A mystery Google gadget with 60GHz Soli radar just crossed the FCC

We’ve been waiting for Google’s tiny radar to fulfill its imaginable for years. Now, it looks similar the company’s astatine slightest giving Soli different chance. According to filings astatine the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Google present has a enigma “wireless device” that features the short-range 60GHz radar tech — arsenic good arsenic 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and a “base plate” of immoderate kind.

What could this instrumentality perchance be? One early educated guess is that it’s simply a caller Nest Thermostat, and that could marque sense. The FCC filings don’t amusement this instrumentality having immoderate different radios beyond 2.4GHz and 60GHz; the 2020 Nest Thermostat was likewise airy connected radios, but it did usage Soli radar to automatically observe erstwhile you’re successful beforehand of the thermostat and airy up the show invisibly hidden down its mirror. It’d besides marque consciousness for a thermostat to person a “base plate,” of course, whether partition mountable oregon perchance adjacent a stand.

An update to Google’s 2021 Nest Hub, which added Soli radar for slumber tracking, seems little apt — a astute location hub would surely person a low-power vigor tech similar Thread oregon Zigbee to power different astute location gadgets, and there’s nary notation of either here. But successful 2024, I’d honestly expect immoderate Google astute location gadget to person Thread, truthful would it truly beryllium a thermostat oregon fume alarm oregon that benignant of gadget?

It does look to beryllium thing hardwired, since there’s nary notation of batteries — not adjacent the brace of AAA batteries that showed up successful the FCC filing for the 2020 Nest Thermostat. Today’s filing shows the caller enigma gadget was tested either plugged into AC powerfulness (via a “setup box”) oregon plugged into a USB cablegram plugged into a laptop. (Early Nest Thermostats do technically person USB ports that tin beryllium utilized for charging.)

I person a hard clip imagining it could beryllium a astute talker with lone 2.4GHz 802.11n Wi-Fi, arsenic adjacent Google’s cheapest Nest Mini speakers enactment the 5GHz set arsenic well.

Could it perchance beryllium the leaked Pixel Watch 3? One of Google’s earliest tech demos for Soli was successful a smartwatch, and Google’s watches don’t usage the 5GHz band; 2.4GHz, Bluetooth, and Soli would beryllium capable for a Wi-Fi-only variant of the watch, and the “base plate” could beryllium a charger. But no, Google claims this instrumentality volition usually beryllium astatine slightest 20cm distant from a idiosyncratic and didn’t behaviour radiation investigating for that reason:

That’s akin to what it said astir the Nest Thermostat successful 2020: “The antenna of this product, nether mean usage condition, is astatine slightest 20cm distant from the assemblage of the user. So, this instrumentality is classified arsenic Mobile Device.”

Any FCC sleuths person a amended idea? For now, I’m reasoning it’s inactive a mystery.