Yet Nest insists its taking a different approach than Apple’s connected device play, HomeKit – Nest is opening its protocol to any interested developer, rather than selected ones, and will pair the devices to owners with iPhones or Android smartphones. The Linus lock by Yale is the first Works with Nest product to use Nest Weave.
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Additionally, developers can now build on top of the Nest Cam thanks to the open availability of a new Camera API. August, Mimo, Petnet, Philips Hue and Skybell are the first to work with the API.
Nest also offers integration with its core app, meaning that if developers don’t have the capabilities to create their own mobile app, they can piggyback off of Nest’s. But as we know, not all home products can or should connect to Wi-Fi, and that’s where Weave comes in. Now, Nest Weave gives developers an entirely new way to work with Nest. And developers may be reticent to join Nest’s platform if the company one day unveils a product that competes with their own. And to help grow their businesses, developers can leverage Nest’s relationships with more than 40 retailers across 8,000 stores, professional installers, and energy companies around the world.
“Building a connected product is hard”, Nest’s Vice President of Engineering Matt Rogers said in a statement.
These latest developments from Nest are “kind of an expected next step”, Frank Gillet, a Forrester Research Inc. analyst covering IoT, told us. Google’s OnHub router will also support Weave, providing a central hub for devices to relay communications. Nest Weave contains code that enables each powered device to act as a wireless extender to route information. 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.
A report published by Argus Insights yesterday claims that demand for connected home products is declining, due in part to distrust from consumers about the reliability of connected devices – often associated with poor network connection.
Thread essentially allows different devices in a home to connect to the internet over a low-power, secure mesh network.
By not going over Wi-Fi, you’re also improving the latency as well.
Power and size – The Nest Weave communications protocol is compact and runs on single MCU devices with as little as 64KB of RAM. This solves many problems for small, low-powered products. 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.
The idea is to make the home of the future work as seamlessly as an analog one. “Nest has been committed to meaningful integration for user experiences”, he said. Now other connected devices can opt to integrate with all three Nest ones – or do it all at once using Weave. That’s exactly the company’s ambition, in part because it will make it more appealing for consumers to buy into the Nest ecosystem. The devices, including Yale’s lock, are capable of working independently of the Nest system, however they will do so without the smart features provided by Nest (as in, the Linus will be a nice door lock with a passcode, but not much more).
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Nest Cam is an easy-to-use cloud-based video monitoring camera and cloud service that lets people stay aware of what’s happening at home, no matter where they are.
