Google Nest

The nest integration allows you to integrate a few supported Google Nest devices in Home Assistant. This integration uses the Smart Device Management API and Google’s Cloud Pubsub to efficiently listen for changes in device state or other events. See Supported Devices for all devices supported by the SDM API.

There is currently support for the following device types within Home Assistant:

• Climate
• Sensor
• Camera
• Event

Cameras and doorbells use Automation and device triggers for events and a media source for capturing media images on supported devices. Other device types like Smoke and CO Alarms or Security systems are not currently supported by the SDM API.

You are in control of the information and capabilities exposed to Home Assistant. You can authorize a single device, multiple devices, or different levels of functionality such as motion events, live streams, for any particular device. The integration is flexible enough to adapt based on what you allow.

Configuration

To add the Nest integration to your Home Assistant, use this My Button:

The integration setup steps will walk you through the process of configuring a Google Cloud Project, Device Access Project, and finally link your account to Home Assistant. Make sure you are running the most recent version of Home Assistant.

Climate

All Google Nest Thermostat models are exposed as a climate entity that use the Thermostat Traits in the SDM API. State changes to the thermostat are reported to Home Assistant through the Cloud Pubsub subscriber.

Given a thermostat named Upstairs then the climate entity is created with a name such as climate.upstairs

Sensor

All Google Nest Thermostat models have traits exposed from the SDM API. The initial values of the sensors are fetched on startup, then updated regularly using the Cloud Pubsub subscriber. The following traits are supported with sensors:

• Temperature
• Humidity

Given a thermostat named Upstairs then sensors are created with names such as sensor.upstairs_temperature or sensor.upstairs_humidity.

Camera

Home Assistant supports all SDM API features. However, every Camera or Doorbell device has a different set of built-in capabilities. A Camera device has one of the following live stream types:

• RTSP: These devices have an HLS stream served by the Home Assistant Core. These cameras support server-side camera actions like stream recording or image preview. See Low Latency HLS as a great option to enable to reduce stream latency.
• WebRTC: These devices support direct browser to camera communication and a super low latency stream. A Picture Glance Card can show the live stream in the grid with the Camera View set to live (not recommended for battery-powered cameras). camera actions like stream recording are not supported.

Given a camera named Front Yard, then the camera is created with a name such as camera.front_yard.

All cameras also expose event entities for automation. Some camera models also support capturing media (snapshots or clips) through device triggers. The table below summarizes the supported SDM API features for each device.

Event

All doorbells and cameras support event entities. See the Event integration documentation for more about how to use event entities in automations.

There are two classes of event entities that are available based on the above camera features:

• motion for cameras that support any of the event types camera_motion, camera_person, or camera_sound
• doorbell for all cameras that are doorbells and support doorbell_chime events

Nest event entities are updated immediately when an event message is received without waiting for any media to be fetched. See Device Triggers for media support.

Device Triggers

The Nest integration provides device triggers to enable automation in Home Assistant. You should review the Automating Home Assistant getting started guide on automations or the Automation documentation for full details.

Device triggers will wait to fire after any media associated with the event is downloaded. Use an event entity for immediate notifications without media.

{
    "event_type": "nest_event",
    "data": {
        "device_id": "EXAMPLE_DEVICE_ID",
        "type": "doorbell_chime",
        "timestamp": "2022-01-26T04:56:54.031000+00:00",
        "nest_event_id": "EXAMPLE_EVENT_ID",
        "attachment": {
          "image": "/api/nest/event_media/DEVICE_ID/EVENT_ID/thumbnail",
          "video": "/api/nest/event_media/DEVICE_ID/EVENT_ID",
        }
        "zones": ["Zone 1"],
    },
}

Continue reading below to Media Source Attachments to see how to use media with notification actions.

Google Home App Notification Settings

The Google Home App Notifications settings control not only which notifications are sent to your phone, but also what gets published to the Pub/Sub feed.

For example, if you enable Away-only notifications, Home Assistant will only receive events when your phone is away from home.

Another thing that may not be intuitive, is that seeing the event in your device history does not mean it was published to the feed. However, if you are getting push notifications, the settings are likely working.

Note: The exact settings and effect they have on the feed may vary by camera model or app version.

If you are still not getting notifications, you can read this [troubleshooting guide from Google] (https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9230439#zippy=%2Cyour-camera-detected-something-but-you-didnt-get-a-camera-alert)

Media source

The Nest media source platform allows you to browse clips for recent camera events. Home Assistant is not intended to be a Network Video Recorder (NVR) platform, however, basic support for capturing recent events is supported.

The table above describes which devices support image snapshots or 10-frame mp4 video clips.

Media Attachments

The Media Source APIs can be used in Companion App Attachments for Notifications as actions for Device Triggers above like Doorbell Pressed. You will need to be familiar with both the Media Sources supported for your camera, as well as the media capabilities of the companion apps.

• /api/nest/event_media/DEVICE_ID/EVENT_ID: Media for the event, which supports image snapshots (jpg) or clip previews (mp4) depending on the camera type.

• /api/nest/event_media/DEVICE_ID/EVENT_ID/thumbnail: A thumbnail preview of the media, which supports image snapshots (jpg) or clip previews (gif) depending on the camera type.

You can use the Nest Device Trigger payload fields attachment.image or attachment.videoin an automation to send a notification from an actions as shown in the examples below.

action: notify.mobile_app_iphone
data:
  message: Doorbell Pressed
  title: Someone pressed the doorbell
  data:
    image: "{{ trigger.event.data.attachment.image }}"
    video: "{{ trigger.event.data.attachment.video }}"

action: notify.mobile_app_android
data:
  message: Doorbell Pressed
  title: Someone pressed the doorbell
  data:
    image: "{{ trigger.event.data.attachment.image }}"

action: notify.mobile_app
data:
  message: Doorbell Pressed
  title: Someone pressed the doorbell
  data:
    image: "{{ trigger.event.data.attachment.image }}"

Deprecated App Auth Credentials

To improve security and reduce phishing risk Google has deprecated a previous authentication method used by Home Assistant. This requires action by you to resolve if you previously configured Nest using App Auth.

Once you have completed the above steps, you can continue through the flow to re-authorize Home Assistant to restore access to your Nest Devices.

Troubleshooting

• No access to partner information “Information could not be retrieved” error message during the setup wizard means that the Google Account used is not able to access the Home. Please ensure that you have successfully migrated your Nest Account to a Google Account using the Google Nest App. Additionally, if your home has multiple members, please note that the individual who initially set up the home must complete the migration of their Nest Account to a Google Account before you can establish a connection with Home Assistant.

• You can manage devices and permissions granted to Home Assistant in the Nest Partner Connections Manager. Restart Home Assistant to make new devices available. See the SDM API Troubleshooting documentation for more details.

• Error 400: invalid_request plus a message about not complying with Google’s OAuth Policy for keeping accounts secure is shown when using App Auth or Desktop Auth or OOB Auth which has been deprecated by Google. Follow the steps in the previous section to upgrade Home Assistant and restore access.

• Error 400: redirect_uri_mismatch means that your OAuth Client ID is not configured to match the My Home Assistant callback URL. Home Assistant’s redirect URL behavior may have changed since you initially set this up!

• Something went wrong: Please contact the developer of this app if the issue persists: This typically means you are using the wrong type of credential (e.g. Desktop Auth). Make sure the credential in the Google Cloud Console is a Web Application credential following the instructions above.

• Something went wrong, please try again in a few minutes: According to Google’s Partner Connections Manager Error Reference, this error covers all other undocumented internal errors within Partner Connections. One of the issues that cause this error is synchronization problems between the Nest and Google Home apps. Confirm that your Nest device is visible within both apps under the same Home. If it is missing within Google Home, create a new dummy home on the Nest app, which triggers the synchronization process. (This is the workaround recommended by the Google support team). The dummy entry can be deleted once the Nest device is visible within the Google Home app.

• Can’t link to [Project Name]: Please contact [Project Name] if the issue persists: This typically means that the OAuth Client ID used is mismatched

• Reauthentication required often: If you are getting logged out every 7 days, this means an OAuth Consent Screen misconfiguration or your authentication token was revoked by Google for some other reason.

• Check Settings -> System -> Logs to see if there are any error messages or misconfigurations then see the error messages below.

• Thermostat does not appear or is unavailable happens due to a bug where the SDM API does return the devices. A common fix get the API to work again is to:

• No devices or entities are created if the SDM API is not returning any devices for the authorized account. Double-check that GCP is configured correctly to Enable the API and authorize at least one device in the OAuth setup flow. If you have trouble here, then you may want to walk through the Google instructions and issue commands directly against the API until you successfully get back the devices.

• Error 403: access_denied means that you need to visit the OAuth Consent Screen and add your Google Account as a Test User.

• Error: invalid_client no application name means the OAuth Consent Screen has not been fully configured for the project. Enter the required fields (App Name, Support Email, Developer Email) and leave everything else as default.

• Subscriber error means that configuration.yamlThe configuration.yaml file is the main configuration file for Home Assistant. It lists the integrations to be loaded and their specific configurations. In some cases, the configuration needs to be edited manually directly in the configuration.yaml file. Most integrations can be configured in the UI. [Learn more] has an incorrect subscriber_id or the subscription is misconfigured. It is recommended to delete this from the configuration, then delete and re-add the integration to let it create a subscription for you.

• Not receiving updates typically means a problem with the subscriber configuration. Make sure to check the logs for any error messages. Changes for things like sensors or thermostat temperature set points should be instantly published to a topic and received by the Home Assistant subscriber when everything is configured correctly.

• You can see stats about your subscriber in the Cloud Console which includes counts of messages published by your devices, and how many have been acknowledged by your Home Assistant subscriber. You can also View Messages to see examples of published. Many old unacknowledged messages indicate the subscriber is not receiving the messages and working properly or not connected at all.

• To aid in diagnosing subscriber problems or camera stream issues it may help to turn up verbose logging by adding some or all of these to your configuration.yamlThe configuration.yaml file is the main configuration file for Home Assistant. It lists the integrations to be loaded and their specific configurations. In some cases, the configuration needs to be edited manually directly in the configuration.yaml file. Most integrations can be configured in the UI. [Learn more] depending on where you are having trouble:

logger:
  default: info
  logs:
    homeassistant.components.nest: debug
    homeassistant.components.nest.climate_sdm: debug
    homeassistant.components.nest.camera_sdm: debug
    homeassistant.components.nest.sensor_sdm: debug
    homeassistant.helpers.config_entry_flow: debug
    homeassistant.helpers.config_entry_oauth2_flow: debug
    google_nest_sdm: debug
    google_nest_sdm.device: debug
    google_nest_sdm.device_manager: debug
    google_nest_sdm.google_nest_subscriber: debug
    google_nest_sdm.event: debug

• It is recommended to let Home Assistant create the Pub/Sub subscription for you. However, if you would like more control you can enter a subscriber_id in the configuration. See Subscribe to Events for more instructions on how to manually create a subscription and use the full subscription name in the Home Assistant configuration e.g. projects/gcp-project-name/subscriptions/subscription-id

• Not receiving camera motion and person events: assuming the integration is correctly configured (for example, the oauth and SDM API are set up correctly, you can see camera streams, and permissions are correctly set in Partner Connections Manager): If you are then still not seeing events, it’s possible you need to adjust the Google Home App settings. Refer to the Google Home App Notification Settings for details.