Canary has seen one pretty steep low this month after the big change in features for free users including the reduction of video recordings to a short measly 10-sec preview. But now the smart camera company is hoping to gain back some love with the introduction of its Google Assistant integration.

Starting today, you can head over to your Assistant's "Explore" section and look for Canary, or use this direct link, and connect your Canary account to Assistant. When that's done, you'll be able to ask Assistant to talk to Canary or immediately say things like, "ask Canary what's the temperature at home," or "ask Canary for the humidity in my apartment." You can also inquire about the battery life of the wireless Flex camera.

For now, it looks like only environmental features are supported through Assistant. You can't change Canary's modes or inquire about the device's state. Canary says that you'll "soon" be able to ask which members are home and sound the siren, but the integration won't allow disarming the system to avoid any unauthorized actions.

The commands that work (left) and those that don't yet (right).

Even with the upcoming mode control and member inquiry, Canary still has a bit of road to travel to catch up to Nest and Logi, both of which let you view your camera's feed on a connected Chromecast. Still, this is a good start and one I wasn't holding my breath for, at least not this soon: Canary doesn't integrate directly with Alexa, IFTTT, or SmartThings, it just works with Wink and now Assistant. We should consider ourselves lucky.

If you own a Canary camera or several, you can get started right away. The Assistant integration is available for both free and Membership users, on both the all-in-one Canary and the Canary Flex, and works with Assistant on Google Home, phones (Android and iOS), TVs, and Chromebooks.

PRESS RELEASE