Google has expanded Google Assistant support to a plethora of smart home hardware today. The expansion follows a similar move for smart home entertainment devices in April this year.
According to Google Developers Blog, the new device types getting Google Assistant support are as follows:
- Audio-video receiver
- Streaming box
- Streaming stick
- Soundbar
- Streaming soundbar
- Speaker
“These new device types help build out a more complete solution for smart home media and gaming devices. By implementing these types and traits on your entertainment devices, you can enable users to fully access device and media controls from any Assistant surface,” wrote Google’s Toni Klopfenstein in a blog post.
If you’re a developer, you may check out Google’s documentation and samples to learn how to implement these new features. Thanks to this public documentation, more developers from different companies can get on board to make their products compatible with Assistant, which in turn improves the experience of end-users.
Alongside, Google is also launching a new trait (command) it calls Channel. As the name suggests, Channel lets Google Assistant identify user’s commands to change TV channels.
“The available channels should be shared as a list, per user or device, during SYNC via the availableChannels attribute. This list should comprise of all top or popular channels that the user or device is subscribed to. To ensure a low query latency, we recommend that you keep the channel list small (to 30 channels or less),” reads the guideline for developers.
We could expect Google to reveal more plans it has for Assistant and Smart Homes in general tomorrow at ‘Hey Google’ Smart Home Summit. Stay tuned for updates.
