Overnight, Nest — which just launched into Australia with the Nest Cam and Nest Protect — announced a suite of security products, like a smart home doorbell and door monitoring system. They’re not coming to Australia straight away at least, but it should be a sign for Aussies considering a Nest gadget or two that the smart home ecosystem is expanding.
Nest has launched six new gadgets, all of which have a focus on security as much as safety, rather than just simple internet-connected smarts — in the past, Nest started as a smart home company with the money-saving and convenience-focused Learning Thermostat, but it’s more clearly developing itself as an ecosystem for a connected secure home.
The centre of the announcement is Nest’s Secure alarm system, which centres around a Guard security base with an alarm, keypad and motion sensor integrated, all wrapped up with a speaker and voice prompts — it’s the kind of thing you’re meant to put on the side table near your front door. It uses a battery-powered Nest Tag fob to lock and unlock as well as a passcode or the Nest app, so you can give temporary or permanent entrance to anyone that you might want to enter your house like dog-walkers.
The Guard also talks to the new Nest Detect, a wireless and battery-powered sensor that detects motion over an area in front of it as well as open/close; both the Guard and Detect work in concert to monitor the areas of entrance and exit around your house, alerting you to intruders when you’re not there. Nest says almost half of US alarm system owners don’t actually activate them out of inconvenience, and it’s hoping a connected and comprehensive security system will change that.
All of this is also wrapped up with a new Nest Hello doorbell, a battery-powered doorbell with a HD camera and motion sensing. If you’re in the home you’ll be alerted (just like a regular doorbell), if you’re away you’ll get an app notification, and you’ll be able to talk back and forth with whoever’s at your front door — tell a postie to drop off your parcel nearby, for example. It’ll also notify you if someone’s loitering there without ringing the doorbell. Nest and lockmaker Yale are also collaborating on a smart home lock called the Linus which should be out in the near future and should tie the whole system together.
Probably the most interesting gadget to come out of Nest’s new haul though is the Nest Cam IQ Outdoor, which is an outdoor version of the facial-recognition Nest Cam IQ already available overseas. It’s especially notable purely because it’s the first security camera to have Google Assistant built in — you can ask it questions and get responses through its speakers, control your smart home devices, and manage your own tasks. Imagine getting to your front door and turning on your Philips Hue lights as you walk in — sounds pretty cool.
At the moment, none of Nest’s most recent announcements are up for sale in Australia, and if that changes we’ll let you know. Just like previous Nest products, there’s nothing serious stopping you from buying a Nest Hello or Nest Secure and shipping it internationally. Nest told Gizmodo when it launched into Australia that it knew it already had established customers and fans in the country; we don’t exactly recommend buying something that’s not certified to work in Australia, caveat emptor, but hey — we’re all beta testers and early adopters anyway, right? [Nest]