Nest is now integrated with major whole-home automation systems

Nest is building a bigger nest for itself.

Today, the Google-owned purveyor of smart thermostats and smoke alarms announced that it is adding several “whole-home” automation systems to its “Works with Nest” developer program.

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The systems — Control4, Creston, Remote Technologies Incorporated (RTI), and URC — offer various kinds of controls for home and businesses. Nest also works with Dropcam, maker of a home video surveillance system. In June, Nest bought Dropcam for $555 million.

Announced just before the opening on Wednesday of CEDIA EXPO 2014 in Denver, the new integrations will allow Nest products to “be among the connected devices that can [be] accessed and controlled by these home automation systems,” company spokesperson Ha Thai told VentureBeat.

“So, for example,” she said, “RTI users can adjust the target temperature of their Nest thermostat and also see and adjust the Home and Away status [on Nest] of multiple dwellings from within their RTI devices.”

RTI will also have a view of some Nest Protect alarm functions, such as the statuses of multiple alarms.

The company noted that earlier integrations, with Whirlpool, Jawbone, and LIFX, enabled such capabilities as smart appliances turning themselves down or off when energy prices were high or smart light bulbs flashing when the Nest smoke alarm detected trouble.

Since Nest has launched an API and developer program, isn’t it a competitor in some ways to these home automation systems?

“We do not see ourselves as competitors to home automation systems,” Thai told us. “We want to work with them.”

Nest integration with Dropcam enables the video recording of a smoke or carbon monoxide event when the Nest Protect smoke and carbon monoxide detector goes off.

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The video system automatically saves the clip, even if the user is not subscribing to Dropcam’s Cloud Recording service, assumedly so one can later see the cause. Additionally, when the Nest Learning Themostat is set to Away and the occupants leave, Dropcam automatically turns on motion alerts.

Last week, Nest announced its first major software update for the Protect smoke/carbon monoxide detector. Google bought Nest for $3.2 billion in January.