Google Home

Randomly logged into a work rewards program today 'people plus', realised I had 300 odd points sitting there doing nothing, and surprise surprise they stock the google home. Should have one in 5days More I think about it though the more I realise having just one of these things is useless. Unless it can answer me from where ever I happen to be it's going to be far too limited. I think that's where amazon really have the edge with their 'dot'. Small little thing you can buy half a dozen of cheaply and have 'everywhere'.


chargin - I would expect asking it 'what's the news' or similar should give you the same sort of results as you get out of google assistant, which for me is a selection of Australian 'top stories'. Mostly political BS and a handful of tabloid crap for good measure.

 

$147 on Catch Of The Day at the moment

 

That's the yank model, not that it makes any real difference. Good price.

 

Arrived a few days early I was surprised when I unboxed it, it's half the size I expected it to be. None of the pictures or video I've seen online really gave me an idea of the actual scale. Even the size of the box itself has you prepared to open a larger device. Despite being tiny though it sounds really good, I'm quite surprised. I'm sitting in my office at work so I can't really crank it up, but at volumes under half it seems to be richer and bassier than my logitech UE Boom.

Odd side effect, my phone now responds to 'hey google' as well as 'ok google'. I couldn't convince it to use 'hey google' before, it just ignored me. Considering this a huge win because 'ok google' is an utterly retarded thing to have to say more than once in a row. I can't wait till google wake up to themselves and give us some options. So far everything I've read from them on why they haven't given us other options boils down to 'wah wah it's baked into the code really deep and it would be really hard'. Google, grow a pair.


Only downside I've found so far, after you ask it something and get an answer, you can't just speak again to continue the dialogue. You have to wake it with 'hey google' again. Example, hey google can you do x? Yes I can do that. Awesome, do it.. *silence*. Hey google, do x. Sigh.

Also there seems to be a hefty lag between request and action, but for the moment I'm going to attribute that to the rather poor speed of our guest wifi.

 

I read that it is meant to be able to continue a train of conversation

 

It can maintain context, like 'who is the president' - trump. 'does he have tiny hands' yes, the smallest. Unfortunately to have that conversation you would have to say 'Hey google, who is the president?' The president of the united states is Donald Trump. 'Hey google, does he have tiny hands?'. Yes, the smallest.

 

That's what annoys me about google and siri. The constant re-engagement is literally a show stopper for me.

 

At the moment I'm going to assume it's a balance between asking the device to do something and having it butt into any conversation you return to, and having it be able to string commands together. It definitely needs to improve, it's frustrating, and add in the awkwardness of 'ok google' and 'hey google', having to say them, over and over.. urgh.

 

I think folks need to consider just how quickly this is moving. "Show stopper" today, "mildly annoying" next year, "part of every day life" by 2020.

 

Oh I know son, you preaching to the choir.

 

Can you say "HAL" instead of OK google?

And can you say "hal turn on the lights" as well as "turn on the lights hal"

And will it iot to chromecast etc?

My experience with voice control is limited to ford/microsoft sync2 which sucked.

 

Haha, I like the example

I am tempted to get one, would be cool to have it controlling the lights and stuff but at this stage, I might wait a bit

 

Hmm, I don't think so in this case. I think this needs to be fixed. It will get fixed relatively quickly I'm sure, you know a few years down the track the already years worth of complaints they have will have built up to a level where they realise they need to do something, or whoever the jerkoff is who is standing in the way of it being fixed now will move on, whatever. Either way, what's an annoyance now isn't going to get any less annoying. I don't think this is an adoption issue, where something being weird or out of the ordinary holds back user acceptance. I'm all on board the voice assistant train. This is a UX issue they need to sort out.

Google for all the good they do consistently screw up stuff like this. They have no clue what people want, they have no particular direction or vision and just run with whatever happens to be sticking to the wall until it's cancelled. It makes it hard to hang your hat on anything with them. It's why I think Amazon will eventually end up eating their lunch.

Amazon gives you a few options, you can call the amazon echo Amazon, Echo, Alexa or Computer. It'll happily respond to any of those, you just choose in the amazon app. The Google home will only respond to OK Google or Hey Google. Hey google rolls of the tongue a little easier, but it's still very impersonal and not a natural thing to say, and the more you have to say it the worse it gets.


As for capabilities, it'll tie into various music streaming services, cast audio or video to your chrome casts, ie play youtube on *name of chromecast here*. It'll also tie into various home automation things, philips hue, lifx globes etc etc. At the moment the amazon echo has more skills - 3rd party ad-ons that add to what it can do, but google is making ground.

 

hmm not interested until I can call it something silly. Good to know about the chromecast integration, i'm amazed it has taken so long for chromecast type devices to work (semi) properly.

 

So I've been trying to find a good justification for wifi lighting (or philips hue, etc) to get the wife on board for years... It took a 30second ad from google.

So I picked one up yesterday. I like it. I've had it for 2 days and directly played with it for 5mins (but listened to it for longer...). Will figure out the lighting situation later.

What annoys me?
- I don't like saying heygoogle all the time, but i get you need something somewhat unique.
- I can't cast to my roku... there is no reason that I can tell why i shouldn't be able to cast to my roku - i didn't go google for a closed ecosystem. I would like to control my roku with the google home somewhere down the line. I can cast to roku from my android phone. Maybe im missing something.

What I do like:
- so far for practical reasons ive used a timer for cooking, the weather, traffic, news, and just relaxed to ludavico einaudi over spotify after work while having a cider while cooking.
- I like that my wife actually doesn't mind it
- I like that it's small, far smaller than advertising would imply
- I like that I now have a speaker in the room where i previously didn't - that said, don't expect great quality, but it's fine for background music
- I like that it can play the last news broadcast

Anyway, i can see it becoming more and more useful. I want a few of them so I have speakers in a few key rooms. The kitchen (where the current one is), the lounge and just outside the bedroom or in the bathroom for shower music. Shower music rocks.

 

Looks like you can control your roku using a 3rd party app tied into google home:

http://cordcuttersnews.com/can-now-use-amazon-alexa-google-home-control-roku-players/

I'm not sure if that's what you mean by 'cast to roku' though.



I know what you mean by wanting a few of them. I've put my first in the lounge, but bathroom and kitchen will be must haves, and maybe even bedroom.

 

Hi Evil

The issue is more that the roku is NOT recognised as a cast-to device... The app you mention is how to control the roku... which is fine, but my issue is more saying "cast ronny dahl videos to loungeroom"... now i have to go out and buy a chrome cast for that functionality :-(

 

Anyone used this for controlling Kodi?
https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=314096

It's my main media centre setup. So looks interesting to me.

 

Looks interesting

I have Kodi on the main TV, using Plex to store the media, so it would be interesting to see how they all interact

 

Dad jokes....

OK google... who farted.... Kids love that one