OH, Nest and Arlo

Hi all,

I’m after some advice / comments please.

I’ve got a majority of my smart devices on OH now, the 2 main ones I have left are my Nest thermostat and my Arlo cameras.

My Nest was working fine until Google bought it and my wife inadvertantly upgraded the account to a gmail one so it no longer plays nice with OH.

The Arlo cameras I’ve never found a way to properly integrate them into OH and I know they do have somewhat of a closed ecosystem but it would be good to be able to have some of the basic functions through OH, ie motion alerts, doorbell button press etc if camera streaming isn’t possible.

I happened to buy a new Samsung washing machine recently and installed the smartthings app on my phone just to have a play around with the UI etc.

When searching, I found that it works with both Nest and Arlo, and after very little fiddling, managed to get it all connected.

Now, not for one second am I suggesting OH should be the same as Samsung has far bigger pockets to buy code and influence API etc but it got me thinking.

While it’s not ideal, I could buy a smartthings hub, connect this to OH via the binding and then get access to my devices this way. I believe the downside is that smartthings is cloud based so would expose everything to the internet, which we all want to avoid.

a) has anyone used the smartthings hub to get access to devices that OH currently doesn’t support, and if so what has been your experience?
b) is there a way to block the smartthings hub from the internet, keep it only local network and still have the devices work? I know I can block internet per IP from my router but does ST require that to function?
c) anyone used any other workaround - other than buying more devices…I think my wife might disown me if I bought more ‘stuff’! :laughing:

TIA

See Google Nest Device Access Console now available and Nest - Bindings | openHAB (follow the SDM instructions).

Both Arlo and Nest go through the cloud anyway. There is no local control or access for either of these systems. Arlo is completely closed as far as I’m aware.

A cheap Amazon Echo and the Amazon Control Binding could be another approach if you don’t want a SmartThings hub. It’s basically the same overall approach.

Not SmartThings but Amazon Echo. Amazon sent me a free Echo Show because they are ending their separate Amazon Dash service which let my printer order toner automatically. That feature has moved to Alexa and needs an Echo. Once I got it I added my thremostat and outdoor lighting, neither of which have OH support. I can now access them at a basic level using the Amazon Control Binding. It works OK. I’d prefer to have more controls on the thermostat though.

No because you can’t access Arlo nor Nest locally anyway. It’s all cloud access or nothing for both of those.

Thanks for the pointer for the Nest binding, not sure how I missed that post when I was searching the forums…I’ll go and install and have a play.

Hadn’t even given the Amazon app a thought about integration that way. I already use the Alexa skill so that might save me having to have too many cloud apps involved…

:+1: