Google In Da Houz!

I received my Google Home on Friday and have been messing around with it all weekend.  Overall, I like it.  I even like it better than the Amazon Echo Dot that I used to have (and still have as it is now up in my master bedroom on my bedside table so that we can whisper sweet nothings to each other).  But nothing, especially a first generation product, is perfect.

I'm not going to compare it to the Echo Dot (better speakers, adds Google Play Music) because tons of reviews have already done that.  Instead, I'll focus on the unboxing, setup and smart home control stuff.

Unboxing and Setup

The Big G is doing the same thing that all big tech companies do: making the unboxing more of an unveiling.  There is a text riddled sleeve that slips off to reveal a box with a tab sticking out.  (I added the Alice-in-Wonderland text, but I 'wonder' why Google didn't?  Not classy enough?)

Lifting the tab showed the device itself nestled in it's disposable home (though I keep all boxes for my electronics because... I really don't know any more).

Underneath was the ubiquitous box of instructions and the power cord, the only other piece of hardware in the box.

The instructions aren't much.  Just something inviting you to download the Google Home app from your store of choice and continue with setup from there.

Setup itself was a breeze.  As I already had Google Home installed (it is a rebadging of the old "Cast" app which you needed to setup a Chromecast in the past), all I needed to do was select the "Devices" tab from the left menu (or the icon in the upper right of the screen on Android) and the app found the new device instantly.  It even ported over the Wi-Fi settings from my phone, asking me if I wanted to use the same ones for the Google Home.  I did.  I was then asked about which Google account I wanted to use and we were done with the basics.

The app then walked me through a list of things to say to the Google Home.  It is uncertain whether this was to test the device or to test the user.  I suspect the later.  Both of us performed flawlessly.

Google Smart Home

What the initial setup did not do was ask about any smart home devices (an option listed as "Home Control" on the menu).  I have both a Nest and a SmartThings (v2) hub which are supposed to work with the Google Home.  And they do.  Nest works easily and effortlessly as it should coming from the same Alphabet soup.

SmartThings also brought all of my connected switches over to Google home.  I had also paired my Harmony hub with SmartThings and the device control from that showed up as things to add to Google Home.  Voice command of these things worked pretty well with a few hitches.  I can say, "OK Google, Turn on Fire TV" and my home theater turns on, switches inputs, turns the TV on and we're good to go.  The Amazon Echo did the same thing, but had a direct pairing with the Harmony instead of relying on me first pairing it with SmartThings.

A Few Issues

But there are a few things missing: none of my door sensors or smoke alarms are devices that I can add.  This means I can't ask the Google Home if I remembered to close the garage or what the battery status is on the smoke alarms.  That would be nice.

There are also some issues with lights in a room.  Most of my smart switches are named using the convention [Room][Light Location in Room].  For instance, my living room fan light is called "Living Room Fan Light".  I also have "Living Room Stair Light" and "Living Room Switch" (for the floor lamp that gets moved around a bit).  Google Home wants you to associate each smart device with a room, which is fine.  However, it stops listening after the room is mentioned and assumes that you want all lights turned on or off in the room.  So now, all of my living room lights turn on when all I want is the living room fan light on.

I traded tweets with both Google and SmartThings over the weekend and was offered this page for solutions.  First, they recommend removing the room name from any device names.  That would work if the Google Home was the only way that I was controlling these.  But I'm also using the SmartThings app (which can group by room) and the WeMo app (because SmartThings and WeMo don't always work reliably).  If I kill the room names, then it is difficult to identify the switches in the WeMo app or causes me to give them strange names that do not flow well when speaking them to a voice assistant.

The other solution is to give the switches nick names.  I haven't played with this yet, but I suspect that it is the solution.  My only (admittedly minor) complaint about this is that I will have to remember which device responds to what name when speaking.  Google Home is downstairs and can hear from most places.  But my Echo Dot is still in the house and helps me wake up in the morning.

One Other Minor Thing

Beyond Smart Home control, there are a few small things that bother me.  I love that it pairs with my Google Play Music subscription.  That's a big win over the more restrictive Echo.  However, when I heard a song that I liked, I could not say, "OK Google, Thumbs up."  I got the generic "I'm sorry, I don't know how to do that, but I'm learning" response.  For me, this is a must have.

Beyond that, I like the Google Home.  I maybe biased due to the music subscription thing and that I'm comparing it to an Echo Dot, but still, out of the box, it works pretty well.  I know that it will get better and that by 2017, it will rock.  My complaints are small, especially for a first gen, pre-ordered device.