With project Connected Home over IP talking a painstakingly long time to come to fruition our dream future of a fully interoperable IoT ecosystem with simple set up and less 3rd party apps still seems forever away. At least for those using Google’s Assistant platform you can now skip the 3rd party apps thanks to Seamless Set-up.
At CES this week three new vendors were added to the list of companies that now support Seamless set-up, Yeelight, Nanoleaf and LIFX. With integration with Google Assistants Seamless set-up, you no longer need the 3rdparty app to set up selected devices from these companies.
With a compatible lighting product you just need to power on the bulb and open the Google Home app from there it’s a simple process to add the light to your Google Assistant devices.
- At the top left, tap Add Set up device plus New device.
- Choose a home to set up the light bulb in and tap Next.
- Your device will start scanning for nearby devices that are ready for setup.
- Tap Set up smart lights.
- Select the light bulbs you’d like to set up. Your bulbs will blink when selected.
- Room Selection: Choose what room your bulb is in.
- Create a unique name for the light
- Tap Done.
While that may look less than seamless, imaging having to download a 3rd party app, set up an account, pair the bulb, then open the Home app, then pair it via account linking, then add it to a home. Trust us, this is simpler.
For lights Seamless set-up is fine, because lights, on the whole, have such simple options, however, one huge complaint we have about Google Assistant is that it often can only control a small portion of a device’s capabilities compared to the native app.
Until Google makes their control schemas for IoT devices more fully-featured the experience of Home Automation on Google Assistant is always going to be a distant second to a 3rd party app at best, and outright frustrating to use at worst.
