Oct 5 2016
SmartThings and Google Home (Graphic: Business Wire)
SmartThings have announced a collaboration with Google Home as one of the anchor launch partners. Google Home is the latest voice activated speaker, built as a hands-free help from the Google Assistant to obtain answers from Google, manage daily tasks, stream music, and control smart home products.
SmartThings is extending its commitment to voice control with this collaboration. This will allow consumers to interact with devices in numerous new ways as they put together a smart home that is a lot more efficient and secure.
Artificial intelligence has enabled more sophisticated voice control, and consumers now desire to interact with devices in a more natural and conversational way that fits seamlessly into their everyday lives. At SmartThings, we’re committed to bringing voice control to the smart home and partnering with the most innovative products like Google Home so consumers can integrate with all of their favorite brands as we continue to expand our open ecosystem.
Alex Hawkinson, CEO and Founder of SmartThings
Google Home can manipulate a number of 'Works with SmartThings' thermostat and lighting products from top brands such as Philips, Leviton, Honeywell, Osram, and Ecobee. Users will only have to say “Ok Google” and lights will be seamlessly turned on. It will also be possible for light color to be altered, or thermostats to be modified.
Using Google Assistant coupled with its powerful artificial intelligence, Google Home does not limit customers to speak commands in a specific way and allows users to conduct a very natural, conversational interaction with their smart home.
SmartThings is now also integrated with with Weave Cloud Platform. Weave is Google’s communications platform for IoT that facilitates device installation, user interaction from mobile devices and the web, and phone-to-device-to-cloud communication. SmartThings being an open platform will continue to support Z-wave, Zigbee, WiFi and local internet connected devices.
Google Home can be pre-ordered from October 4, and from early November it will be available in any one of the national stores - Best Buy, Target and Walmart.