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Summary Older Google Home (gen 1), and Google Home Mini (gen 1) devices appear to have issues with a recent firmware update that's being pushed out to devices. The devices are unable to reboot after the update and will, in most cases, get to the step in the bootup process with 4 white lights turned on and then hang there indefinitely. My thoughts This personally happened to one of my Google Home Mini devices and through my attempts to reboot, factory reset, and even reached out to the Google Home support live chat I was able to learn that the Google engineers are working on the issue but I am unsure if there will be a self-service solution to those that have bricked devices because the device locks up seemingly before they connect to the wifi. The earliest reports of this bricking appear to have happened this past Tuesday (12/05/2023). Unfortunately, while not everyone has confirmed this, it appears that those which have mentioned it do report that they had opted into the Preview Program where our devices could get firmware updates and new features pushed out earlier. While I understand there are risks to opting into a program such as this I do also firmly believe that Google should be responsible enough with a preview program to not push firmware updates to devices that are out of warranty and/or aren't in their list of validation devices for new firmware updates. I'd like to see Google provide a solution to this through sideloading of a new firmware through the micro-usb port (if that's even possible), opt to provide an out-of-warranty replacement ( unlikely) or even provide us early adopters with a discount code to buy a new device. It's an unfortunate situation but something that I don't see Google having no fault in causing. There were many ways they could have prevented this and it doesn't seem that any of them were put into place. Sources Sadly it doesn't look like any traditional news sites have picked up on this as of yet. We just have my own personal experience, responses from chat support, and lots posts in the Google Nest Community support forums. Update below https://www.googlenestcommunity.com/t5/Speakers-and-Displays/Google-Home-stuck-with-4-white-lights/td-p/557532 https://www.googlenestcommunity.com/t5/Speakers-and-Displays/google-home-mini-all-4-lights-on/td-p/555963 https://www.googlenestcommunity.com/t5/Speakers-and-Displays/My-Google-Home-mini-suddenly-died/td-p/557160 Edit: Adding Actual News Sources It appears that smaller tech news sites are starting to report on the issue: https://www.androidauthority.com/google-home-mini-bricked-2-3393591/ https://www.howtogeek.com/google-is-looking-into-bricked-google-home-speakers/

I found some unused ESP8266's that I bought a while ago and totally forgot, I am bored so I thought I would take my home automation few steps further. I was using simple Web UI based control system but having 3 nodes with 5 relays its getting mind boggling to remember what is controlled by what. I found about gBridge 2 years late and sadly project is dead and Google Actions API seems to have changed so even self hosting is not an option. I looked at IFTTT and apparently since the last time I used it over 8 years ago, it turned into a subscription based service, so that's out of question, plus no solution I have found integrates with google home but only google assistant. Any ideas? I got a nice network setup and I can self host (as long as it can be hosted on a linux server or SBCs) whatever is needed and access wherever I am.

Is there a way to make a physical button that controls my Google home devices

Hello everyone, Linus Recently made a Video where he used his server to control his Garage Door With Google Home i was wondering if there was a way to use google home to control the RGB colors on my pc like i do with the leds in my room.

A couple of days ago my Crestron Prodigy systems brain went out. We can not use our whole house audio system. I was thinking of either getting a Sonos amp for each room, a cheap integrated 2ch amp for each room and hooking them up to a chrome cast. What is the best solution? We have 6 rooms controlled (2 4 zone amps), and each room does not have more than 2 in ceiling Polk audio speakers. Also need a keypad to control input and volume in each room. Would like to keep under 3000, unless there is a excellent option that is over that price. If you are wondering I am replacing the switches with Lutron Caseta dimmers and I am going to control them with the google home app.

#FirstWorldProblemYo System which is a part of IOT made a bit frenzy during the Advertisement spot segment for some folks, which google had on their product "Google Home" , The system responded to the trigger voice command from the television "OK Google" & tried to respond to the following command following the ad transmission, Google Home is a voice activated speaker powered by the Google Assistant which always listens , which made this a mini chaos to those users who had it in a hearing range to the television the spot featured over and over again, people uttering its popular wake word, “OK Google” made the device wake & respond abruptly, The home system is dormant until a user calls out . Then they perform any number of functions from playing a musical selection to turning on or off the lights. Some users reporting that the system didn't recognize the command & responded " sorry, I don’t understand " #OkayDad, More Money Google hasn't yet commented on this mild hiccup , but no harm done. Sources : http://www.digitaltrends.com/home/google-home-super-bowl-ad/ Plus others Jump into the comments section down there...

Soooooo, as you guys probably know google home was released recently. And if you didn't know, it's basically a better (in my opinion) version of the amazon echo. It has more features, is better at conversations, and has better ai. Anyways, the google home is targeted to rival the amazon echo. It is within the $150 price range and has the decently sized speaker. On the other hand, the amazon echo dot selles better than the echo and is 3X cheaper. Google hasn't released or announced a new $50 variant to compete with the amazon echo dot. However, they probably will pretty soon. What do you guys think about this? Which one do you think is better? Do you think google will release a $50 variant? When do you think it will be released? Amazon vs. Google! Tell me what you think, I'm really bored so yaaaa

Dear LTT Community, For about a year now I have my Google home controlling my smart light in my room. And I was searching for a way, that if you push the physical light switch connected to the wall to just turn off and on the light instead of cutting the power like you would with a normal Bulb. Because every morning or evening when my siblings or parents come into my room they turn off the light because they hit the physical switch next to the door but the light was turned off with Google home commands. So they hit the switch again and that turns on the light. So sometimes the light starts the connect to wifi process again by blinking in a 2 second pattern. And I have to reconnect it to our wifi and set up a new command for the lights. So I was just wondering if there was a physical switch that could replace my built in the wall one that just sends a command to my light bulb to turn it on that way. Thanks for taking your time to read this. And I hope someone can help me figure this out. ~ Slagbot

Anytime I say "Hey Google, play Clothes Off by Amiigos, my Home mini plays Lamb Talk by Quavo instead and I'm really confused since my Google activity shows that it has heard it mostly correctly so I'm unsure if this is on Spotify or Google. Can anyone please test it out themselves or help me in any way? VID_20191022_184829.mp4

What happens when you have a google home, with multiple android users, who all want to be able to use the same google home device? If someone says "hey Google" will everyone's phone along with the google home respond at the same time?

I want to start using a VPN. My computers/phone will be covered, but I also have a Samsung Smart TV and a Google Home. For those, I know I could flash my router and add a vpn, but (a) I'd rather not mess with my router and (b) I'm moving soon to an apartment building that has a business line for the building and wifi for the tenants, there's no router for me to adjust. my question, would using a vpn on my computer/phone and then not on my smart tv/google home defeat the purpose of a vpn? my current public ip would still go out w/ the other two devices.

I'm one of what I've seen as many people who use their own personal domain for their own and maybe family email accounts. I've been finding countless examples of Google removing features that used to work fine that keep making it near impossible to use as your primary email. For starters, I'll share my experience with Google Home. I've had a Google Home for quite some time, and when Google came out with the voice recognition for different family members, linking their voice to different Google accounts, I saw it as a game changer and bought two of the then new Google Home mini. Back then I had my whole family connected to the Home with it able to detect each of our voices and it worked perfectly for quite some time. Some of the accounts were G Suite and some normal Gmail, but it worked perfectly. Recently I realized it wasn't working, so I opened the app and realized with the new update, I now needed to share my home with the other family members. I was initially excited because this seemed like a much easier way for the app to be set up, that is until I tried to add my first family member. I got an error that I then Googled and found out that G Suite users were now no longer able to share their home. I tried everything from adding emails from the same domain, from Gmail, even from a different domain, but nothing worked. I spent a ton of time on the help chat where I was told it was a security feature, but quite a few people had been complaining and hopefully, they would address it in a future update. This didn't change the fact I dropped at least $50 on two new Home minis for a feature that once worked fine and now was pretty much useless for all but one person. When I was fed up and decided to just rate the app one star with a review explaining my situation, just for the slight chance the developers would notice it sooner, I found myself unable to leave a review in the Play store. Really confused, I went on my computer, but the same thing. After some more Googling, I realized that Google was phasing out the ability for their G Suite customers from being able to leave reviews. Fed up, I kept looking through forums of people having issue after issue with this service that was advertised as being perfect for home use, never working for Google products. From Youtube TV, to project FI, to wherever you not only see missing features with G Suite, but the removal of existing features. I have encountered occasional issues with missing features, but it seems an increasingly common trend of removing previously existing features. I would understand the security argument if they were just off by default, but allowing admin to go in and turn it, but this is rarely the case. At this point, it seems like Google is trying to actively scare off its G Suite users using it for personal use. I have no issue with Google trying to phase out a product. If they gave me a deadline and allowed me to migrate to Gmail, I would be fine with that. My issue is that Google has said nothing about phasing out these users, instead just slowly removing features so over time users will migrate away themselves. Right now I would happily switch to a normal everyday Gmail address, but yet Google has no feature to migrate your data into a Gmail account making me more or less stuck without hours of migrating my data from years of using the account, and yet still not having it be the exact same. I love Google, I've loved it all the way since 2014 when I switched from the Apple ecosystem, but part of the reason I switched away was to not have to deal with all of this user-hostile bullshit. If anything, this is a good lesson that our entire digital lives are in the hands of giant corporations that, no matter how much they like to pretend they do, don't care whatsoever about their individual users.

I am aware that Google assistant can control Chromecast devices, but what about Chromecast audio? When I search it just shows stuff about normal Chromecast. I'd think Google would make this loud and clear to brag about Google assistant. I even tried asking Google assistant. Anyone know? Thanks!

I have to decide if I want to buy a google home or an amazon Echo but I want to Program my own Apps/Skills, I now that you can make Alexa Skills using the AWS toolkit and C#, which is one of the languages I now good, but I would rather buy a Google Home if there was a way to program it in C# or Java. So is there any way to make an App for google Home without Dialogflow.

Is there any way to create an Alexa skill without an AWS account? To create an account you'd need a credit-card and I dont have one. I just want to make small skills to control my house and dont publish them if I'd need a Server that wouldn't be a problem. Or alternatively is there any way to make a Google home app in C#?

Hi, Just wanting to know if its a good idea to install a android rom on a Fire 10 tablet, so I can control my smart home with it instead of my phone with google apps. Any tips or issues regarding OS and hardware would be great to know. Cheers.

I want to be able to say "Add $ to the homework list" and have the assistant add it so some list, whatever the app is. I've been able to do that with IFTTT, but I cannot find an app that I can use to read back that list to me if i ask my google home "What homework do I have?" Everything I've tried only adds to the list, not reads.

This is great news for people waiting to get a Google Home or Pixel phone! However, there are always the odd ones out... But this is still amazing news. Google has announced at the DNI summit that Google Assistant will become available for Western Europe in 2018 at the DNI Summit in Amsterdam. This was shown on a slide during the summit that showed planned availability for the Google Assistant in 2018. The Map showed that the support for the assistant as planned for 2018 will be in or coming to: North America Middle America South America Western Europe Russia Saudi Arabia India and more... With this the supported languages for the Google assistant will almost triple from the current 8 supported languages. Tweakers.net heard that the support for the Dutch language will be released in the first quarter of 2018. Sources: https://tweakers.net/nieuws/135299/google-brengt-assistant-in-2018-uit-in-nederland-en-belgie.html (Dutch tech news site) https://www.androidcentral.com/google-assistant-will-expand-38-countries-and-17-languages-2018-0

Hi, Just wanting to know if its worth waiting for google home to update to control my Android TV or invest in a Logitech Harmony Hub? I'm also using an old Amplifier with an IR remote. Cheers.

Buy Smart Speakers on Amazon: http://geni.us/x6q9 Is HomePod better than Google Home Max? How good does it sound? How about compared to Alexa or Sonos? Answers now!

Hi. I just bought myself a google home mini and I wanted to have my first integration of smart home devices to use google home mini. I tried to look for a good priced smart desk lamp, and the only one that came up to me was Xiaomi's yeelight smart led lamp. However, I don't know if the yeelight is supported by google home and I do Not know if it will listen to my voice commands. Please, if anyone have anyidea on this, please reply asap!

Hi, Just been trying to get Phlex a custom voice command addon to use Plex. Sadly I've encountering annoying issues during the installation process which I cant solve. Been following this youtube guide: OK, so the step I'm stuck on is I cant seem to link my Google account with Phlex about 7mins into the tutorial. My error message. "Unable to connect to Client at http://localhost/phlex/, please check the setting for 'Public Address' in the Phlex UI." Any help on this would be great. Cheers.

Hi, Just been exploring using google home assistant to control my smart TV with voice commands. Sadly I cant seem to get it to link with my phones google assistant. I'm using a Samsung Galaxy S7 with a Sony Android Smart TV. Any help or guides on this would be great. Cheers.

So, looks like it's 50% off. Buy 2 x Google Home for $129.98 https://www.bestbuy.com/site/google-home-2-pack/9999290100050001.p

So one of the major things that I'm looking at getting right now is a google home mini. I know there is going to be a sale and it will be way cheaper ($20 I think) so I was thinking of getting it then. I just want to know if it is worth it because if I do get it then I want to connect it to Lifx bulbs and a chromecast. Does anyone here have one? Is it worth it or is amazon dot better?