Google Nest is canceling its Secure product and backend. This security alarm has integration with the Nest ecosystem. One important feature was that when you arm the alarm with the keypad, it puts the house into Away mode instantly, which in turn puts the thermostat into Eco mode instead of waiting around 30 minutes for the Nest sensors to take notice. you're away from home - it can save you a lot of money in wasted heat and/or air conditioning. It could also be configured to turn Nest cameras on/off etc. Again, having these turn on the moment you set the alarm is better than relying on Nest's often weak algorithms. I replaced my Nest Secure with an Abode Iota. It's been great so far and it integrates with HomeKit. I also have a Starling Hub, which integrates Nest with HomeKit. I wanted to use HomeKit to recreate Nest's feature of setting the house to Away in Nest when I set the alarm and set it to Home when I disarmed the alarm. To do this, you need to use a HomeKit app that gives you access to all the options that Automations have. The Apple Home app doesn't give you the granularity you need! I used Home+ for iOS. First, make sure the Starling Hub is configured to reveal the "Home Occupied" switch in HomeKit. This switch allows you to set Nest to Home or Away (when Home Occupied is off, you're Abs, when it's on, you're Home). Then make a HomeKit automation to set Home Occupied to Off when the state of your HomeKit-compatible security alarm changes to Away. e.g

[https://imgur.com/a/4PtpD6A](https://imgur.com/a/4PtpD6A) Now make a second HomeKit automation to set Home Occupied to On when the alarm state changes to Night, Home, or Off. e.g

[https://imgur.com/a/GutFN1V](https://imgur.com/a/GutFN1V) Try it to make sure everything works. If it does, great! You might think you're done, but there's a huge problem! When the Nest motion sensors (from the thermostat or smoke detectors, etc.) detect motion, they seem to ***keep sending updates every 5 or 10 minutes saying they've detected motion***. This means that as you leave the house, set the alarm, your automation puts Nest into Away mode. But then five minutes later, the Nest algorithm returns to Home! Disaster! I can only assume this is how Nest's algorithm breaks on the move. For example, the house is considered occupied until there has been no activity for thirty minutes. It needs to check if Nest Secure is armed and ignore these updates, but it obviously can't do that for third-party alarms. (Could also be a bug in Starling, I don't know.) But it's annoying. For a while, I thought there was no way around this behavior with a non-Nest security alarm, but then I found a simple solution: we *don't* want the Nest to be in Home mode when our alarm is set. So let's just add a third automation to make sure of this! Make an automation that fires when House Occupied changes to On, *provided* your alarm status is set to Away, and have it set House Occupied back to Off! I was worried I'd go into a racing state, but it's been running flawlessly for a few weeks now. Here is my version of that automation. You must also do this in a third-party HomeKit app that supports such criteria. (Note that I created a new scene that just sets Home Occupied to Off and I have the Automation call. This was necessary because otherwise the Home+ app makes a weird scene anyway. You may not need to do this and you can just set the Home Busy accessory directly to Off.)

[https://imgur.com/a/DLdgMvZ](https://imgur.com/a/DLdgMvZ)

[https://imgur.com/a/VZdOMr0](https://imgur.com/a/VZdOMr0) tl;dr: When I set my non-Nest alarm, Nest now goes into Away mode and *stays* in Away mode as long as it's set. When I come home and disarm it, the Nest immediately goes into Home mode. I hope this is helpful to others who are switching from Nest Secure but still have other Nest products.