Nest’s plans for a Dropcam successor possibly outed by new FCC documents

Nest sent out press invitations last week to an event on June 17th, and we speculated that it might mean that the company is ready to announce its first Dropcam successor since being acquired by Google in June of 2014. Now, thanks to an FCC filing that we’ve uncovered (published to the FCC website on May 28th), it seems more likely that the company is getting ready to announce the next generation of its security camera…

With a date of evaluation listed as March 2nd, 2015, the device in question, an “Identical Prototype,” is listed clearly as a “Wireless Camera” filed under “Nest Labs Inc.” While there’s nothing we can say for certain about Nest’s upcoming announcements based on this pass through the FCC, we can learn a couple of interesting tidbits about this as-yet-unannounced device. Like the Dropcam Pro, this device evidently has Bluetooth hardware, with the FCC test report specifically mentioning that it has Bluetooth LE 4.0.

Perhaps more interestingly, the documents suggest that this device, with model number A00005, sports the IEEE 802.15.4 wireless standard—technology that was also found in the Dropcam Pro. Maxime Veron, director of product marketing for Nest, has previously mentioned that while the Dropcam Pro includes the same 802.15.4 radio used by ZigBee, Nest is actually using proprietary technology similar to the low-power IP protocol 6LoWPAN called Nest Weave—a name that’s very familiar to those who have been paying attention to moves Google has been making in smart home tech.

Since we don’t know much about Google’s planned Brillo and Weave, it’s hard to say exactly what—if anything—in these documents would point toward support for Google’s move into smart device connectivity standards. It’s likely that even the Dropcam Pro would be able to support the new standards, so there isn’t much to learn here in terms of hardware changes.

The device filing in question also has an interesting document that shows how the FCC label will be attached to the device. Much like the current Dropcam, it appears as if this device has a circular bottom for affixing it to a wall.

Meanwhile, Amazon is completely out of Dropcam Pro stock, and has been for a couple of weeks at least. Amazon had the device “in stock” and listed as “ships and sold by Amazon” until recently, and now is no longer stocking the device at all and only offering limited quantities through certain third-party sellers.

Nest’s press conference is scheduled to take place on Wednesday, June 17th in San Francisco, California. And while might have been hoping for a futuristic smart mailbox, it looks like we might have to settle for an update to the Dropcam. We’ll be sure to keep you in the loop on the day of the event as announcements from Tony Fadell and co. unfold.