Nest Introduces Nest Weave, Creating Most Comprehensive Developer Platform for

The technology enables low power devices in the home to communicate with each other securely and with no lag time, Nest says, even if the Wi-Fi goes down or is out of range, or one of the other devices in the Nest network crashes.

Since that could prove a nightmare for easy navigation, Nest is launching a Works with Nest store, where all of the connected products will be organized by category and product.

Nest, the Google-owned company that builds products for the connected home, has turned appliances even as mundane as thermostats and smoke alarms into beloved, sought-after Christmas gifts. Google first announced that it was making Weave available for developers in May at its developer conference; the move should let the search giant set standards and ultimately help define the Internet of Things ecosystem.

Meanwhile, you can manage and monitor the Yale lock from the same smartphone app that oversees the other Nest gear.

This points to a future where the smart home begins to make more sense, where it can appeal to far more people. If a burglar severed the Internet connection, the Linus lock would still remain functional, collecting up to 10 days of history and utilizing a magnetometer to ensure that the door is fully closed. Nest Weave lets people get connected right from their smartphones using the Nest app. The two entities eventually merged together, culminating in the launch of a rebranded device called the Nest Cam earlier this year. And it introduced the Works with Nest Store, an online retail hub to showcase certain devices that, as the name suggests, work with Nest’s existing hardware trio.

Everything will be controlled from the Nest app, even the Linus lock.

“If you’re building a lock, we’re still talking about transferring kilobytes of memory, in order to get it [working] in that small of a package, with that battery life”. Yet Nest insists its taking a different approach than Apple’s connected device play, HomeKit – Nest is opening its protocol to any interested developer, rather than selected ones, and will pair the devices to owners with iPhones or Android smartphones. More importantly, tapping into the Internet via an ordinary Wi-Fi network requires a significant amount of power, which isn’t always an option for digital door locks and other slim devices that run on batteries. But at the same time, the company is giving device makers the freedom to offer their own apps.

Aubrey Thelen, Nest’s head of developer relations, tells us that things like basic camera control, motion and sound events, and extracting clips from the camera are all possibilities through the API. In other words, the Nest system continues to expand beyond Nest.

Yale’s Linus lock that connects to Nest products via thread networking.

Overall, what we’ve seen here are three tools that Nest is gearing up to deploy with the sole objective of showing the world that not only its Nest Cam, but also Nest Protect and iconic Nest thermostat are central parts to the home and that it is reliable, simple, and just works. As Hu explained to me, many companies have expertise in the segment they now work in – GE knows how to make switches, while Big Ass knows how to make ceiling fans – but they might not be so proficient in apps, nor have the infrastructure and manpower to keep software updated. At launch, August, Philips Hue, Mimo, Skybell, and Petnet are the first developers to have access. Though that’s good for device makers, it shows just how complicated the fledgeling smart home market may become.