Google Assistant

Google Assistant gains open support for smart home doorbells

Kyle Bradshaw | Mar 9 2021 - 10:08 pm PT

Google has opened the door for more companies to offer a smart home doorbell that can integrate with the Assistant.

Google maintains a fairly extensive list of the different types of devices that the Assistant can interact with, as part of their developer documentation. Once a device is listed here, it’s easier for product developers to directly integrate it with the Google Assistant.

The last time this list saw an update was actually in July of last year, when the Google Assistant added open support for a variety of entertainment devices. This evening, Google updated the list to reflect that developers can now create a smart doorbell that uses the Assistant API.

Doorbells serve two distinct purposes in the smart home. Just like a traditional doorbell, an Assistant-integrated doorbell should be able to notify your smart home devices that someone is at the door and has rung the bell. More recently, smart doorbells have begun doubling as security cameras that can show video on demand or even notice when a package has been dropped off or picked up from your doorstep.

Doorbells can let people know someone is at the door. This device can send notifications and stream video if it has the corresponding capability.

According to the Google Assistant API document, Assistant-integrated doorbells will be at least able to offer all of those features, though none of them are specifically required. All of the options line up fairly closely to the feature set of Google’s own Nest Hello doorbell, allowing other companies to create products from a level playing field, if a bit late.

Interestingly, the document also notes that Google explicitly requires Assistant doorbells to have less than 2 seconds (2000 ms) of latency along with over 97% reliability.