Google announces Home Feed, a new AI security feed for your Nest devices

Damien Wilde | Oct 15 2019 - 7:46 am PT

Google has announced Home Feed, which is a new security feed for your existing Google Home and Nest Home devices as well as the Home app on mobile.

The new system requires a Nest subscription starting at $6 per month. This unlocks new abilities in your Nest Home devices. Your Google Assistant-powered speakers will be able to detect what Google refers to as ‘critical’ sounds such as dog barks or smoke alarms, this then is able to send an alert to your phone.

Home Feed essentially turns your old non-smart tech into smart tech simply be leveraging the abilities of your Nest devices. Notifications will appear via the Google Home app on your smartphone. You are then given the option to listen live to the alert or the recording of the alert or alarm that triggered your device.

If you or the app deems that the alert is an emergency, then it can directly connect you to the emergency services via a pop-up icon. It will contact the appropriate emergency services that are closest to you, no matter where you happen to be located.

All of these notifications and Home Feed will come as part of a future update to the Google Home app. It will work much like some existing systems such as the TP-Link Kasa smart home platform, whereby you can see all of the snippets and alerts from one convenient place.

Unlike competing options, the Home Feed within the new Google Home app is able to organize and highlight what it deems as important notifications so that you can quickly see what you need to see at a glance.