{"id":1431,"date":"2022-08-09T05:49:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-09T05:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.smarthomepoint.com\/?p=1431"},"modified":"2022-11-14T12:54:25","modified_gmt":"2022-11-14T12:54:25","slug":"nest-turn-lights-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.smarthomepoint.com\/nest-turn-lights-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Can The Nest Doorbell & Cameras Turn On Your Lights?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A fairly desired (and standard) feature of smart doorbells and cameras is that they notify another service about motion, so that automation routines can run – for example, turning a smart light on when motion is detected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is possible with many smart doorbells and cameras, and is often as easy as integrating your device into the Alexa app and then setting up a routine which triggers when motion is detected, and does something else (i.e. turn lights on). This is a useful feature because the light coming on can discourage would-be burglars from targeting your home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since this is a normal feature, surely it’s possible with the Nest Hello doorbell<\/a> and the Nest camera range too, right? Well… as my slightly sarcastic introduction implies, it’s unfortunately not (easily) possible right now on Nest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since Google shut down the public ‘Works with Nest’ API in August 2019, it’s a lot harder – and sometimes impossible – to get smart lights to turn on when your Nest devices detect motion. However there’s a few things you can try that might work.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How this used to be possible (pre August 2019)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Nest cameras and doorbells used to expose a lot of ‘action hooks’ via something called an API, under their ‘Works with Nest’ system. What this effectively meant was that third party developers and services could easily write computer code that would do something when your Nest device detected motion – or people.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"A
Some guy who’s just read
about what Google
did to the Nest ecosystem…<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

As a result, there were loads of awesome things<\/a> that you could configure to happen when motion was detected – including having smart bulbs or switches turn on some lights<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you owned a smart bulb, chances are good that your smart bulb’s app had a feature to integrate with Nest devices and turn on\/off as you’d like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately Google decided to kill off nearly all these third party integrations, by ending the ‘Works with Nest’ system in August 2019<\/a><\/strong>. Hence something that was very easy to setup – have a smart light come on when your Nest camera\/doorbell detects motion – became almost impossible overnight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boo!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You’d think that Google did this because this feature is already possible on the Google Home app<\/a> – but that’s unfortunately also not the case. Google Home routines don’t support this feature, even though it’s been long supported on the Alexa app<\/a> and within Alexa routines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This means that right now, there’s no simple way of taking a random, off-the-shelf smart bulb turn on when Nest detects motion. Nonetheless, there’s some<\/em> options available to you – which I explore in each section below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Option 1 – Don’t Migrate Your Nest Account, Use IFTTT<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When Google originally announced that they were killing off (sorry, I mean “changing”) the ‘Works with Nest’ program, there was an understandable uproar from Nest users who have relied on the various third party integrations from Nest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Google eventually backtracked a tiny<\/em> amount, and announced that ‘Works with Nest’ will still work in some limited cases. Basically as long as you satisfy the following conditions, you can continue to use IFTTT:<\/p>\n\n\n\n