Google Home - Home Automation Noob Questions

• 

  mskeggs on 01/01/2018 - 17:56

  -1

  The others in my family cheered over my objections and ended up bringing a Google mini home from the family secret santa.
  I have found it not irritating at all if you just remember to unplug it every time you walk past.
  It takes a bit of a change in behaviour to remember, but I have found if I have it somewhere prominent I can almost always remember to have it turned off.
  Sorry I can't answer the other questions, but so far they haven't come up.

  • 

    Diji1 on 01/01/2018 - 18:42

    -1

    Sounds great!

• 

  teacherer on 01/01/2018 - 18:05

  Google home and Google home mini are identical except for speaker
  Thats all I know ow

  • 

    tempura on 01/01/2018 - 19:27

    Upon research, GHM seems to have better Mic than GH.

• 

  Scyl on 01/01/2018 - 18:24

  1. Are you going to play music from the Google Homes? if you do, the home have better sound quality and more bass. If not the only difference is the mic, the home is better at picking up your voice from a distance, so it's good for bigger rooms.
  2. Think about where you might use one, less likely in bathroom, more so in kitchen, do you stay in the living room enough to need one? or more so in bedrooms?
  3. I am using Hue, but Google Home integration is very minimal, IFTTT helps, but I am rather disappointed right now, hope it improves. Siri works so much better.
  4. With smart lights, you can control individual bulbs, set scenes, or turn a whole room of lights on and off at the same time. So yes, can be done easily, but not with Google home without additional work in IFTTT.
  5. I don't have a chromecast, can't help you, sorry.
  • 

    tempura on 01/01/2018 - 19:38

    +1

    I need to research this IFTTT thing. You mentioned lots of IFTTT on your post so it seems crucially important to learn and understand them.

• 

  dissin on 01/01/2018 - 19:30

  Home in the kitchen, and mini in the bedrooms/study is my setup.

  Am waiting for yeelight to go on sale at $10USD each. Doesn't need a hub or bridge which is good.

  • 

    tempura on 01/01/2018 - 19:35

    • Is this Yeelight bayonet or Edison screw?
    • I assume the light switch (on the wall) for these bulbs need to stay on all the time, for it to listen to command sent from Google Home?
    • Do you know if these Yeelight are perfectly compatible to Google Home? It wouldn't be fun to later realise they aren't detected in GH.

    Then there this brand called JIAWEN.

    • 

      wellglued14 on 01/01/2018 - 20:37

      It’s an Edison screw.

      Yes light switch must always be on.

      And yep Yeelight is supported in the Google home app, just make sure you setup the Yeelight in the Singapore server.

• 

  cimrak on 01/01/2018 - 19:34

  @Scyl brings up some good points.

  I personally use LIFX lightbulbs because they are self-contained and do not need the hub. This means they are a bit more to buy compared to the Phillips Hue bulbs but it really depends on how many you need. I have only put them in the kitchen/lounge/hallways, not the bedrooms. Keep in mind that if you have a power outage, pretty much all smart-bulbs will turn on when power is restored, so I didnt want to run the risk of an overnight power outage waking me up :)

  The LIFX bulbs work fine with Google Home, but are ~1sec slower to respond compared to when I give the commands via my Amazon Echo's. I have a few bulbs "grouped" so they turn on/off together without issue.

  I also use a combination of the app Life360 (lets call it a family monitoring app) and IFTTT, and have a command setup so that the "if no-one from the Life360 app is within the home geofence, then when the first person does arrive home turn on all lights". The family loves not coming home to a dark house.

  • 

    tempura on 01/01/2018 - 19:42

    The LIFX bulbs work fine with Google Home, but are ~1sec slower to respond compared to when I give the commands via my Amazon Echo's. I have a few bulbs "grouped" so they turn on/off together without issue.

    Do you need IFTTT to 'group' those bulbs? or can this 'grouping' be done in Google Assistant app?

    • 

      cimrak on 01/01/2018 - 20:14

      Its grouped within the Google Home app (or Amazon Alexa app). I'll use LIFX bulbs as an example, because thats what I have.

      Lets say you have 4x bulbs in the lounge. When doing the initial configuration using the LIFX app to connect them to wifi etc, these might have been named lounge-1, lounge-2, lounge-3, lounge-4. The LIFX app lets you create a group of these lights, but last I checked this group is not available outside the app.

      So within the Google Home app, you link it to LIFX which goes out to your LIFX internet account to get a list of bulbs. You can now use the voice command "Hey Google, turn on lounge-1 and the single light will come on. This lets you test things are ok but is not much use if the other lights are still off :)

      Within the Google Home app you then create a group called "lounge" and select the 4x lounge bulbs. At this point, you can then use the voice command "Hey Google, turn on Lounge" and all 4x bulbs turn on.

      Sounds like a hassle, but its really easy and only adds maybe 2 minutes to the setup.

• 

  SurprisedEwe on 01/01/2018 - 22:37

  As an initial comment, based on your questions and inquires regarding automation of lighting both the Home and the Mini will do the same job.

  In lighting the options would be:
  1. Use a light that has wi-fi built in and connects to a cloud service. Examples include the mentioned Lifx and Yeelight bulbs. These require no additional hardware.
  2. Use Philips or Philips Hue compatible bulbs. These communicate with a different protocol and thus require an extra hub which works kind of like a translator between commands from your Google Home and the bulbs.

  Now there would also be a third option which would be to retain existing lights but install a smart controller. This would be installed as part of the physical lighting circuit. This controller would then most likely communicate through a hub (like 2 above). This is what I'm looking at for a room of existing downlights as the controller is ~$50 compared to >$100 per downlight for 6 lights. You can't control each light individually, but they work from a single switch anyway.

  And while it's annoying about the switch having to be on - well without electricity they won't work so that'll always be the case as the switch physically disconnects the power 😉

  In terms of the Chromecast I would think that you can only control it like you would through the app such as picking the video stream and the app, pausing/skipping/going through content. Unless your TV is able to detect a signal on the HDMI input I wouldn't think it would even turn your TV on, then I would even more strongly doubt it would turn it off. Other forms of automation would be needed for that!

  • 

    tragic on 03/01/2018 - 09:52

    Pretty sure my Chromecast turns on and off my tv. :)

    • 

      SurprisedEwe on 03/01/2018 - 11:38

      Fair enough. This was only based on my experience.

      My setup only allowed me to control the Chromecast once it was on. I had to even set the TV to the proper input.

      Admittedly this was with a 4 year old LG TV and a Chromecast 1.

      And that probably makes a pertinent point - the hardware setup you have greatly determines the possibilities ;)

• 

  tragic on 03/01/2018 - 15:35

  Not being argumentative, just letting you know. Hence the :)

  Mine is a cheap GVA TV and a Chromecast 1.