We have a ~3500 sq ft home with two HVAC systems, and we have two Nests. I am pleased with the Nest units and the Vera plugin. I have them integrated with coming/going Vera scenes and DSC alarms. My wife and I both use the Android app regularly.
We do not use and have turned off the presence detection/auto-away. I had problems with the Nest and hidden SSIDs.
Right now I am holding off on the Protects as the story is a bit different there and I do not need another CO detector right now. I may need to add one next year, I will re-consider the Protect then. The value-add and integration assessments of the Protects from others on this thread more learned than I make me comfortable with waiting for now.
The Nest does not have a “hold this temp” function that most cheap thermostats do, this is a known issue that is the only thing that my wife has complained about.
I agree that the absence of a “Hold” feature is the biggest annoyance regarding the Nest. I cannot imagine how the Nest designers don’t see the usefulness of being able to maintain a set temperature when having guests over for dinner, for example?
For people with multiple Nest tstats, how do you handle the problem of Nest’s occupancy being applied to the entire house rather than each room?
For example, say we have two Nests, one controlling upstairs and one downstairs. Even if our family members spend most (but not all) of our time downstairs, the upstairs Nest will still turn on the HVAC even though no one is in the upstairs zone since each Nest does not sense occupancy independently.
Nest’s solution is to create two separate zones (houses), but surely there’s gotta be a better way?
I have each nest in its own “location” as Nest support suggested. Vera sets both to Away or Home based on my alarm settings (need a few seconds delay between calls to the nest in those scenes) and upstairs sets itself to auto-away during the day even when the downstairs is still occupied. Seems silly I know, but no real downside to this setup that I have noticed.
It doesn’t need a hold button, it’s a safe guard! If you want it to stay at a temp go to schedules set the temp you want and erase the rest of the temp sets for that day [or days] and it well remain on the temp you set. The safe guard is that if you forget to un-hold the temp [like on other thermostat-units] it well resume normal at the next temp change down the line on the schedule. If you leave the house, it well keep the last temp and sleep, it will reset auto to the next temp reading when it knows people are around. That’s why it’s a smart thermostat…
I have the Nest Tstat. It looks great. But like others have said, I think that the main feature that it has is the auto-away feature to help conserve energy. But what I do now is have Vera set the Nest to away when I arm the alarm or my phone locator detects that I am out of the house. Hence, I could have used a cheaper Tstat with Vera.
