Smart Home Doorbells Now Have Open Support in Google Assistant

Many businesses will be able to sell a smart home doorbell that works with Google Assistant now that Google has opened the door.

As part of their developer manuals, Google keeps a reasonably comprehensive list of the various types of devices with which the Assistant can communicate. It’s easier for product developers to combine a device with the Google Assistant until it’s described here.

The Google Assistant introduced open support for a number of entertainment devices in July of last year, which was the last time this page was updated. Google revised the list this evening to show that developers can now use the Assistant API to make a smart doorbell.

In the smart house, doorbells have two functions. An Assistant-integrated doorbell should be able to warn the smart home gadgets that someone is at the door and has rung the bell, much like a regular doorbell. Smart doorbells have recently started to double as surveillance cameras, allowing them to display video on demand and even detect whether a delivery has been delivered or picked up from your home.

According to the Google Assistant API document, Assistant-integrated doorbells will be at least able to offer all of those features, though none of them are specifically required. All of the options line up fairly closely to the feature set of Google’s own Nest Hello doorbell, allowing other companies to create products from a level playing field, if a bit late.