Can I disable the Occupancy sensor in a Nest Thermostat E?

[Shot]

My thermostat is in the living room and I work elsewhere in the house. If I stay out of the living room for a while the thermostat set point lowers automatically and I get cold. I want to maintain the proper set point while I'm home but not in the living room.

[sporfrog · Accepted solution]

It sounds like maybe home/away assist is kicking in thinking that you are away, when you are actually home. You can probably adjust the settings so that the thermostat itself does not participate in determining home/away.

Ideally home/away is then determined just by mobile phones. 

From Change Home/Away Assist Settings, I believe you do this in the Nest App:

1. Open the Nest app.
2. Tap Settings.
3. Select Home/Away Assist.
4. Tap What decides if you’re home.
5. Select a Nest product, then tap the switch to enable or disable its participation in Home/Away Assist.

[sporfrog · Accepted solution]

It sounds like maybe home/away assist is kicking in thinking that you are away, when you are actually home. You can probably adjust the settings so that the thermostat itself does not participate in determining home/away.

Ideally home/away is then determined just by mobile phones. 

From Change Home/Away Assist Settings, I believe you do this in the Nest App:

1. Open the Nest app.
2. Tap Settings.
3. Select Home/Away Assist.
4. Tap What decides if you’re home.
5. Select a Nest product, then tap the switch to enable or disable its participation in Home/Away Assist.

[Shot]

Thank you, Sporfrog. That was very helpful. I got that working okay.

However, now Nest does not see our phones when we are home. We have "location services" checked for "always". Yet, Nest says it has not seen neither phone in a few days. So, now Nest goes into "Eco" mode while we are home. We recently changed the modem password a few days ago. But everything has been reconfirmed as connected on our  LAN. Any suggestions on how we can get Nest to see our phones' location?

[sporfrog]

Shoot!

The thought was that, you had something like phone 1, phone 2 AND Nest E participating in determining if you were home or away. Hmm, that might not be the problem. The idea was to remove the thermostat from participating so that only your phones were. However, it sounds like home/away is not behaving as expected with your phones. 

Double check:

Make sure all phones are listed as contributing to home/away. Make sure location services is turned on for all phones. 

Here is a lengthy article for Troubleshooting Automatic Home and Device Switching. The article covers both Nest App and Google Home App. I think you are using Nest App,  just make sure to read what applies in your situation.

[Shot]

Thank you, Sporfrog. I understand what you are saying.

We have Phone 1 and Phone 2, both connected to the Nest app and Google Home app. And while it shows we are using our phones in both apps for Home/Away Assist, the "current status" shows us as "not here" under the "what decides if you are home" section. I've spent more than 90-minutes reviewing all available articles and troubleshooting guides to no avail. Both phones are set up properly with precise location services, wifi and cellular on, and airplane mode off. I quit the apps, shutdown the phones and then restarted everything. No luck. Do I "reset" the thermostat and possibly delete it from the apps and start fresh? Any other thoughts before I take these measures?

I really appreciate your guidance thus far and appreciate the advise.

[sporfrog]

I don't think resetting the thermostat will have any bearing on home/away. The whole point was to make it so the thermostat did not contribute to home or away and it sounds like that is now set. However, I didn't consider that your phones were not working with home/away.

In the Google Home app, presence sensing will indicate whether you are home or away. If there are routines associated with either, those will run when it changes. You can view the status below the home's name in a small horizontal oval icon just above the circle icons for thermostat, routines, settings, etc. Even if you don't have a routine configured the oval icon will change.

It is very strange that neither phone would work for neither the Nest App or Google Home. At this point I am only guessing.

If it were me, I would probably focus on getting it to work in Google Home app first just as a sanity to check to make sure it not something unusual with the phones.  Maybe go into Google Home -> Settings -> Presence sensing and turn off the "You" phone on each phone.  Then turn off Allow this home to use phone locations. Then start again by enabling presence sensing.  See if it works with just one phone.  If it does build from there, by adding the second. Then maybe move to the Nest app.

I hope I did not and am not sending you on a "Goose Chase". 

[Ryan_G]

Hey folks,

I just wanted to follow up and see if you're still in need of help? Please let me know, as I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thanks for your help, sporfrog

Best regards,

Ryan

[Shot]

Thank you, Ryan and sporfrog. Whatever I did seems to keep the thermostat working now as Google Home shows me "at home". However, when I leave the house it does not recognize I'm "away". Yesterday no one was home for the whole day and it never change status.

There is one thing odd. That is, when I select on Presence Sensing, the Phone list for You (i.e. me) says I'm using this feature on a different phone. And that I can switch to my current phone. I've done this switch many times but keeps resetting to some phantom phone. Weird right?

[Ryan_G]

Hi Shot,

Thanks for the update!

Let's further check on what's going on. Could you go to the presence sensing settings and select just one of your mobile devices? You could check this link for complete guides. This will depend on how many devices are being linked to your account with your Nest Thermostat. This time, we'll only use one mobile device to decide your home away status.

Let me know how it goes.

Best regards,

Ryan

[Ryan_G]

Hey Shot,

I just wanted to follow up and see if you're still in need of help? Please let us know, as we would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Best regards,

Ryan

[Shot · Accepted solution]

Thanks Ryan. I'm good now.

[Ryan_G]

Hey Shot,

Thanks for the update and it's great to hear that it is up and running well now.

If you have any other questions, don't hesitate to get back to us by creating a new thread as this one will now be locked.

Best regards,

Ryan