IoT & Google Assistant

Getting started with smart home development, part 1

“Ok Google, set the temperature to 72 degrees and turn off the TV.”

It’s fun to ask the Google Assistant questions and have it, seemingly like magic, return answers to you. It’s a whole different feeling when you can ask the Assistant to do things for you in the physical world. Using the Actions on Google developer platform, you can integrate and control any IoT device through the Assistant.

This is part one of a two-part series, where I cover fundamental concepts and APIs for smart home Actions on Google. These key elements include:

Part 1

1. Natural language understanding (NLU) for IoT
2. Device to cloud API communication flow
3. Key concepts: device types, device traits, and the home graph

Part 2

1. Incoming calls: SYNC, QUERY, EXECUTE, and DISCONNECT
2. Outgoing calls: Report state and request sync

Natural language understanding for IoT

When it comes to IoT with voice control, an important question to ask is: Does it support natural language? With Google Assistant and the…