I have a ton of new updates for you related to Google Home, Google Nest, the
Google Assistant, and the Google Pixel range of devices as well as they become
more and more integrated within the Google suite of products hello Automaters
thanks for tuning in again I'm Brian from Automate Your Life and today I'm
going to take the frustration out of automation by keeping you up to date
with everything related to Google but also showing you a couple of those
demonstrations that you guys really seem to love with existing features so let's
get right into the first update which is local home control and I showed this
just last week on the smart home news but what has happened is the first
instance of a rollout of localized control so this means they don't have to
go to the cloud in order to execute commands that you give on your Google
Home devices now it's not perfect yet this is just the start and my Yeelights
have this enabled and you just go into the Yeelight application and you can
enable it very quickly and now it's on local home control related to your
Google home products the thing is Google is still heading out with their voice
assistant out to the cloud so what this has changed into in my smart home
already before we have this full upgrade coming from the Google side as well is
that my Yeelights now respond just as quickly as things like ZigBee Network
so that's happening just as fast once the Google Assistant has interpreted my
request
bedroom lights on! One thing you might notice if you have a number of these
different smart displays throughout your smart home is that the non Google
branded ones and I'm using the Lenovo smart display here it it has a different
pull up menu for exploring what the Google Assistant can do and this is a
different interface that I believe is being tested and I like this approach
actually so we'll see if this expands but this is brand-new to the Lenovo
smart display and not the Google smart displays try saying roll a die or play
some workout music now let's go through a demonstration of the new media control
capabilities that you have especially on smart displays now you have this in the
Google Home application as well enough really in a little bit of a different
way but on the media center within your smart display so this is just a pulldown
menu you can go into media and any music that is playing throughout your smart
home you can go ahead and manage now you can move the songs back and forward and
pause and change the volume all of those things are capable but what is different
about this is you're able to control other interfaces from any of your smart
displays or you can control any speakers from any of your smart display so this
is a little bit different now and you can go ahead and transfer to other
speaker groups or other smart displays and smart speakers throughout your smart
home that are connected to the Google assistant speaking of which this is
really interesting to me is that any Google Home product can now
use a Sonos connected speaker as the default speaker now what's interesting
about this and I'll show you a demo in a second is that when you ask this device
to play music from a specific source if it's not set up inside of the Sonos
application you will not get that to work so let me show you a quick demo
here play music
so you can see the control interface showed up here and it started to play on
here so you get both of those things with any Sonos connected speaker I can
control with the player pause here player pause here I can also move
between songs so it's allowing you to control your Sonos connected speaker
which I like a lot actually now that I have one now again when you ask it to
play from a different source you get a very different response play music from
YouTube music sure music from YouTube music playing on Sonos sorry it looks
like you haven't set up YouTube music on your so no set so there you go that's
the difference if you haven't set it up on this speaker within the Sonos
application it's not going to work here's a quick little demonstration of
the tile integration now you can actually ask whatever you've named the
device within the tile application you can ask for that device to be found by
the Google assistant and it will actually ring that device so it's
obviously something that most people are going to use with their keys so let me
show you how that works
okay locating keys
one really interesting update here from nest and within their nest thermostat is
the fact that they can now utilize data from your existing HVAC system to
actually diagnose or early diagnose HVAC issues that you are about to have with
your device now obviously as they get more and more data of your system this
is going to get better and better and in certain locations you're going to be
able to raid away get a technician so they're just demoing that part of it in
a few states in the US right now but it can diagnose your existing HVAC issues
before they happen so this is a big benefit for the nest thermostats going
forward as we all wait for the end of the works with nest program in the
migration of all nest accounts to Google accounts there are lots of us holding on
to those existing nest accounts and we don't really want to change anything
there but there is a requirement coming from Google here to actually enable
two-factor authentication on nest accounts so if you've already moved to a
Google account you already basically have this but what is happening with
those who are still using those basic nest accounts is in order to log in
coming this spring so we're only talked in a month or so here you're going to
have to enable two-factor authentication Google IO was announced for May 12th to
May 14th I'm kind of hoping I get to go to this one but we'll have to see on the
channel now the things I'm expecting there and this is just a little bit of a
prediction for you guys Google Nest products I'm expecting some Google Nest
products and I don't just mean smart displays or smart speakers or any of
that stuff I mean more around the thread components and preparing for this new
connected home over IP Alliance getting some of their sensors and other products
out there that will integrate with this I'm also expecting the implementation of
some of these network devices and some of their smart home which is the
automation and the routines where we can actually trigger off of different
devices and I expect the local home SDK that we talked about earlier in the
video to become front and center to show the speed of
their devices along with the improved Google assistant this is a bit of an
interesting demonstration if you didn't know this already Google slides can
actually display on a smart display or any chromecast enabled device now this
means that you could potentially use this for a presentation if you can get
connected to Wi-Fi and I think this is just a really interesting implementation
of their technology speaking of chromecast this is something you can
look at with newer Smart TVs in your smart home and a chromecast device now
we all know you can add that to a multi speaker audio group within the Google
home application and then you can use your TV as a speaker but what I found
with one of the newer TVs that I had purchased is that I could actually get
it to play music without turning the screen on and this is based on some of
the settings that you're going to have within your TV
now I've been using the pixel for for a while here Google sent me one of those
devices and I've really been enjoying it what it has done for me versus the three
Axl that you've seen in the home is the speed and the capability of utilizing
the Google assistant to move through applications and to get information just
on that phone especially with the squeeze to talk
flights from Edmonton to Hawaii leaving the 8th of March currently in
Honolulu it's 20 today through Sunday
I found a few hotels near Maui Hawaii
opening Twitter
opening YouTube one thing that I haven't actually talked about in a long time is
the connectivity options with your pixel devices and Android devices in general
to a PC now there's actually a Windows 10 application that allows you to
connect your Android phone to your PC and get all kinds of notifications now I
found that a little bit too busy I didn't really enjoy that but what I have
enjoyed is messages for web now you can on a browser on a PC or really any
device with a browsers go to messages google.com and then the set up is only a
QR code scanning on your pixel device and then you get your messages there you
can send pictures from your computer you can send pictures to yourself if you
want to use that as kind of a transfer method you can do that kind of thing and
then you can actually start google duo calls from that interface as well one of
my favorite features of my pixel devices is that call screening capability here
with the Google assistant I love watching those telemarketers or fake
spam callers hanging up it's a lot of fun to me I don't know why but if you
have a pixel 1 2 3 or 4 now you're going to get that call screening so that's
being kind of rolled out bat as a backwards compatibility feature for your
pixel phone a couple of things interesting related to YouTube music and
the integration of that service within this whole platform you know initially
when YouTube music came out a lot of people were afraid of losing their
libraries on google play music but Google was very quick to say hey guys
don't worry we got you we're gonna transfer your libraries that does appear
to be happening so we will at some point have to migrate from google play music
to youtube music but for now it looks as though Google is going to deliver on
that promise they're being very forward about this something else we're seeing
is the Google assistant can now be used within the YouTube app or the YouTube
Music app for some users this is just being kind of demoed you're given the
ability to control the music but you're also given the ability
like a song as it's gone on and so obviously if your screen is locked this
is going to be very helpful for you though what's on my screen capability
actually went away and I see this it's funny with YouTube videos when you put
out YouTube videos you'll see that actually become a problem on your
channel you start getting a lot of comments this doesn't work anymore but
that feature is back now something that's been very interesting is some of
the pixel 5 render starting to come out and it looks like a different design on
the camera otherwise the phone looks pretty similar but you can have a look
at one of the first renders here so there you have it guys that's all the
latest from Google home Google Nest and the Google assistant as well as those
pixel devices which are becoming more and more integrated with these products
and I think a great control device within your smart home in a lot of ways
so thanks for watching everyone make sure you subscribe for more of this
smart home news and of course don't hate automate