A major use case of home assistants is obviously close integration with smart home products, but Home and Echo have both managed to make things a lot more confusing than they should be when it comes to turning on lights or accessing your home security system.
Google is trying to rectify this and is starting by making Nest products a lot more friendly with Home. Now, seamless integration between two products operating under the same parent company in the same vertical should be a given, but in IoT nothing is a given.
Nest came onstage to chat about their latest products and how they seamlessly integrate with Google Home. For the new security products, users will be able to live cast footage from the company’s smart security cams or video doorbells. It can also give you automatic feedback so that when the doorbell rings and the camera recognizes who’s at the door, the Google Home will actually tell you the name of the person.
There are some new phrases for Google Home to recognize. Say, “Let’s get ready for bed,” and you can turn on the security system, adjusting thermostat and turning off lights, while reminding you what events you have coming up.
Outside of Nest products, the company announced that there are now more than 1,000 smart home products that work with Google Home.
Additionally, the Google Home is going to make it a lot easier to locate your phone at home. Say “Find my phone” and the Home will identify who you are and ping your device. If your phone is running on iOS it will call your phone, but if it’s an Android device you can get an audio ping even if it’s on silent. This really seems like a feature that’s going to get a lot of use and join the use case repertoire for many users.
These are some pretty subtle updates, but especially if you’re thinking of getting Nest’s latest shindigs, this may convince Alexa users to migrate to Home.
