Google’s new Nest screen wants to keep you awake while you sleep

Google has announced a sequel to the Nest Hub (formerly the 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 main feature is the inclusion of Google’s Soli Radar technology, which enables airborne gestures and sleep detection.

Like the other second-generation Nest Audio speakers, the Nest Hub 2 has better sound. “The speaker of the new Nest Hub is based on the same audio technology as Nest Audio,” says the Google blog, “and has 50 percent more bass than the original Hub.” Like the second-generation speaker hardware, the new Hub has a dedicated machine learning chip on the device that moves some assistant experiences from our data centers directly to the device, so that answers to common commands become faster over time. Google notes that the ML on the device is only available in the US.

Soli is the most important new addition. Google’s internal disk was previously included with the Pixel line (and then removed). The technology is interesting: Google has miniaturized radar into a disk that is small enough to be moved into an electronic device. The early demonstrations promised to capture ‘movements of a sub-millimeter of your fingers’, making the movements possible, such as turning a virtual rotary knob or tapping a button. On the road to commercialization, Google had to reduce these lab prototypes, and now Soli can only detect large, arm-waving gestures, which are far less useful. Soli was a flop on the Pixel 4 because it offers inaccurate movements that do not offer much value compared to the giant touch screen on a phone, which had clear labels and better accuracy.

Google wants to transfer the feature to the Nest Hub, unimproved, with ‘Quick Gestures’. The only gesture mentioned is a large, hand-up “stop” gesture that you can do a few inches in front of the screen. This gesture will play or interrupt content, stop an alarm, and stop a timer. As on the Pixel 4, there is also a large, more accurate touch button on the screen when one of these things happens, so it will probably be difficult to select the air gesture over the screen tap. I can see that air gestures are useful when 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 bunch of others things hands-free, without the reach limits of Soli.

Google Dream of Monthly Subscription Services

The Nest Hub 2 does not have a camera, but it wants to monitor you while you sleep via Soli’s radar. The new “sleep detection” feature will “analyze how the person sleeps closest to the screen, based on their movement and breathing – all without a camera or portable.” 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 detect what is happening in the room. In the morning you will know if you need to feel tired (I think?) Via a sleep summary that will appear on the Nest Hub screen. Sleep detection can also connect to the Google Fit app on a smartphone and share data with it.

The portable call is interesting because most tech companies will do sleep tracking via a portable, but the terrible performance of Wear OS in the market means that Google does not have a viable portable platform. Google is currently revising its portable strategy after the acquisition of Fitbit, and this blog post says, “We will continue to look for ways to work with Fitbit’s sleep tracking features in the future.”

Google notes that sleep monitoring is optional and “your coughing and snoring audio data is only processed on the device – it is not sent to Google servers.” For now, sleep perception is a preview, and it sounds like Google is planning ask for extra for service somewhere 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 on this new technology and exploring how Sleep Sensing can become part of the Fitbit and Fitbit Premium experiences. Google and Fitbit will keep you informed of any future plans related to Sleepwalking.

Fitbit Premium – a service currently in line with all the others at Fitbit – is $ 10 per month.

A slide for Project CHIP

The new Nest Hub also includes the new smarthome standard, “Project Connected Home via IP” or “Project CHIP.” CHIP is a conglomerate of heavy victims – Google, Apple, Amazon, Zigbee and others – who ultimately want to invent smarthome standards once and for all with a new, additional standard (please link the XKCD cartoon in the comments). The Nest Hub already has a bunch of smarthome controls, but it depends on your existing smarthome hub bridging commands and data to Wi-Fi and the Google Assistant. With a built-in wired radio (one of the IoT communication protocols for CHIP), it could theoretically be a more active part of a smarthome network or possibly replace your hub.

The CHIP standard is not ready yet, so it is not clear what Google is planning here. Google has previously integrated smarthome hardware into devices, such as Google’s OnHub router which also came with a wired radio. The OnHub’s secret smarthome functionality has become absolutely nothing, so we’m not holding our breath to happen here. Google’s follow-up on the OnHub (Google Wi-Fi and Google Nest Wi-Fi) can also connect to Thread networks, but there’s no reason why you should. Currently, the Google Assistant’s Actions’ API makes it great for smarthome voice control, so it’s not clear what it will accomplish from a consumer perspective.

The second-generation Nest hub can now be pre-ordered for $ 99.99 in the Google Store. It appears to be shipping around March 30th.

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