Nest, the Google company, wants to monitor your home

Hello, the doorman of Nest.

When Google bought Nest for $ 3.2 billion it was just a startup that made a thermostat with a beautiful design and prepared a smoke detector, mandatory in US homes. Two supplements for the home, almost always bland, that turned into something to teach. In the case of the thermostat it was soon seen as an ally to save on the heating bill.

Behind the design was Tony Fadell , considered the father of Apple's iPod. He created the company in 2011 and left Nest (meaning Nest in Spanish) in June 2016. Then they added dropcams , small cameras to control the home, to his catalog.

Now, as a company with its own entity within the Alphabet conglomerate, Nest is positioned in one of the places with more legal edges and challenges to solve, that of security and monitoring of the home. Google enters for the first time inside the home with relevant steps in terms of privacy and consumer responsibility.

During the presentation at the Modern Jewish Museum in San Francisco they renewed their vision with the protection of the home as the central point of the catalog. They took out an intercom, the popular telephone, with camera and facial recognition. The name is Hello, of course, and makes sure that whoever calls us is the postman or our grandmother. It will hit the market in early 2018 in the United States and then Europe, with a price still to be unveiled. According to Nest, this first door is the one that first supervises the shards. Hello will send an alert to the cellphone every time someone rings and will save their photo. They have created a subscription service, Nest Aware, which will cost $ 5 a month for additional alerts. As an example they put the detection of intruders, strange activity, sounds outside the usual or dogs barking.

Guard and Tag, Nest's security systems.

Hello also serves as an intercom. The application for the mobile, with sound enhancement, allows videoconferencing with the visitor before he crosses the threshold of the door. Another novelty is the option to put pre-recorded messages, such as an automatic response.

They already had a recording camera, Nest iQ. During the presentation they unveiled their version for outdoor. I thought to record the garden or the back of the house, prepared to withstand the weather. Both this version and the interior will receive an update that will make them compatible with your personal assistant, that is, you can control with the voice, a way to compete with the ever expanding catalog of devices compatible with Alexa, the assistant Amazon.

Finally, they showed a package called Safe Alarm System, with several components. It is made up of the Nest Guard, a base that serves as an alarm, a keyboard to enter an access code and a motion sensor with the ability to speak. Detect, which is a motion sensor that perceives changes in both a shorter range and a farther range. Once placed in a window you can know if it has been opened or if someone is moving in the room. Detect is a key part of the control ecosystem that Nest projects. And Tag, which is a small piece that is added on the key ring to use as a key when approaching Nest wants to have the members of the home, the gardener or trustworthy people who want to give access to the house without need to call. They can be activated or deactivated remotely.

Marwan Fawaz, the new CEO of Nest, said that they will get more products in the remainder of years than in the sum of the previous two. "Security is a sector that desperately asks for innovation," he said.

The three products will reach both the United States market first, Canada and Europe later, but did not provide data regarding Latin America and Brazil.

Matt Roger, co-founder of Nest, maintains a clear idea, he wants the home automation to be for all audiences, not only for fans of DIY or technology: "Until now they were not offered more than complicated toys." An observation that gives an idea of ​​its ambition to democratize access and raise quality.

Despite the attractive design and ease of use of both hardware and applications, Nest has a great challenge. They did not provide details, for example, of the five-dollar subscription contract, but it is a frontal attack on the subscription-to-use alarms. The question remains of what would happen in case of losing Internet connection or what type of responsibility they assume if it fails, if the data is lost