At last year’s Google I/O the Assistant team announced a beta of their Local Home SDK to allow local command and control of Smart Home devices by Google Assistant hardware. Today the SDK graduated from Beta into an official public release.
What does Local Home control do?
Simply put, the SDK allows developers to build micro Java apps that can run on Google Assistant hardware to both map out the local network and search for devices that work with the SDK and enable local control of those devices. No more waiting for your Assistant commands to travel up and back to the cloud, you should get near instantaneous control locally.
With the SDK now out of beta we will hopefully see more device makers enable the local control features. As a heavy user of Google Assistant’s home automation features it would certainly be welcome to reduce the latency often experienced with using the platform.
We’ve currently got a Google Assistant Lamp on the review bench that includes Local Home control so we should be able to report back soon on how the platform performs.
