Google’s Nest to open “Works with Nest” store for Nest-compatible smart products.
Nest was once known for making a stylish, smart thermostat that knew just the right moment to change the temperature, helping to keep people comfortable at home while also lowering their monthly utility bills.Nest, the Google-owned company that builds products for the connected home, has turned appliances even as mundane as thermostats and smoke alarms into beloved, sought-after Christmas gifts. Nest has often marketed its products – Internet-connected home appliances that owners can control via smartphone – as part of what Nest calls “the thoughtful home.” Now owned by Google, the “Internet of Things” company is trying to get more people to embrace the idea of a fully-connected home, announcing on Thursday that it will release Weave, its proprietary connection software, to work with devices made by other manufacturers.
But over time, Nest grew to encompass more: It was also a smart smoke and carbon monoxide detector, as well as a connected camera that monitored homes around the clock. Presumably Google was buying into Nest’s longer-term vision for what Nest refers to as the “thoughtful home.” On Thursday, Nest outlined more of that vision, built around tools aimed at developers, and a new online Works with Nest store to help consumers find Nest-compatible products, from smart door locks to lights. It’s the protocol that the Nest Learning Thermostat, Nestcam home-security camera, and Nest Protect smoke-detector use to communicate with each other. In a bid to compete with rivals such as Apple, which released its own connected-home software, HomeKit, in 2014, Nest is partnering with device manufacturers in areas ranging from lighting to locks to home audio.
That’s what enables a Nest Cam to record video if the Nest Protect detects smoke in the home, and the Nest Thermostat to shut down your ventilation system in the same circumstance. The fact is, Nest is not likely to create its own, say, microwave or motorized window shades, so it has to rely on outside developers to build these kinds of products and integrate them with Nest. Appliances connected using Weave will work even when a wireless connection isn’t available, reducing the devices’ latency to less than 100 milliseconds and improving their security, the company says in a statement.
Today’s platform update, called Nest Weave, is designed to do just that, by not only streamlining the process for hardware makers to connect with Nest’s family of products, but also by streamlining that process for consumers too. In order for your lights to come on when you open a door, for example, the door sensor (or a smart door lock) sends a message to the control panel, and the control panel then sends a message to your smart light. For example, if a new Internet-connected door lock – made by veteran manufacturer Yale – has its Internet connection severed by a burglar, it will still work, accessible from a smartphone with the Nest App. As consumers look for the latest and greatest, many companies have responded by cramming in sensors—into light bulbs, wrist bands, coffee makers, even toothbrushes—so they connect to the internet. The problem is that the vast majority of household appliances remain disconnected: Just look at any corner of your home or apartment, and you’ll probably come across a slew of devices built before smartphones or possibly even the Internet.
That’s why we want to make it easier for developers…. [They] have an end-to-end solution when they work with Nest, and can use only the parts of the program that meet their needs.” “I don’t think this will change things fundamentally, it is just another protocol among several, and still fails to address fundamental security, privacy, and functionality concerns,” says Alex Pentland, a computer science professor at the Massachusetts of Institute of Technology and director of the school’s Connection Science and Human Dynamics Lab, in an e-mail to the Monitor. Because of the nature of Thread’s decentralized mesh network, one break in the system, even to something as crucial as the internet, won’t bring everything down. GE or Whirlpool can afford to hire a team of engineers and designers to code a suite of apps, add Bluetooth or Wi-Fi capabilities, and so forth, but that smaller company or Kickstarter startup? “For companies who don’t want to have to build a cloud, build an app, or can’t even put Wi-Fi into their products—they’re stuck,” says Nest engineering VP Matt Rogers. Another smart door lock maker, August, is also working with Nest, as are such partners as Skybell, Petnet, GE, Tyco and Earth Networks, the company behind the WeatherBug app. You’ll still need a router when the network clients need to reach the cloud—or when you want to control them from the cloud—but the mesh network itself won’t fail if you lose your Internet connection.
And because Thread is a self-healing network, it will automatically rebuild itself if any device goes offline because its battery died, it was unplugged, or it just fails. The actions will be communicated from smartphone to Nest’s cloud, which speaks to Nest devices in your home, which will in turn speak directly to the Linus lock. “You don’t need to have your own cloud and you don’t need to have your own app—you can use ours,” Rogers says. “For a lot of developers out there, this is a much easier, cheaper way of getting your product connected.” Because it doesn’t use Wi-Fi or Bluetooth and instead leans on Nest’s ecosystem, Weave offers developers a more secure and energy-efficient way of becoming Internet-connected—a big plus for a product like Linus, which runs on just four AA batteries and will last more than a year on a single charge.
You can add smart products over time as needed. “You don’t want every app to know what is happening every time,” he says. “Your lock doesn’t need to know your energy usage, and your dishwasher doesn’t need to know if you’re home or not.” Z-Wave has enjoyed significant success in the connected-home market, but one of the factors that have prevented Z-Wave from becoming even bigger in this space is that it’s a single-source technology. Nest Labs doesn’t make chips, but it’s lined up at least four manufacturers to support Nest Weave in its silicon: Freescale, Silicon Labs, Dialog, and Qualcomm Technologies (a Qualcomm subsidiary). With each new smartphone device that enters the market, adding another piece of hardware or smartphone app to a household setup only makes the process more burdensome, not more convenient.
Manufacturers are much more apt to incorporate a new technology when they can secure the needed parts from multiple sources that are all competing for their business. Yale, a Z-Wave early adopter, will incorporate Nest Wave into its new Linus deadbolt (named after the company’s founder, who invented the cylinder pin-tumbler lock in 1843).
Imagine, say, if a burglar is tampering with a Linus lock; the device could automatically communicate with a Nest security camera and tell it to start recording and send a notification to your smartphone. When Nest Weave goes live in early 2016, Yale’s lock will be the first product available for the system, and Rogers tells me it will be several months before the next one likely comes to market. Nest boasts around 11,000 developers on its platform, a sign not only of how fast its ecosystem is growing, but also of how nascent this market remains.
Philips Hue LED lighting: When the Nest Cam senses motion, it will trigger the lights to turn on to fool a potential burglar into thinking someone is home. The new Nest Cam API is available now, and Nest says the aforementioned August, Mimo, Petnet, Skybell, and Philips Hue integrations will be available this month. Nest Weave, Nest cloud services, and Nest app integration won’t be available to developers until 2016, so it might be a while before we see some of the more ambitious integrations reach the market.