Google is on a bit of a rampage adding new device types to Google Assistants native smart home control. Late last month Google added support for smart heaters, air fresheners, and fireplaces, and now they’re adding native support for smart blinds.
This continued increase in supported device types is hopefully just the tip of the iceberg and shows that Google is serious about rounding out both the Assistant and Google Home’s abilities to act as the central control hub for your smart home.
Reading through the new device schema the controls for a smart blind is exactly what you would think, they can be opened and closed. Of course, there are multiple kinds of blinds and the new device type include support for vertical and horizontal blinds, as well as blinds that can be opened in two directions or one.
With the introduction of Home View on Google Smart Displays Google can now offer both voice and physical control (via the Home app or a Smart Display) of your Smart Home. From experience, I can tell you that native integrations are much better than third-party solutions so the more device types the supported, the better the experience will be.
I just hope they add garage doors soon, I’m sick of having to say “Hey Google, turn off my garage door” to get it to open, it’s a bit silly!
Hey Duncan, what are you using to control your garage door? We’ve just knocked down our house and starting to build, so I’m looking at heaps of smart home tech
Hey Murray,
I’ve gone zwave, we’re working on an introduction Post about it.
http://www.smarthome.com.au/
These guys know zwave in Australia.
D
In Australia, it’s mainly Somfy motors. Acmeda do them too but no Google Assistant support yet, only Amazon Echo. You can control the Acmeda blinds through IFTTT, but it’s not native.
Luton also do them but I don’t think they’re in Australia.
What kind of smart blinds are available on the market nowadays for this?
Swipe down from the top to expose the normal phone interface and long press the home button. 😉
Back to the article, this is relevant for me since I run my own Canberra-based blinds business.
Canberra also here and planning on updating my vertical blinds to motorised ones (hoping for honeycomb). Went for a indicative quote online through Veneta, but they said they didn’t make motors under 900mm, meaning that 2 of my windows wouldn’t be motorised….
Hey Duncan, is it possible to use Routines as command aliases? Eg. In the case of your garage door – When I say “Open the garage door” then command is “turn off the garage door”
Completely….. Except of course when you’re using Android Auto, then you get “routines are not supported”. So when I’m a passenger it’s okay, when I’m the driver with my phone docked it’s not. Ahhhh, Google how you love to fragment your own platforms
I have a routine set up for opening my garage door… Works fine from Android Auto in my experience. I have a few different phrases for opening the door including “open the pod bay doors Hal”