As of yesterday you can pair your Nest thermostats directly to your Amazon Echo via the Alexa app. Currently, according to the Amazon help page, you can only use variations of the following commands:
“Set [thermostat/group name] temperature to [#] degrees.” (Fahrenheit only)
“[Raise/lower] the [room/group name] temperature.” (Changes by one degree Fahrenheit)
This is subject to change and more commands may be rolled out, or already be available, just not advertised. Having set this up last night, I can say that it does make controlling the Nest temperature a little easier and more intuitive than using the Reflect skill, but Reflect had more commands available. One pretty important command that I’m missing is being able to ask what the thermostat is currently set to, which seems like a pretty important thing to leave out. Maybe I’m just not asking the right questions.
Here’s how to add your thermostats via the Alexa app:
- From the main menu, open “Smart Home”
- Scroll down to “Device Links” (pictured above)
- Open the “Link with Nest” link
- You will be asked to log in to Nest’s page with your Nest username and password.
- After logging in, you will be brought back to the Alexa Smart Home menu.
- Scroll down to “Devices”
- Run “Discover devices” to discover your new thermostat(s)
- Scroll down the list to confirm your devices are added
After completing the above steps you will be able to control your Nest thermostats with the names that show up in the Alexa “Devices” menu. If you don’t like the name of your thermostat, you will have to change it from within the Nest app, and it should then be updated in the Alexa app, although you may have to rediscover the thermostat.
One thing to note is that you can still continue to use the Reflect skill or any IFTTT triggers if you have gotten used to the commands, or don’t want to lose any functionality that you have built out. I will be keeping Reflect at least until Alexa has the ability to tell me what the Nest is currently set to.