Blog

Jul

01

2014

The Cylon Nest

by Edgar Silva

We are excited to announce support for the Nest Thermostat. With this new set of adaptors and drivers, you can allow your JavaScript robots, microcontrollers or single-board computers to interact with your Nest-supported smart home devices using Cylon.js.

We currently have two Nest-related drivers supported, nest-thermostat and nest-home. nest-home allows you to check the status of all of your home's smart devices at a glance. you can also check on more than one house, and set your status to 'away' or 'home'.

Getting started with Cylon.js and Nest is easy, all you need to do is install the cylon-nest module:

$ npm install cylon cylon-nest

After that, follow these instructions to get a Nest developer account set up.

Once you're done with that, you can try your Nest integration out with the following code example (also made available in the cylon-nest examples):

var Cylon = require('cylon');

Cylon.robot({
  connections: {
    nest: { adaptor: 'nest', accessToken: 'ACCESS_TOKEN' }
  },

  devices: {
    thermostat: { driver: 'nest-thermostat', deviceId: 'DEVICE_ID' }
  },

  work: function(my) {
    my.thermostat.on('status', function(data) {
      console.log('The Thermostat at a glance:', data);
    });

    // We set the target temperature of the thermostat
    // and we check the change took place when the status
    // changes and the event gets triggered.
    my.thermostat.setTargetTemperatureC(24);

    every((60).seconds(), function(){
      // Alternatively to reading the status of the nest
      // we can call one of the read temp functions directly
      // on the thermostat.
      console.log('NEST ambient temp C:', my.thermostat.ambientTemperatureC());
      console.log('NEST ambient temp F:', my.thermostat.ambientTemperatureF());

      my.thermostat.read('away_temperature_high_c', function(data) {
        console.log("Away Temp High C on read callback -->", data);
      });
    });
  }
}).start();

Please note that to get this example to work, you'll need to provide an access_token and device_id. These are both obtained when you set up authorization, and are needed to communicate with the Nest API.

The nest-home driver can also be used in cool ways too! Imagine you're in a different room from your Nest Thermostat, and the away state has kicked in. You'd like to remind the Nest that you're still home, but you don't have a smartphone on you.

As a fun weekend DIY project, you can hook up an Arduino such that a couple of LEDs tell you the away status of the nest in your home office, and pressing a button tells your Nest that you're still home, let's check the code:

var Cylon = require('cylon');

Cylon.robot({
  connections: [
    { name: 'arduino', adaptor: 'firmata', port: '/dev/ttyACM0' },
    { name: 'nest', adaptor: 'nest', accessToken: 'ACCESS_TOKEN' }
  ],

  devices: [
    { name: 'blue', driver: 'led', pin: 13 },
    { name: 'red', driver: 'button', pin: 12 },
    { name: 'button', driver: 'button', pin: 2 },
    { name: 'home', driver: 'nest-home', structureId: '' }
  ],

  work: function(my) {
    my.home.on('status', function(data) {
      console.log('Nest home at a glance:', data);
      if ('away' == my.home.away()) {
        my.blue.turnOff();
        my.red.turnOn();
      } else {
        my.red.turnOff();
        my.blue.turnOn();
      }
    });

    my.button.on('push', function() {
      my.home.away('home');
      console.log('nest thermostat `away` state set to home!');
    });
  }
}).start();

Hopefully running through these quick examples has given you some cool ideas of ways you can interact with your smart home. And if you build something awesome with Cylon and Nest, please let us know on Twitter!

If you want to see more of what can be done with Cylon.js and Nest, check out the rest of the cylon-nest examples! Also be sure to take a look at the 19 other different hardware platforms we currently support.