Business Insider:
In early February, Google announced that Assistant would work with its home security and alarm system, Nest Secure. The problem: Users didn’t know a microphone existed on their Nest security devices to begin with. On Tuesday, a Google representative told Business Insider the company had made an “error.”
“The on-device microphone was never intended to be a secret and should have been listed in the tech specs,” the person said. “That was an error on our part.”
What — did they “forget” they had put a microphone in these things?
“And, oh yeah, we knew that product we sold for decades causes cancer. But not officially.”
They’ve had microphones in the Nest Protect since generation 2 (introduced June 2015) and no one seemed to notice or care about that
Right, because they’ve been upfront since the get-go that those microphones existed and about what they’re used for.
That’s a world apart from “oh btw there’s been a secret microphone hidden in your Nest Secure system this whole time.”
It’s an especially bad look when Google and Nest have spent years claiming a firewall between the two companies and their privacy practices, yet here we are with an undisclosed microphone that suddenly turns your Nest Guard into a Google Assistant.
I’m sure it wasn’t a secret to *some* people. Just to the public.
Probably there for a feature for listening in on your house (by which I mean, YOU doing that deliberately, as a normal feature of a security system), but they didn’t get the software side implemented for release, so dropped it from the press/specs as irrelevant.
(Spec sheets never have all the hardware, just the stuff someone comparing might CARE about, after all.)
But they woulda left the hardware in, because you can’t add a mic via a software update, and also it was already built and approved.
Is quality of mic listed there somewhere I missed?
And is there a meaningful difference between “voice recognition capable quality” and “lets you, the end user, tell if the person talking over it is someone who should be in your house or you need to call 911”?
(I mean, the mic in my iPhone can do voice recognition. And it’s not exactly a hyper-expensive, bulky microphone that you’d never consider putting in a security device because it’s only needed for Scary Bad.)
Makes one wonder if there is a camera in there too, might need that as well.. down the road.
“It also said the microphone was originally included in the Nest Guard for the possibility of adding new security features down the line, like the ability to detect broken glass.”
I’m not saying the intent must have been nefarious, but “like broken glass” is an awful reason to include a microphone of high enough quality to do voice recognition. You’re being lied to now. This is the “grasping at straws” stage.
The error was they got caught not giving a crap, again.
iPhones don’t have great microphones, but most (all?) have multiple microphones and use them for background noise cancellation. I’ve found Siri much worse with EarPods or over most BlueTooth microphones (though it works quite well with AirPods, so who knows?).
As for overall quality, I’m not sure. We used to have a security system that detected glass breaking via microphone, but those microphones were understood to have lousy quality. The more central sensors had better microphones and the whole system was (at one point) monitored. If you set off the system, you were supposed to go to one of the better microphones and clearly announce the back-down secret code.