Thermostat Nest 3rd generation 2015 release.
Google’s new Nest thermostat hit the FCC. Droid Life was the first to notice this list on the government website. The list is in confidential mode, so the details are few and far between, but the details we have are rather strange. We think it has air gesture controls.
Firstly, RF Exposure Report lists the device as a “thermostat” and says it has 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, which seems normal enough. He then lists a device with a “60 GHz transmitter” that was not in the previous Nest thermostat. One possible use case for a 60 GHz transmitter is “WiGig, “a form of 60GHz Wi-Fi that can go as high as 7Gbps. However, high-speed data transmission is not entirely suitable for a thermostat, so another more likely possibility is Project Soli, Google’s air gesture system that was first commercialized late in the past. year on the Pixel 4.
Project Soli is an aerial gesture system that Google has been developing for some time. It is a compact radar system on a chip, and Google has FCC approval use Soli in the frequency range 57 to 64 GHz. The initial commercial move for Soli was that by detonating your hand at 60 GHz and picking up the returned signal, Soli could detect “sub-millimeter movements of your fingers,” which would provide very precise gesture control. You could put your thumb and forefinger together to press a button, or rub two fingers together to rotate the dial. Soli was originally designed for devices without large touchscreens such as speakers or smartwatches. The Nest thermostat would most likely fit into this description, as it lacks a touchscreen and instead uses a rotating scroll wheel that serves as the outer casing of the thermostat.
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Original Soli gestures from 2015. None of these work on the Pixel 4.
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These gestures were incorporated into this original Project Soli chip as shown in Google I / O 2015. Note that there are six antennas here.
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In 2016, Google reduced its chip and power consumption while retaining six antennas.
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The Pixel 4 chip has only four antennas. Most likely one for transmitting radar and three for receiving.
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Salt has been showcased as a smartwatch, which makes sense given the small touchscreen.
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There was also a smart speaker demo, which again makes sense when you don’t have a huge touchscreen.
Of course, the Pixel 4 version of Project Soli it was a mess Reducing the size of the experimental chip to fit into a smartphone meant destroying the promised “submillimeter” accuracy. Rather than moving your fingers, the Pixel 4 required large gestures of waving your hands to detect anything, and functionality was very redundant considering the smartphone already has a huge touchscreen on the front. Perhaps a thermostat that is much thicker than a smartphone and doesn’t have to worry about battery life could use a larger, more accurate chip.
To date, Google has not dared to develop the Nest thermostat. Google bought Nest in 2014 it was 3.2 billion, but Nest operated as an independent company for several years under the umbrella of Google (and later Alphabet). The current 3rd generation Nest flagship thermostat was released in 2015 and the cheaper Slot E launched in 2017. Nest ceased to be a standalone company and merged with Google in 2018. According to Google I / O 2019, Nest was really dead, and “Nest” became a sub-brand of Google. Nest and Google still have a lot of confusing overlap as competing smart home apps, and it seems that eventually all Nest products will need to be replaced with Google versions.
Google may be responsible for this right now, but there is rarely a good reason for releasing an updated thermostat. It’s just a thermostat! It never needs faster processors or better connectivity, so you must have another reason to deploy new hardware. Using Google’s logic, Project Soli’s air gestures seem like a good enough reason to build a Google version of the Nest thermostat. I’m not sure if anyone would really want to wave their hand over a thermostat, but we’ll see what the potential Google suggestions for sales are.
