A new service called Nest Renew is being released on a by-invite basis in the United States. Nest Renew is a service that combines existing Nest thermostat programs with new elements to allow users to "play a part in the fight against climate change." This service works with intelligent automation, user education tools, renewable generation support, and nonprofit funding focused on clean energy equity.
Nest's newest connected security cameras - including its first with a built-in floodlight system - are now up for order, offering new options inside and out. The Nest Cam (wired) and Nest Cam with Floodlight were announced back in August, alongside the second-generation Nest Doorbell and the new Nest Cam (wireless).
Spanish, the second most commonly spoken language in the United States, is now more accessible on Google's Nest Hub and Hub Max smart displays. Google announced the expanded support today, noting that its smart home products can now display text in Spanish as well as English, plus they now support additional Spanish language queries and more.
Nest Doorbell is up for order, and the convenience of a simple-to-install, battery-powered smart doorbell seems hard to ignore. Having been using one for the past few days, though, there have been some surprises along the way, and while it's too soon for a full review there are still some stand-outs worth noting if you're considering giving your front door an upgrade.
It tends to be very dry in the western parts of the United States, leading to significant wildfire activity. This summer has been particularly bad for fires, and so many are burning that many Western states, such as Colorado, are currently blanketed in smoke. Significant quantities of smoke in the air is bad for people to breathe and particularly harmful for those with conditions like asthma.
Although they look like stationary tablets, smart displays like the Nest Hub or Echo Show are specifically designed to remove that misconception. The software, in particular, has an interface that isn't exactly conducive for physical interaction and is more geared towards voice commands with audiovisual feedback. It seems, however, that Google is taking things in a different direction with an experiment that brings a familiar app drawer to the Nest Hub.
Last year, Google announced a then-new feature called Family Bell that enabled users to set up bell reminders. The idea was that parents could set up these reminders to announce when tasks needed to be done, such as reminding their child to get ready for an online class. The company is back with an update to the feature that ties in its Nest Hub smart display.
Nest is adding offline storage to its latest range of security cameras, allowing them to save video files even if their link to the cloud is temporarily interrupted. The new feature debuts on today's four-strong range of updated Nest models: the Nest Cam, Nest Doorbell, Nest Cam with Floodlight, and Nest Cam (wired).
Nest has launched a quartet of new smart home products, with a new Nest Cam, Nest Doorbell, Nest Cam wired, and Nest Cam with Floodlight bringing revamped styling and more onboard-smarts. The redesigned range of home security devices include an uptick in onboard machine learning, allowing for data to be processed on-device rather than in the cloud.
Google has once again leaked its up upcoming products via some images that briefly appeared in the Google Store. Once the apparent leak was noticed, Google removed the images from its online shop, but not before visitors managed to get screenshots of the upcoming hardware. While new Nest security camera products are anticipated, none have been announced at this time.
Google's acquisition of Nest and eventual migration of brands and accounts unsurprisingly met with some pushback. In addition to privacy concerns, there were some issues when moving from Nest's own platform to Google's. One pain point, in particular, revolved around features in the Nest app that haven't made their way yet to Google Home. Fortunately, it seems that Google is indeed working on resolving that problem, and an upcoming version of the Google Home app could see the arrival of two old Nest Hello features to the new app.
Smart home products are getting more common and more accessible, but, as recent events prove, they are far from being the completely reliable and trustworthy parts of our lives that ads and videos would have us believe. Part of that relies on companies and agents on the remote side acting more responsibly in their ability to control these devices from afar. Another part of that formula, however, also depends on manufacturers ensuring the security and privacy of their products and customers, something that Google's Nest is promising to do better.