Nest Announces New Smart Home API 38
mpicpp writes "Today, in advance of Google I/O, Nest has officially announced a new developer program and API that will allow other companies' smart devices to communicate with Nest's Protect smoke alarm and Learning Thermostat. Among the companies that Nest is partnering with for this initial publicity push are IFTTT, Jawbone, LIFX, Logitech, Mercedes-Benz, Whirlpool, Chamberlain, and Google itself—the latter two companies will release Nest-compatible features this fall, while the others are all available today.
Looked at the IFTTT integration (Score:5, Informative)
When I looked at it earlier today, it was rather lacking. No ability to set your Home or Away status and no ability to control temperatures for people who set both an upper and lower bound rather than a single temperature. Ended up being a rather disappointing update from a user's perspective. From a developer's perspective, it was pretty meh. It's just what you'd expect, and not much more.
Rather uninteresting API. (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the API reference. [nest.com] It doesn't let you see or do much. I though the Nest was supposed to "learn" your behavior patterns, but if it does, that info isn't exposed in the API. You can look at the temperature and heat/cool/fan status, and maybe change the setpoints. You can tell if someone is home, and when they set the time for when they were coming back.
This isn't an API for the device. It's an API for a Google-hosted service that controls the device. Google is in total control of your home.