Google GE Lighting + Amazon Echo Charcoal Smart Control of Traditional Fixtures

Surprisingly bad at home automation

so for $25 this thing is a pretty good deal, but if you have the expectation of using it too conveniently turn your lights and TV off then you're going to spend a significant amount of time fighting with it if you have a significant amount of devices in your home. if you only have a few devices it works pretty good, but the more Google speakers and the more smart devices you get the worse the entire system works. That's kind of a big problem since the entire smart home infrastructure more or les...

Used to like it

It seems the longer i use my Google Assistants the worse they get. I am so tired of hearing "something went wrong try again in a minute" when actually nothing went wrong. I use Google WiFi mesh router. I have 8 assistants and 50ish switches through out the house. 1500 square feet and the garage and the shed. It's a total smart home with one idiot, the google assistant. I have tried factory resets, i have factory rest the google Wifi Mesh, i have turned of the poser to the entire house to reset e...

Neat gadget but long term concerns

I like the device. I have one in my bedroom and it makes my life easier for my automation. My only big complaint and the only reason I didn't give it five stars is that it does a bad job of either picking up words or the apps that you run on them are bad at picking up words .For example if I say "let's play who wants to be a millionaire" I can only get so far before I have to say"use a 50/50"and it screws to 100% of the time, ending my experience .This could be just something on this app. But th...

Not meeting potential

Googles smart speakers have so much potential, but they just don't do what all they could and should do. I have four smart speakers in my house and it would make complete sense that we should be able to use them as intercoms, nope, we can broadcast to other speakers in a rather haphazard way, and you can make phone calls to other people, but you can't have a conversation between smart speakers set up in the same house. I recently noticed that we can now link up the different smart speakers to ...

No basis for comparison

Recently started getting the "something went wrong, try again in a few seconds" error on 1 or 2 minis. Trying again right after works for some reason. I reset minis back to factory default, re-setup all my lights and devices, and it still happened. Magically went away on it's own. But now 3 of my bedroom lights show on the Home app as being IN my bedroom, but when I'm in that room and I say "Lights on", only 2/5 lights will turn on. App says they're in the same room as the mini, when I clic...

Ok but Frustrating

Having started with Alexa dot years ago, and giving up on it with it's intrusive ways, I gave the google mini a try...must of been given to us, or a plus to something else we purchased. So it sat on the shelf for a long time before I said OK. So i try it, and it's a commercial every time i ask for a song or a question, first with U-Tube... got tired of that and got my access for apple music, and it atleast now stops trying to sell me a service. However, went to sleep last night listening ...

I can ask anything!

If I pick up my phone to ask my Google Assistant a question, chances are I will probably get distracted and spend more time on my phone than I should. I have absolutely falling in love with Google mini sitting on a bookshelf in my living room. at any given moment I can ask Google anything I can set timers when I set something in the oven or when to rotate I can play games I can make shopping lists, set reminders I can even tell it to send a text message or make a phone call. This has been a game...

Google Home Mini

Back in May of 2021, I purchased two used Google home minis. I have been very satisfied with my experience so far. One of the options that I really like is the ability to adjust the base and treble on the units. For such a small unit, they sound really great in my opinion. I also really like how quickly it responds to my trigger phrase. I don't like having to leave a pause between my trigger phrase and command. However, I wish it was a lot easier to stream audio from my Windows laptop to the dev...

I was asked to review my Google Nest Mini!

I do not have a Google Nest Mini. I have 4 Google Home Minis. I am guessing that Google somehow has changed the name to virtue signal, or dog-whistle to their ANTIFA, and leftist base, of which I am definitely NOT one, (allegedly). I use the devices to play sleep sounds, broadcast messages throughout my lavish 1100 square foot home, help my find my telephone, but mostly to play 5-to-7-minute trivia games while I take a shower. I also operate my smart home with the devices that I use that are Goo...

Great... When it Works

I have had it a couple years now, and I have always had connectivity issues with this particular device. I initially thought it was my router, because I was seeing similar problems with a variety of my devices. However, after numerous attempts at diagnosing the problem with my Nest Mini, including placing it right beside the router and also performing a factory reset, I saw no change. It would work great for a day or two, and then lose all association with my smart home network and have to be se...