The Last Day of Nest 2nd Gen Support
Oct 25 - Today is the final day that Google will allow users of the 2nd gen Nest thermostat to use the Nest and Google Home apps with their thermostat. More
Sett Thermostat - Updates and Current Progress
Latest posts
Should the Sett Thermostat switch to an e-ink screen?
What if the Sett thermostat used an e-ink display instead of its color LCD? We explore this question, diving into the appeal of e-ink’s calm, paper-like aesthetic for a device you glance at all day. We weigh the trade-offs, from the hard mechanical constraints of the 75mm circular enclosure to a detailed comparison of screen area, pixel counts, and what 'glanceability' really means for a…
Reverse-Engineering the LCD Display Interface of the Nest 2nd Gen Thermostat
I reverse-engineered the Nest 2nd‑gen thermostat’s circular 320×320 LCD (TM025ZDZ01), built a 41‑pin 0.3 mm FPC breakout, and drove it over 3‑wire 9‑bit SPI with an ESP32‑C6 using Toit—covering the initialization sequence, partial‑window writes, SPI performance limits, and an MT3608 backlight boost. This work feeds into Sett, an open‑source, enclosure‑compatible replacement that reuses the Nest…
Motivation and Early Research
Frustrated by the complex setup, persistent bugs, and Google's looming end-of-life date for the 2nd Generation Nest thermostat, I decided to take matters into my own hands. An iFixit teardown revealed the hardware was too good to become e-waste. This post details the motivation and early research behind a new project: creating a drop-in, open-source replacement board that reuses the Nest's iconic…