While Google Assistant can do a lot for you, there is still a lot that they can improve, especially when it comes to managing and controlling devices around your house. To be able to say that you run a fully smart house, you need to be able to support both voice commands and passive automation based on sensors as well. The advance of voice assistants paid a lot of attention to the former but neglected the latter. Now it seems that Google is taking its first steps by adding support for things like sensors and smoke detectors.
Android Police says that makers of sensor-only devices that are able to measure things like humidity, temperature, air quality, brightness, motion, or open/close state, will now be able to directly add these things to the Google Home setup. There is also a special device type for things like smoke detectors and CO detectors that can give them separate commands from the other sensors.
However, what this support means, at least for now, is that it can only answer your questions about the connected devices. You cannot yet set passive alerts and automation but we’d like to believe that eventually, this is where things are headed. Eventually, you can set up routines that can rely on both time triggers as well as movement or sensor detection. You will be able to set up a lot of IFTTT-like recipes and formulas that would make life definitely easier.
Google has not yet made any specific announcements about possible actions and routines that you can eventually set up, but for now, we’ll have to be satisfied with sensor support since that will be a prerequisite for all those simple and intricate routines. This may be the “missing peace” of the automation and smart home puzzle so when the support is updated, then we can start dreaming of a truly smart home.
For now though, third-party developers and device makers can enjoy adding Google Assistant support for their sensor-driven devices. Let us know if you can already ask your Google Assistant questions about these devices.
