GoKawiilis a senior reviewer with over twenty years of experience. She covers smart home, IoT, and connected tech, and has written previously for Wirecutter, Wired, Dwell, BBC, and US News.
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One of the best things my smart home does is help me care for my pets, and security cameras are particularly useful for keeping track of my many critters. But the barrage of notifications they send often means I miss important ones. So, when Google announced its new Pet Memory feature for Gemini for Home, I thought this could be the perfect solution.
Pet Memory promises to teach your Google Home smart home who your pets are, allowing connected Nest cameras to go beyond simply telling you they saw an animal to which animal they saw. It can then use that knowledge to adapt your smart home to your pet.
My plan was to use it to keep a digital eye on my three cats while working in my home office, distinguish them from one another, and automate their feeding based on who was at the feeder. But after two weeks of testing, Google’s AI still can’t tell my three cats apart.
Boone giving the Google Nest Cam a good close-up.
My house is on a suburban, three-quarter-acre lot in a quiet neighborhood, and I take full advantage of all this space to have as many animals as possible (my husband has already said no to a goat and horse). But I’ve managed to wrangle a flock of free-ranging chickens, a large, counter-surfing Wirehaired Pointing Griffon called Gus, two indoor/outdoor cats, and — most exciting of all — a new kitten.
As The Verge’s smart home reviewer, I test a lot of connected tech and have found my best use case for security cameras is monitoring my pets around my house and yard. They help keep the chickens safer from predators and my lunch safer from Gus, and act as a type of digital pet door for the cats. When I get a notification that there’s an animal at the door via a video doorbell and/or outdoor camera, it’s likely a cat wants to come in.
Osa the kitten checking out the Nest Cam.
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