This alternative firmware brings old Nest thermostats back online

Nothing lasts forever, and that’s especially true when we’re talking about smart electronic devices whose “brains” require them to communicate with some distant server in the cloud. Right now, early adopters of smart thermostats are clearly learning this lesson, and Google discontinued the first and second-generation Nest models last month. When the deadline arrived, we looked at the limited functionality left for those Nest Learning Thermostat models, with the teaser that a third-party project was trying to restore some of the app remote control that Google had removed. And now it’s time to try it for the first time.

Last week, we saw that developer Cody Kociemba was on his way to introducing replacement firmware for these thermostats, and all this interest prompted him to hurry up and share his solution. Since then he launched his It’s not bad anymore project website and shared the firmware and setup instructions on GitHub. The source code should arrive to complement those binary downloads sometime in the next two weeks.

Basically, No Longer Evil offers a web-based control panel to control converted Nest Learning Thermostats. Upgrade your old hardware with a custom bootloader and kernel, which tells it to communicate with the No Longer Evil server instead of Google’s. Kociemba has implemented a reverse-engineered version of the Nest API, so as far as the thermostat knows, it works the same as before: it thinks it’s communicating with Google, as intended. All you need to do is create a No Longer Evil account and link your newly upgraded hardware.

Next, we can expect the source code to be released not only for the modified thermostat firmware, but also for the backend running on No Longer Evil to emulate the API. There is also the possibility of a mobile app in the future.

If you’re curious to try this out, keep in mind that Kociemba strongly warns that this is all still in testing and that you shouldn’t use it blindly in a situation where you or others are depending on it to keep you warm and safe. But if you’re willing to put up with some obstacles and are willing to keep a close eye on things, it may be worth the effort. Come visit us in the comments if you install it on your thermostat and share how it went!