3G-generation nest thermostat from 2015.
A new Google Nest thermostat has hit the FCC. Droid-Life was the first to see the list on the government site. The list is in secret, so it’s scattered over the details, but the details we have are kind of weird. We think it has air gesture controls.
First, the RF exposure report lists the device as a “thermostat” and says it has 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, all of which seem pretty normal. After that, it lists the device with a “60GHz transmitter,” which is not on the previous nest thermostat. One potential use of a 60 GHz transmitter is “Wiigig,” a type of 60 GHz Wi-Fi that can hit 7 Gbps. While high-speed data transfer doesn’t really seem right for a thermostat, other possibilities are possible with Project Soli, Google’s Air Gesture System, which was first commercialized late last year on the Pixel 4.
Project Soli Lee is an air gesture system that Google has been developing for some time. It is a compact radar system-an-a-chip, and Google has been approved by the FCC to use the Soli in the 57- to 64-GHz frequency band. Soli’s original sales pitch was that, by blasting your hand from 60GHz and catching the return signal, Soli could detect “sub-millimeter motions of your fingers,” which would enable very fine gesture control. It was possible to pinch with your thumb and forefinger to press the button to spin the dial or dial both fingers together. Soli was originally conceived for devices without large touchscreens, such as speakers or smart ches. A structure thermostat could possibly fit into that description, as it does not have a touchscreen and instead is based on a spin-enabled scroll wheel that doubles like the exterior of a thermostat.
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Original soli gestures from 2015. None of this works on Pixel 4.
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These gestures were enabled by this original project soli chip as shown in Google I / O 2015. Note that there are six antennas.
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Google curtailed chip and power consumption in 2016, while still retaining six antennas.
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The Pixel 4 chip has only four antennas. There is probably one to transmit radar and three to receive.
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Sally was demogged in a smartwatch, which makes sense when looking at a small touchscreen.
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There was also a smart speaker demo, which makes sense again when you don’t have a huge touchscreen.
Of course, the Pixel 4 version of Project Soli was a mess, and squeezing the experimental chip to fit it into a smartphone meant hitting exactly what was promised with “sub-millimeter” accuracy. Instead of moving your fingers around, the Pixel 4 needed a big, hand-waving gesture to find anything, and the functionality was pretty futile considering the smartphone at the front already had a huge touchscreen. Maybe a thermostat, which is a lot more gear than a smartphone and doesn’t have to worry about battery life, could use a bigger, more accurate chip.
To date, Google has never taken the swing to design a nest thermostat. Google bought Nest for 2 3.2 billion in 2014, but Nest spent several years operating as an independent company under the Google (and later alphabet) umbrellas. The current flagship thermostat, 3G-Nest, was introduced in 2015, and the cheaper Nest E was launched in 2017. Nest ceased to be a standalone company and merged with Google in 2018. By Google I / O 2019, the nesting company was really dead, and “Nest” became a Google sub-brand. Nest and Google still have a lot of confusing overlaps, such as competitive smart home apps, and it looks like eventually all nest products will need to be replaced by the Google version.
Google may be in charge now, but there’s probably a good reason to release an updated version of Thermostat. It’s just a thermostat! It never needs a faster processor or upgraded connectivity, so you have to get some other excuse to spin a new piece of hardware. Using Google logic, Project Soli seems to be the gesture of the air, for a sufficient reason to create a Google version of the nest thermostat. I’m not sure if anyone really wants to get their hands on a thermostat, but we’ll see what Google’s final sales pitch is.
