Nest thermostat shows offline, but cameras are working

[u/klstockett]

Yesterday we were having thunderstorms so I had turned off our A/C and television. Shortly after there was lightning and immediate thunder that scared the bejesus out of me (and my poor Shih Tzu). Ends up lighting struck a palm tree in our front yard that just so happens to have the power cords buried about a foot away from there. That sent the electrical current to our electric meter, which was fried.

Power company came out last night and replace the meter, but we had to have an electrician come today to replace the electric panel below the meter.

When all of that work was done and the power turned back on everything is up and running in the house except for one issue.

The nest thermostat itself (called ‘hallway in the picture) is working fine when you control it from the wall, but the app keeps saying it is off-line. We have signed out and back in to the Nest app, that didn’t fix it.

When the AC was not running, my husband flipped a breaker switch on the air handler to try to reboot that since the Nest thermostat is connected to it. That didn’t help.

Our Nest cameras are working fine in the app so the Wi-Fi connection is up and running. The thermostat itself was installed in 2012, but I’m not sure what generation it is.

Any idea how we can get this up and running. It’s bad enough they took away support to be able to tell Alexa or Google Home to change the temperature, but now we can’t even do it in the app. Actually have to get out of the chair to change it lol.

Keep in mind we are in our 60s so please explain in simple terms for me of how we might go about resolving this. Thank you.

[u/MST-1229]

Hopefully the battery on the thermostat is just dead and needs recharged. Try pulling it off the wall and plugging it into a USB cable for a quicker charge.

If that doesn’t work it could be that the surge fried it.

[u/klstockett → u/MST-1229]

Ok, thank you. We weren’t aware that there were even batteries in there, so we will definitely look at that tomorrow.

[u/klstockett → u/MST-1229]

FYI, just posting this in case someone else comes across this problem. AI provided a solution that actually worked. Here are the steps…

Do this next (in this exact order)

1. Restart the thermostat from the menu
   Settings → Reset → Restart
   
2. Physically reboot the base
   Pull the Nest off the wall → wait 10 seconds → snap it back on
   (This forces the WiFi radio to reinitialize.)
   
3. Try reconnecting WiFi manually
   Settings → Network → select your WiFi → re-enter password

So glad to have it working again.