Home automation continues to be a growing market. The continued growth of voice automation and an increasing demand for smart devices has impressively intrigued enthusiast. The ongoing comparison between Google Home, Alexa, and Siri continue to fuel the digital assistant war. I am often asked which family of products is the best. Answering this question often times starts with whether you have existing compatible devices or not. In terms of compatible devices, Google has several compatible devices, Amazon has several compatible devices, and Apple has recently began to launch more compatible devices.
In terms of answering the “which is better question”, I’ll lead by emphasizing that I personally own more Google compatible products than others. For me it makes more sense to use the Google based home automation simply because of the investment in smart devices with that particular product line. However, I must admit I own variations of them all. For the sake of this post, lets talk about Google… Lets start by establishing a simplified understanding between the terms Google Home and Google Assistant. If I could break-down the two in the simplest terms, lets say Google Home is the vehicle and Google Assistant is the fuel for that vehicle. In a real world analogy, if you don’t have fuel your gas powered vehicle is a nice shiny object (that goes nowhere). In slightly more technical terms Google uses “Google Assistant” behind the scene to aid the digital and voice assisted technology. When you are looking to purchase a smart device you would want to see if that device is compatible with Google Assistant (with regard to Google compatible devices).
Google Home is a product line and family of devices. Lately if you have paid close attention, the acquisition of Nest by Google has also shifted the naming of devices to Nest products. Newer Nest products by default are typically compatible with Google Assistant. Other areas of compatibility include Android TV and Chromecast. However, I won’t dive into those in this post.
“Ok Google, turn the Christmas lights on“. Yes, that command is the emphasis of this post. How cool is it to speak automation and things just happen. My friends often marvel when they come to my home and I don’t let them touch remotes, use light switches, etc… Almost everything is voice controlled in my home [except flushing the toilet {ha ha..}]. Recently I demonstrated a bridge between Android Wear and home automation. At the time I didn’t think it was unique until me and a friend of mine were driving up to my home and she saw me speak into my watch, “Hey Google, turn the entrance light on“. She acted like it was something from a 007 / James Bond movie. To me, it was just something everybody does (I assumed). This prompted me to add a little flash. A few days later I invited a date to my home and right as we walked in, I spoke a command into my watch to turn the Christmas lights on. I got a smile (ie… brownie points).
So, how does this speaking into a watch thing work as it relates to home automation. As mentioned, the fuel of the Google Home technology is the Google Assistant. [1] I first found Google Assistant compatible switches for my Christmas lights. [2] I added the compatible devices to my Google Home app (a free app for download from the PlayStore). [3] I enabled Google Assistant on my Android phone and my Google Wear compatible watch. Done!!! See the brief video snippet below.
Copyright darrenjohnson.org © 2019. All Rights Reserved.
