Google Home FAQ

Sheep Shagger · 24-12-2020 6:52pm

killbillvol2 wrote: »

Somebody mentioned here that the Max was being discontinued I think.

Think that was the old max speaker right?

Hub max (screen with camera) is still around although the only place you'll find it here (where I've bought 3 of mine) is Dixon at Dublin Airport.

The normal hub (7 inch screens) are readily available now after only being at the airport (in ROI).

The Black Oil · 09-01-2021 4:06pm

Why are RTE's new bulletins so far behind, from the day before?

sioda · 09-01-2021 11:33pm

The Black Oil wrote: »

Why are RTE's new bulletins so far behind, from the day before?

The have been like that for a while, is there any alternative?

How come this thread is unstuck?

Moreilly · 12-01-2021 9:29am

Google homes of various types in most rooms, mix of minis, hubs and hub max and I swear to god sometimes they are head wreaking, 'hey Google turn off the light' power controls not supported, repeat then it works. Play 2fm - Apple music isn't available in ....., Set alarm for 5:30 am - alarm set, turn off the light' - alarm cancelled . Hub max in the kitchen : 'hey google' - no response, move closer - no response, 2ft away it decides to wake up. Play some classical music - correct text comes on the screen so it hasn't misheard me but starts 'tears for fears or starship ext...
I have the Google home system since day oneI was getting much better performance in the past, it all seems very flakey now, so much so that I'd not sure I'd recommend it to anyone over Alexa (and I've never seen a Alexa in operation)

Raoul · 12-01-2021 10:29am

Moreilly wrote: »

Google homes of various types in most rooms, mix of minis, hubs and hub max and I swear to god sometimes they are head wreaking, 'hey Google turn off the light' power controls not supported, repeat then it works. Play 2fm - Apple music isn't available in ....., Set alarm for 5:30 am - alarm set, turn off the light' - alarm cancelled . Hub max in the kitchen : 'hey google' - no response, move closer - no response, 2ft away it decides to wake up. Play some classical music - correct text comes on the screen so it hasn't misheard me but starts 'tears for fears or starship ext...
I have the Google home system since day oneI was getting much better performance in the past, it all seems very flakey now, so much so that I'd not sure I'd recommend it to anyone over Alexa (and I've never seen a Alexa in operation)

Alexa is the same really. I had Alexa for over a year and for similar reasons to the above (and I got a pixel), I moved over to google home. You face all the same problems really.

Mickeroo · 12-01-2021 10:31am

I've been getting the "power controls not supported" one a lot lately. Seems to have replaced the "sorry something went wrong" one from a few months ago

The J Stands for Jay · 12-01-2021 10:54am

I have a Google home and a Google nest mini. The home is fine and works perfectly. The mini will tell me to link music accounts on the home app, which they already are and crap like that.

SierraTango · 12-01-2021 11:29am

Mickeroo wrote: »

I've been getting the "power controls not supported" one a lot lately. Seems to have replaced the "sorry something went wrong" one from a few months ago

Same. It's getting quite annoying!

Irish_peppa · 12-01-2021 11:35am

Moreilly wrote: »

Google homes of various types in most rooms, mix of minis, hubs and hub max and I swear to god sometimes they are head wreaking, 'hey Google turn off the light' power controls not supported, repeat then it works. Play 2fm - Apple music isn't available in ....., Set alarm for 5:30 am - alarm set, turn off the light' - alarm cancelled . Hub max in the kitchen : 'hey google' - no response, move closer - no response, 2ft away it decides to wake up. Play some classical music - correct text comes on the screen so it hasn't misheard me but starts 'tears for fears or starship ext...
I have the Google home system since day oneI was getting much better performance in the past, it all seems very flakey now, so much so that I'd not sure I'd recommend it to anyone over Alexa (and I've never seen a Alexa in operation)

To be honest i though it was just me..but have these google homes been getting dumber last 7 or 8 weeks? Mishearing, playing irrelelevant stuff answering questions in ludicris ways. I thought was my imagination

Bluefoam · 12-01-2021 1:00pm

Whenever I ask Google to play music... it plays Muse... very frustrating

fletch · 12-01-2021 1:11pm

Bluefoam wrote: »

Whenever I ask Google to play music... it plays Muse... very frustrating

Same! I wonder how much additional revenue Muse earn from this

sioda · 12-01-2021 6:16pm

I have a home plug on a uplighter called very imaginatively uplighter and once every so often uplighter on gives me Duran Duran on Spotify.

Raoul · 13-01-2021 10:47am

sioda wrote: »

I have a home plug on a uplighter called very imaginatively uplighter and once every so often uplighter on gives me Duran Duran on Spotify.

What's the problem?

Alkers · 13-01-2021 12:08pm

Moreilly wrote: »

Google homes of various types in most rooms, mix of minis, hubs and hub max and I swear to god sometimes they are head wreaking, 'hey Google turn off the light' power controls not supported, repeat then it works. Play 2fm - Apple music isn't available in ....., Set alarm for 5:30 am - alarm set, turn off the light' - alarm cancelled . Hub max in the kitchen : 'hey google' - no response, move closer - no response, 2ft away it decides to wake up. Play some classical music - correct text comes on the screen so it hasn't misheard me but starts 'tears for fears or starship ext...
I have the Google home system since day oneI was getting much better performance in the past, it all seems very flakey now, so much so that I'd not sure I'd recommend it to anyone over Alexa (and I've never seen a Alexa in operation)

Agreed, our performance has significantly deteriorated but I think it's been going on longer than 7 / 8 weeks

Rowley Birkin QC · 13-01-2021 6:35pm

Alkers wrote: »

Agreed, our performance has significantly deteriorated but I think it's been going on longer than 7 / 8 weeks

You'd wonder is it a familiarity thing or an actual service issue?

As in, are we now all so used to barking orders at the units that the careful pronunciation that we probably all used at the start of ownership has slipped into something more casual and the devices are struggling. I've definitely noticed some frustrations over the last few months compared to when I kitted out the house first.

JimmyVik · 13-01-2021 6:44pm

We have 6 of them all in different rooms. Different google devices too.
They have gone to sh!t the last couple of months.
So much so im thinking of moving to Alex.
Really getting sick of google assistants now. We all find ourselves swearing at it and calling it a fukin idiot.

It was working perfectly up til mid November for the last few years and since then its turning on the wrong devices. Its hearing completely differnt things to what we are asking it.
"Hey Google, Turn on the Kitchen lights". It answers with "Power city blah blah is closed now."
Or it says power options are not available at the moment. Have 3 goes and eventually it turns "something" on or off".

Broadcasting which used to be 100% perfect is hit or miss now. Id say 75% of the time it takes half of what you say, if any of it and broadcasts it. This from different rooms. Always the same rubbish behviour. Even after i factory reset them last week.

JimmyVik · 13-01-2021 6:47pm

Mickeroo wrote: »

I've been getting the "power controls not supported" one a lot lately. Seems to have replaced the "sorry something went wrong" one from a few months ago

This. Im fukin sick of it.

jogdish · 13-01-2021 8:39pm

To echo some of the complaints, notice the last two months, "whats the temp" sorry what are you asking? Repeat myself works fine. Add the various pot luck of the radio issues.

Now I also have an Alexa, purely as a kitchen radio works great on RTE radio 1, snappy and works. However the few times I have asked Alex a question, Directions to a shop/opening times/phone number of a business - it has never worked. Asked was a local shop open, yes a shop by a different name in Hong Kong was indeed open! As much as I am disappointed in G home it is much better than Alexa in terms of actually understanding your questions.

Albeit, it's still not great. Also where the hell is Google calling ? and Duo automated calling ? My home hub keeps telling I can make a call only to tell me that is not available yet the advert is on the screen

copacetic · 14-01-2021 10:11am

Have an extra home hub, new out of the box for an office setup. Greyish, changes to bright White screen on startup and that’s it. Dead out of the box? Google support worse than useless, it was a Christmas present, any option but to try and return it?

Anyone come across the issue, doesn’t seem that common, hardware reset via volume up and down only advice online and doesn’t react to that.

JimmyVik · 14-01-2021 12:23pm

A couple of months ago when i was in a room and would say "turn off the light", it would turn off the light in that room as the light is assigned to that room.
Now 7 out of 10 times it turns off all the lights in the house. Sometimes it will even turn off the sockets too.
The thing is getting dumber by the day.
Ive taken my central heating off of it because it is turning it on sometimes when i ask it to turn on other things. I dont realize it has been turned on til i start sweating. That could get expensive.

timetogo1 · 14-01-2021 1:46pm

I have a few of the nests and a home hub. I don't have many of the issues here.
It might be because I set the language to English US. I did that several months ago as some features are only available to US users e.g. Talk to "ourgroceries" is not available in my language "English UK" but is when I chose "English US"
Also some beta features can be enabled for US users.

I don't know if that is why mine are working OK but might be worth a shot.

https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/7550584

The stuff that works that I use every day.
Turning off lights in the room I'm in.
All weather / temperature questions.
Routines work pretty well.
Anything from Spotify.

Stuff that's flakey.
The odd Irish radio station.
I get the occasional "Power control not supported" error about once a week and then try again and it works fine.

Setanter · 14-01-2021 9:12pm

Anybody got suggestions for cool things that are available with US English and not on UK English?

timetogo1 · 14-01-2021 9:56pm

Setanter wrote: »

Anybody got suggestions for cool things that are available with US English and not on UK English?

At the time I went to the US version to get this update.
https://9to5google.com/2020/10/27/hands-on-with-the-new-google-nest-hub-and-smart-display-ui-redesign-video/
It's probably updated for everybody by now.

Also the talk to "appname" feature didn't work on UK English. On US English its fine.

maxamillius · 16-01-2021 12:20am

Have to say my google speakers are doin my head in at the moment, wonder what’s going on with them?’ Are google actually investing time and money into making sure they operate flawlessly?!

kenmc · 16-01-2021 10:11am

I thought I was the only one experiencing this sort of sh!t. Google in my house seems to have gone to absolute cack in the last few months. "Hey Google, what's the forecast?" "According to Wikipedia, a weather forecast is blah de blah".

"Ok Google, set a timer for 7 minutes". "New timer for 10 minutes, starting now". FFS. "Ok Google, cancel timer and start new timer for 7 minutes". "I can't determine which timer to cancel" grrrrrr

I don't know if it's deliberately fuking with me to get a replacement, or if I've lost the power of speech.

16-01-2021 11:21am

kenmc wrote: »

I thought I was the only one experiencing this sort of sh!t. Google in my house seems to have gone to absolute cack in the last few months. "Hey Google, what's the forecast?" "According to Wikipedia, a weather forecast is blah de blah".

"Ok Google, set a timer for 7 minutes". "New timer for 10 minutes, starting now". FFS. "Ok Google, cancel timer and start new timer for 7 minutes". "I can't determine which timer to cancel" grrrrrr

I don't know if it's deliberately fuking with me to get a replacement, or if I've lost the power of speech.

If have these issues all the time. My biggest issue is my mini randomly stops playing the radio, I then say Hey google play news talk Fm. I can’t play news from news talk yet. Then starts me pronouncing every word so deliberately I sound like a lunatic. And she might get it wrong two more times before we get there. Later on the radio goes off and we start the dance again.

kenmc · 16-01-2021 1:57pm

MAXFANTANA wrote: »

If have these issues all the time. My biggest issue is my mini randomly stops playing the radio, I then say Hey google play news talk Fm. I can’t play news from news talk yet. Then starts me pronouncing every word so deliberately I sound like a lunatic. And she might get it wrong two more times before we get there. Later on the radio goes off and we start the dance again.

Oh yeah, newstalk causes problems for me too. Then sometimes she understands, but then inquires if I would still like to play that on living room TV like I NEVER HAVE BEFORE FFS WHY WOULD I START NOW?

McMurphy · 18-01-2021 6:58pm

Kintarō Hattori wrote: »

I had a horrendous time with disconnects on my two outdoor camera's. I used some range extenders initially and they worked for a time but didn't fully solve the issue. I then got a Mesh system from Huawei which was better but there was still frequent dropouts. I said feck it, got the Google Wi-Fi and I don't know what magic is in the units but it's been a dream since. There is still the occasional dropout but it's totally acceptable and quite rare.

Ok lads I think I'll admit defeat and possibly shell out on a Google WiFi. The eero system worked for a few days and then started experiencing the same disconnection issues as before.

I eventually sent the eero back to Amazon in the end up.

Funny thing is, my nest cam won't connect to the WiFi network at all when I let the WiFi automatically select the WiFi channel (Virgin), meaning I have to set it manually, I find channel 9 usually works best.

Still subject to random your camera is offline notices though. It's a pain in the hoop.

AngelaRI · 21-01-2021 5:59pm

Glad I'm not the only one with these issues! Definitely been ongoing for more than a few weeks and getting worse by the day. Misheard commands. Randomly dropping or replacing words in a command (I can see the command on my Hubs). Or just ignore - words appear, disappear without response after a few seconds.
My most common usage nowadays "Hey Google, Feedback" - and they've gotten a LOT of feedback from me lately, some rather, er, frustrated...

I think I found the trick for the lights though: if my mini in my office won't respond to 'Hey Google, turn off the lights', it usually responds to 'Hey Google, turn off the f****g lights' :rolleyes:

Bluefoam · 21-01-2021 7:27pm

AngelaRI wrote: »

Glad I'm not the only one with these issues! Definitely been ongoing for more than a few weeks and getting worse by the day. Misheard commands. Randomly dropping or replacing words in a command (I can see the command on my Hubs). Or just ignore - words appear, disappear without response after a few seconds.
My most common usage nowadays "Hey Google, Feedback" - and they've gotten a LOT of feedback from me lately, some rather, er, frustrated...

I think I found the trick for the lights though: if my mini in my office won't respond to 'Hey Google, turn off the lights', it usually responds to 'Hey Google, turn off the f****g lights' :rolleyes:

Google just added '**** off' to my shopping list... I was getting frustrated that it didn't recognise multiple items I had tried to add... At least it understood what I was saying, just not the context

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