Firstly, I love Homey. I use it for everything in my house with great success. I had been waiting for Google nest integration for ages and when it arrived as a dedicated App from Athom I was over the moon! Finally a way to hook up my thermostats to my flows!
I added the thermostats a few weeks ago and they seem to be working fine. Last week I bought a new Nest video doorbell (wired) and set it up. I’ve added it into Homey and started to create flows with it. However my doorbell doesn’t trigger any of my flows. I have a couple of very simple examples that adds a message to my timeline if the doorbell button is pressed or it detects motion however they are never triggered. Is anyone able to help?
I have allowed Google to share my doorbell data with Homey (basically ticked every box!)
What’s confusing is that my thermostats seem to work fine, it’s just the doorbell that I added recently that doesn’t seem to work.
I contacted Athom who asked for some more information which I’ll add here to be as helpful for the next person as possible:
Q: Is the doorbell visible in the Google Home app and functioning correctly?
A: The doorbell appears in the Google Home app and in the Nest app. It seems to be working perfectly with Nest, including starting a video call to my mobile phone when someone presses the doorbell. I also receive motion and person alerts from the Nest App. In Google Home I am able to review videos of previous events.
Q: You mentioned that you ticked every box to allow Google to share information with Homey. Could you untick and retick those boxes?
A: Yes. I did this by going into the following menu in the Google Home App on my mobile phone (iOS):
Home App Settings > Partner connections > Homey
I unticked every permission (including all of the individual devices)
I then clicked the back arrow and closed the settings window so that I’m back in the main Google Home app menu
I waited for 3 mins to allow things to happen in the background. Going to Homey I can still see the Google devices however I guess that they wouldn’t work now
I then went back into the Google Home app and re-ticked all of the permissions again
I then clicked the back arrow again and closed the settings
I waited for another 3 minutes and then launched Homey
I pressed my doorbell and nothing happened in Homey. I did receive a video call from the doorbell on my mobile phone through the Nest App.
The next suggestions to share a flow with the doorbell in. I won’t share that here.
Thank you for the suggestion Peter. I will go down that road if it can’t be resolved but I’d like to get to the bottom of this first. There is no reason it shouldn’t work after all
It’s annoying right?! Can I suggest that you contact Athom about it as they may look at the issue that I raised with them again if others report it too? We were unable to fix the problem together.
I downloaded the community version of the app yesterday which I’ve not been able to get working yet either (probably my error)
Ok, I managed to get it working for me using the Google Nest SDM app however I suspect that this would have worked with the normal Athom Google Nest App too so if you have the same problem then try this:
Do not enable all Google Nest permissions when adding your doorbell
Specifically these are the permissions that I use for my doorbell named “Front door”:
Same here, the nest doorbell is added and permissions set…but unfortunately the flows are never triggered. I will also report that this capability is not working properly.
I have been in contact with Athom and have understood that the Google Nest app only works for the battery-powered Nest doorbell and not (yet) for the wired Nest doorbell.
Homey should be more clear about this. They advertise that the “Doorbell” is working. It should be “Google Nest Doorbell Battery” works with this app. If you state “Cam” and “Doorbell”, … then any cam and any doorbell made by Google/Nest should work. It is essential that the exact devices are listed. I also bought the Homey Pro 2023 because the device I had (a Google doorbell) would work.
I could then use the web interface (home.google.com → automations) to create a code snippet.
So here is my steps:
Signed up for public preview
Created a virtual entity in Homey “Person detected” - default value off
Create a script in Google home.
→ note: what I learned by a lot of fiddling is that for a entity to appear it MUST be assigned to a room in Google Home!
Saved - validated - and not least ACTIVATE the script
Created a simple flow that is triggered if the virtual button “Person oppdaget…” is turned on (turning on the front porch light for 10 minutes - then deactivate the “Person oppdaget…” button ready for next visitor )
Voila! Now when a person is detected I can bridge this to my Homey to do flow stuff. Hope this can help others eager to bridge Google Nest and Homey.
Sounds mighty interesting (good work!) - I’ll see if I can get hold of a Nest Doorbell (I was looking at the current Nest doorbell - wired) and try it out.
One question - a week or so later, how is it working out? It’s just that I think we’ve all hade those eureka moments that sometimes turn out a bit “meh” in the long run - so is this still everything it promised?
oh, acrually another question - looking at this script I guess it can work without a Nest subscription?
Thanks for sharing this super interesting work-around!
