Google Home Room Awareness

Posted on
Mon Aug 06, 2018 7:52 am
RogueProeliator offline
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Location: Baton Rouge, LA

Google Home Room Awareness

I know there are more Alexa users here, but at least a few on the boards using Google Home... in case you missed the announcement, they are supporting room-aware commands. For instance, "turn on the lights" will only affect the room you are in (or rather, whichever room you have assigned to that Google Home device).

Heads up, Google Home owners, because your smart speaker is getting a little bit smarter.

Google Home now better understands room context with regard to controlling smart lights. If you have rooms configured and your Google Home is assigned to the same room as your smart lights, you can tell your speaker to “Turn on the lights” or give it a similar command and it’ll only control the lights in that room. Google has confirmed to Android Police that this feature is now rolling out and that it’ll continue hitting devices over the coming days.

The company also says that you can still control all of your smart lights at once by adding the word “all” to your command. You can also control individual lights by identifying them in your command.

This is a nice little update for the Google Home. With it, controlling your smart lights with the Google Home should feel better and more natural since when you’re trying to turn on lights with your smart speaker, odds are good that you want to control the lights in the same room that you’re in. Hooray for smart speakers getting smarter!

Obviously this will get more useful when we get a proper Indigo integration, but still may be useful for those with Hues or other directly-controlled devices. I am curious to see if this works with Thermostats too.

Adam

Posted on
Tue Aug 07, 2018 1:16 am
mat offline
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Joined: Nov 25, 2010
Location: Cambridgeshire - UK

Re: Google Home Room Awareness

Adam,

the problem I had with room specifics with the echo is that almost everything is defined as a light, so assigning a ceiling light and a TV to a particular room and then requesting lights on, switched everything on in the room. Whilst I could limit the lights allocated to one room, I still have to specify which TV.

I presume it will be much the same with GH?

Late 2018 mini 10.14

Posted on
Tue Aug 07, 2018 9:18 am
RogueProeliator offline
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Joined: Nov 13, 2012
Location: Baton Rouge, LA

Re: Google Home Room Awareness

I presume it will be much the same with GH?

No, I think Google Home is probably closer to HomeKit with its device type support -- so far it supports:

A/C & Heaters
Air purifiers
Camera (e.g. Nest Cam, nothing yet for RTSP, though hopefully will come)
Coffee maker
Dishwasher
Dryer
Fan
Kettle (I think this was put in just for @Durosity)
Light
Outlet
Oven
Refrigerator
Sprinkler
Switch
Thermostat
Vacuum
Washer (i.e. clothes washer)

Lights Off would only turn off the Lights category of devices. Of course, there isn't anything that prevents a manufacturer from defining its device as the wrong type but thus far that I have seen they are pretty good about it. One caveat is that without Indigo integration, the vast majority of my devices are not loaded into the Home. Hopefully that will change some day! :-)

Posted on
Wed Aug 08, 2018 1:37 am
mat offline
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Joined: Nov 25, 2010
Location: Cambridgeshire - UK

Re: Google Home Room Awareness

Interesting - I'll wait for some for of indigo integration and then test I think!

Late 2018 mini 10.14

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