| Google Releases Home APIs |
| Written by Alex Denham |
| Thursday, 23 May 2024 |
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Google has announced a set of Home APIs and a Home runtime that can be used to access over 600M devices, Google's hubs and Matter infrastructure, along with an automation engine. Matter is an open standard for smart home technology that lets your device work with any Matter-certified ecosystem using a single protocol. Matter comes from the Connectivity Standards Alliance, an organization of hundreds of companies creating products for the smart home.
The new APIs start with Device and Structure APIs that can be used to control and manage the devices already connected to Google Home, such as Matter light bulbs or the Nest Learning Thermostat. The announcement says developers can use the APIs to create a complex app to manage any aspect of a smart home, or to simply integrate with a smart device for a specific task such as turning on the lights automatically before the food delivery driver arrives.
Stressing the privacy and security aspects, Google says users are always in control and need to explicitly grant access to their structure and smart home devices before an app can access it. The second addition is a Commissioning API that can be used to set up Matter devices in an app or the Home app or directly with Fast Pair on Android, without the need to create a new Matter fabric. There's also a new Automation API that can be used to create and manage home automations in an app using Google Home's new automation engine and intelligent signals. Automations can be triggered by device signals from the home such as occupancy events from motion sensors, mode changes from appliances, or media events from a smart TV. They can also use Google's intelligence signals like home and away, which fuses together signals from devices across the home to create a more accurate presence detection. Alongside the new APIs Google announced plans to improve Google Home hubs. A hub for Google Home is a device that enables remote access and local control of their Matter devices across Wifi and Thread. The improvement will see upgraded hubs and a new Home runtime that will enable other devices to become hubs, including Chromecast with Google TV, select panel TVs with Google TV running Android 14 or higher, and eligible LG brand TVs. The Home APIs will be available in a forthcoming preview.
More InformationGoogle Home APIs Preview Programme Related ArticlesGoogle Gemini API Developer Competition Google Launches Local Home SDK IKEA First With Matter Hub And It Matters Google Home Your Personal Assistant To be informed about new articles on I Programmer, sign up for our weekly newsletter, subscribe to the RSS feed and follow us on Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin. 
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