost the functionality to have their cameras automatically turn on when they leave and turn off when they return home over this summer? Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!!!

[EmptyNester]

Ummmm, maybe the google home app still thinks you live at the old place.  Try this.....

Change the home address of your devices

1. Open the Google Home app .
2. At the top, make sure your home name is listed. If needed, tap the name to change the selected home.
3. Tap Settings Home information. Home address​.
4. Tap Edit Enter your address. Next.
5. Drag the map so the pin is on your home, then tap Done.

[P1neapple]

Hi there, thanks for your reply! 

The app is definitely recognizing the newly created Home. The name at the top is correct, the old home is completely gone, and the address in the settings is correct. All the devices under "Device information" are set to the new home as well. I know the app itself works because when I leave the home pretty much within 1-2 minutes the app switches from "Home" to "Away" and within a minute of coming home it switches back to "Home."

It just seems that the cameras aren't turning on / off in response to the status of Home / Away as they're supposed to (and as they said they would during setup).

[EmptyNester]

Hmmmm, the only other thing I can think to do is have you open a support ticket and speak with a Nest tech person.  Here is the link (below) that lets you do that.   Be prepared to be on the phone maybe an hour or so as they often want to do the basic trouble shooting steps before they escalate.

https://support.google.com/googlenest/gethelp

If they get you going please return here and let us know what the solution was.

[P1neapple]

Thanks for the recommendation. I spoke with them on Friday. They were essentially looking for the trigger that isn't there, and they seemed really puzzled by it as well. Basically they were trying to get me to do the instructions listed here:

https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/10071810?sjid=15145973620020229445-NA

And they kept going back to their team to check why HOME and AWAY weren't coming up under household routines and why my cameras weren't coming up as devices. 

They had me uninstall & reinstall the Google Home app, factory reset the cameras and set them up again correctly (which I had done initially anyway), confirmed presence sensing was on & set up correctly, with my correct address... then they sort of said "Yeah, it should be working now, call us again if it's not." But it still isn't.

I also asked if this is a known issue or not. The issue persists with multiple cameras (so not just one faulty camera), multiple devices (my Samsung galaxy s23+ and my wife's iPhone 14), multiple updates of the Google Home app, across the Public Preview and the normal release version, so it's not like it's one simple thing that should be causing this. The gentleman said it's not a known issue, and he's never seen/heard of this before. I've seen a few sporadic threads on this community and on reddit on the issue, but they're very low activity & no solutions yet.

[EmptyNester]

Wow,,, how frustrating.   At least you know the problem is something at your end so you can stop spending time on something you can't fix.  Hopefully the will get on top of this and fix it.  

[Jcnjd24]

Did you ever get anywhere with this??? I'm having the exact same problem except it's only one camera, the only one I set up with the Home app and not the Nest app.