FIRST, NEST MADE a thermostat that connected to the
Internet. Then it built an online smoke detector. And after toying with the
idea of building a home security camera that tapped into the so-called cloud,
it bought a company that already offered one and spruced it up, dovetailing the
Dropcam—or as it’s now called: the Nest Cam—with its other devices. The
Google-owned company is gradually expanding its slick brand of online hardware
across the home. But as Nest’s Greg Hu says, the company isn’t going to build
everything.
That’s why Nest is working with its parent company to
fashion a suite of software tools that outside developers can use to build
their own “Internet of Things” devices. Google bigwig Sundar Pichai revealed
the project late last month at the company’s Google I/O developer conference.
He focused on a new IoT operating system called Brillo and a communications
protocol called Weave—a way for devices to talk to each other over wireless
networks. But according to Hu, who oversees Nest’s developer programs, Nest and
Google are working on a “full stack” of software and services that anyone can
use to build everything from connected washing machines to light bulbs to
garage doors.
“It provides all the fundamental building blocks a developer
needs to build a connected product,” he says, chatting with WIRED after Nest
unveiled new incarnations of its own IoT gadgets. The stack won’t arrive,
however, until later in the year.
So many companies are pushing so much hardware onto the
much-hyped Internet of Things, from watches to lighting systems. But it’s a
scattershot market. Though Nest offers three gadgets that can talk to each
other—that you can control from a single smartphone app—most devices don’t
communicate so seamlessly. They can’t deliver on the broader promise of smart
online gadgetry: a home where all the devices work in concert, where your
wristband recognizes when you wake up and turns on your lights, where your car
approaches your house and your garage door opens up. With Brillo, Weave, and
other tools—including a low-power radio technology called Thread—Nest and
Google are now working towards this end.
But naturally, they’re not the only ones.
Closed Versus (Ostensibly) Open
Apple is moving in a similar direction with a project called
Homekit. The difference is, well, the eternal difference between Apple and
Google: closed versus (ostensibly) open. Whereas Apple will let developers
build devices that work with Apple hardware and software, Google will let them
build pretty much whatever they like—whether it ties into the Google universe
or not. This makes Homekit akin to iOS, the mobile operating system that drives
Apple devices and only Apple devices. Brillo, meanwhile, is analogous to Google
Android, the open source mobile operating system that runs on practically
anything. In fact, Brillo is based on Android.
“You don’t have to use the Google parts of the stack. You
don’t have to use the Nest parts,” Hu says of Google’s IoT developer tools.
“You choose what you want to use.”
Nest’s project isn’t as philanthropic as it may seem. No
doubt, Google is creating this system in an effort to boost the use of Android
phones and Nest devices. It will work in unique ways with the Android operating
system and the Google Play store, and that will push developers towards the
company’s increasingly broad ecosystem of hardware and service. But Hu insists
that the tools can operate separately from Nest hardware and other Google
devices, and that consumers will be free to control Brillo gadgets from iPhones
as well as Android phones.
Home Is Where the Hub Is
Currently, Nest offers application programming interfaces,
or APIs, the let outside developers talk to Nest thermostats, smoke detectors,
and cameras by way of the Internet. But with Weave—based on technology that’s
already used for communication between Nest devices—Google will significantly
extend the options available to device makers.
Among other things, Hu says, third-party devices will be
able to talk to Nest gear—and other gadgets—over a local wireless networks
inside the home, in lieu of venturing out across the wider Internet. And these
local networks can operate over Thread, a technology built for the kind of low
power devices that suit the home.
When we point out that this sort of technology seems to echo
what Apple wants to offer through Homekit, Hu bristles. Google and Nest, he
says, are not offering a central “hub” for controlling all your IoT devices.
They’re offering something that’s more open-ended. “This is not an ecosystem
that will force developers to use our app,” he says. “We’re not going hub.”
Some users will argue that a hub is the better way to go—a
single place where we can control everything. As Apple partisans like to say,
users benefit when their devices “just work.” But this can also mean you’re
beholden to a single company and its singular vision. It’s the old Apple-Google
debate all over again.
Source From:- http://www.wired.com/
