Google’s new Nest display wants to keep an eye on you while you sleep

Google announced a sequel to the Nest Hub (formerly Google Home Hub): the “second generation” Nest Hub. It looks exactly like the existing Nest Hub – with the same design and 7-inch screen – but with better sound and a few extra sensors. The highlight is the inclusion of Google’s Soli Radar technology, which allows gestures in the air and sleep tracking.

Like other second generation Nest Audio speakers, Nest Hub 2 has better sound. “The speaker for the new Nest Hub is based on the same audio technology as Nest Audio,” says the Google blog post, “and is 50% lower than the original Hub.” Also like second generation speaker hardware, the new Hub comes with “a dedicated machine learning chip on the device that moves some Assistant experiences from our data centers directly to the device, so that responses to common commands become faster over time “. Google notes that ML on the device is only available in the U.S.

Soli is the main novelty. The internal Google chip was previously included (and then removed) from the Pixel line. The technology is interesting: Google has miniaturized the radar on a chip small enough to be inserted into an electronic device. The first demos promised to capture “submillimetric movements of your fingers”, allowing gestures such as turning a virtual dial or touching a button. On the way to commercialization, Google had to cut out these lab prototypes, and now Soli can only detect large gestures by waving his arm, which are much less useful. Soli was a failure on the Pixel 4 because it offered inaccurate gestures that didn’t add much value compared to a phone’s giant touch screen, which had clear labels and better accuracy.

Google appears to be transferring the resource to the Nest Hub, without improvement, with “Quick Gestures”. The only gesture mentioned is a big “stop” gesture with your hand up, which you can do a few centimeters in front of the screen. This gesture will play or pause the content, snooze an alarm and stop a timer. As with Pixel 4, there’s also a huge, more accurate touch button on the screen when any of these things are happening, so you’ll probably be pressed to choose the air gesture instead of the touch on the screen. I can see aerial gestures being useful if you’re cooking and have dirty hands (smart screens are popular in the kitchen, after all), but remember that these devices also have Google Assistant voice commands, which can start and stop music, as well as a lot of other things without using your hands, without the limitations of reach of Soli.

Google dreams of monthly subscription services

Nest Hub 2 doesn’t have a camera, but it wants to keep an eye on you while you sleep on Soli’s radar. The new “sleep detection” feature will “analyze how the person closest to the screen is sleeping, based on their movements and breathing – all without a camera or wearable.” You will be gently stroked by radar waves while you sleep for motion detection, the microphone can detect coughing or snoring and the ambient light and temperature sensors can track what is going on in the room. In the morning, you will know whether or not you feel tired (I think?) Through a sleep summary that will be shown on the Nest Hub screen. The sleep sensor can also connect to the Google Fit app on a smartphone and share data with it.

The wearables message is interesting, as most technology companies would track sleep through a wearable, but Wear OS’s poor performance on the market means that Google doesn’t have a viable wearable platform. Google is currently undergoing a redesign of its wearable strategy after the purchase of Fitbit, and this blog post says, “We will also be looking for ways to work with Fitbit’s sleep tracking features in the future.”

Google notes that sleep detection is optional and “your coughing and snoring audio data is processed only on the device – it is not sent to Google’s servers”. For now, the sleep sensor is “a preview” and it looks like Google is planning charge extra for service next year.

Here is the relevant quote from the support page:

Enjoy a preview of Sleep Sensing for free until next year. Google is learning and innovating in this new technology and also exploring how Sleep Sensing can become part of the Fitbit and Fitbit Premium experiences. Google and Fitbit will keep you updated on any future plans related to Sleep Sensing.

Fitbit Premium – a service currently undergoing a change along with everything else at Fitbit – costs $ 10 a month.

A chip for CHIP Project

The new Nest Hub also features the new smarthome standard, “Project Connected Home over IP” or “Project CHIP”. CHIP is a conglomerate of heavyweights – Google, Apple, Amazon, Zigbee and others – who finally want to discover smarthome patterns once and for all with a new additional standard (feel free to link this XKCD comic to us comments). Nest Hub already has a ton of smarthome controls, but it depends on your existing commands and data from the smarthome hub for Wi-Fi and Google Assistant. With a built-in Thread radio (one of the IoT communication protocols for CHIP), it could theoretically be a more active part of a smarthome network or possibly replace its hub.

The CHIP standard is not yet ready, so it is unclear exactly what Google is planning here. Google has integrated smarthome hardware into devices before, like the Google OnHub router, which also came with a Thread radio. Nothing at all happened with the secret functionality of the OnHub smarthome, so we’re not holding our breath for something to happen here. Google accompaniments for OnHub (Google Wi-Fi and Google Nest Wi-Fi) can also join Thread networks, but there is no reason why you would want to do that. Currently, Google Assistant’s “Actions” API makes it great for smarthome voice control, so it’s not clear what bringing this on board would actually result in the consumer’s perspective.

The second generation Nest Hub is pre-ordered now on the Google Store for $ 99.99. It looks like it will be shipped around March 30th.

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