Google Home FAQ

jogdish

darth_maul wrote: »

If you try to play RTE Radio One, it then seems to lock up and stop other radio stations working until you either reboot device or go into home app and stop what's playing (or not playing) from there.
I have emailed tunein support and they have accepted this is their issue and are working on it, would encourage everyone to throw them an email too, support@tunein.com

If you really want to cast RTE 1 to your home device the simple radio app can cast RTE1, but you have to play on device before selecting cast.

I 'complained' to RTE and got back

Apologies for the delay in responding to you. We have informed Tunein of the problem with RTÉ Radio 1 on their application and they have indicated that they will look into the issue.

Hopefully TuneIn will pay more attention to RTE , I will also email TuneIn personally, and they said:

Thank you for contacting us regarding this problem. This is a known issue that has been passed on to our Development Team, basically RTE does not work currently with Google home. We hope to have this fixed in a future release. I apologize for the inconvenience and we appreciate your support of TuneIn!

jogdish

And just after getting a phone call from Google Home customer support, to say it was content ligh would be an understatment! Just told me the team are working on it and aware of the issue. I pressed for a technical explanation of what the exact problem is, he knew nothing and was unable to contact the eng. team directly.

opus

I see that the Google wifi router has appeared on the Irish play store, wonder if they'll add more devices. Fingers crossed!

Atomic Pineapple

Anyone else experiencing inconsistencies across their different Google homes? I bought a tp link smart plug last week. Set it up and added it as a device through the Google home app. On my Google home I can ask it to turn it off and on and it works fine. But on my Google home mini it doesn't work, just keeps saying I can't help with that yet.

Edit: adding a shortcut solved the issue.

matrim

Has anyone tried to mount a mini vertically on a wall. I was trying this morning with double sided tape and couldn't get it to stick to the rubber on the bottom of the mini

postsnthing

matrim wrote:

Has anyone tried to mount a mini vertically on a wall. I was trying this morning with double sided tape and couldn't get it to stick to the rubber on the bottom of the mini

Yeah i used sugru, it worked well, you can change the orientation of the lights and volume buttons in the setting for when it's mounted vertically.

Spocker

matrim wrote: »

Has anyone tried to mount a mini vertically on a wall. I was trying this morning with double sided tape and couldn't get it to stick to the rubber on the bottom of the mini

Plenty of options there, have a look at this link

You can also try using the holder that came in the box, but it's a bit ugly to be honest

McMurphy

Hey, just wondering if any of you seasoned users might have an answer to this one?

I bought a GH for my parent in laws for Christmas, and they have been more than happy with it up until very recently when it just stopped complying with the request to play radio stations.

It tells them "sure, playing newstalk (etc) on tune in" but no sound comes afterwards.

It works flawlessly with Spotify for example, e.g. Google play the Beatles "ok playing the Beatles on spotify" and hey Jude will come belting out.

I was visiting earlier in the day, looked at the mum in laws phone, opened up the home app, went into music and noting stood out tbh. I selected Google play music as the default for music, then switched it back to Spotify and gave the command to play 2fm and it worked flawlessly, but by 530pm they tell me it's gone back to how it was.

Strange one.

jogdish

Johnny Dogs wrote: »

Hey, just wondering if any of you seasoned users might have an answer to this one?

I bought a GH for my parent in laws for Christmas, and they have been more than happy with it up until very recently when it just stopped complying with the request to play radio stations.

It tells them "sure, playing newstalk (etc) on tune in" but no sound comes afterwards.

It works flawlessly with Spotify for example, e.g. Google play the Beatles "ok playing the Beatles on spotify" and hey Jude will come belting out.

I was visiting earlier in the day, looked at the mum in laws phone, opened up the home app, went into music and noting stood out tbh. I selected Google play music as the default for music, then switched it back to Spotify and gave the command to play 2fm and it worked flawlessly, but by 530pm they tell me it's gone back to how it was.

Strange one.

Have a look at my own posts, the previous page(s) and others, ongoing issue - very annoying! Seems to be TuneIn's fault and they acknowlegde it. I would encourage you to email them, and send feedback via the google home app too to report the issue.

McMurphy

jogdish wrote: »

Have a look at my own posts, the previous page(s) and others, ongoing issue - very annoying! Seems to be TuneIn's fault and they acknowlegde it. I would encourage you to email them, and send feedback via the google home app too to report the issue.

Sorry jogdish, as you can see I didn't even read posts above my own. :P

Rang the mum in law and told her not to throw out GH just yet, as it's not the device, but an issue between tune in and RTE.

Hopefully they get it resolved soon.

jogdish

Johnny Dogs wrote: »

Sorry jogdish, as you can see I didn't even read posts above my own. :P
.

No worries, good to keep the issue alive,hopefully all the complaints work.

As a side note, asking to play RTE1 seems (for me) to lock the device up on playing other stations - i need to manually go into the app ask it stop casting, then I usually can play 4fm, 2fm newstalk etc. For some reason, RTE 1 seems to be uniquely the issue - in my testing anyways.

digitaldr

I contacted TuneIn support about the RTE 1 issue - looks like the ball is firmly back in Googles court! I've also posted on the thread over on their support forums.

Hi,


Unfortunately this issue still hasn't been resolved - there's a long thread about it here 


https://support.google.com/googlehome/forum/AAAAXWcshA0mhLXxNoj17U/?hl=en



The last few posts might be helpful to your technical team - see below. 


Thanks 


Kind regards

~Mark~

I managed to get RTE Radio 1 working consistently. All I had to do was route both my Google Home devices(mini & Home) through a VPN to make them appear in London.


I tested this several ways to make sure that RTE Radio 1 did not work using my regular IP including using smart dns, Google's public dns and ISP dns. RTE Radio does not work until I switch on the VPN for the devices. I hope that narrows down the problem to possibly a routing issue.


 If I were a conspiracy theory kinda guy I would suggest that alexa recently launched in Ireland with "The Irish Radioplayer service, a partnership between RTÉ and the Independent Broadcasters of Ireland (IBI), have launched an Alexa “skill”".



1 day

Alibu

Same here  - Rte just stopped a few weeks back. Newstalk FM,  Lyric FM , RTE Junior all play ok, Seems to be a RTE 1 connectivity issue. GH forwards request to TuneIn ok, and presumably gets a positive response as GH announces " now playing etc. " But then silence when the RTE media stream from a (RTE?) server located in X trying tries to connect to my GH device located in Rep of Ireland. That media streaming service may be blocking traffic sourced from Tunein (perhaps) or traffic with a destination of a certain range of Google IP (perhaps). I have not examined the flows in detail. but typically this happens when someone changes something or adds something like a firewall rule to deny access of RTE 1 streams to Google users for example.


Wonder if RTE1 stream (on GH) is direct from RTE, or a relayed stream via Tune In or Google....


Either way please resolve if issue is on the Google side.


Thanks Alex

1 day

Alibu

Some speculation,


Had a quick look, when I stream RTE junior , and it works, the stream comes direct from a RTE IP 89.207.56.172.


When I ask for RTE1, the request initially goes to AWS (maybe that is where tune in sits) and then google traffic is seen back to speaker with a message "HTTP: HTTP/1.1 204 No Content"


I have reached my limit in understanding, but it would seem perhaps that google server successfully fulfilled the request to Tune in and that there is no additional content to follow...perhaps the tune in service has refused the request to stream , which would suggest Tune-in block rte1 requests sourced from google ....?


Hello,

Thank you so much for contacting us. I'm really sorry for the delay response. Our Team was also unable to play this station on Google Home, therefore we have passed this error on to Google, I hope they can fixed as soon as possible. Thanks for your continued support!

If you need further assistance, please feel free to reply to this email. It will be a pleasure to assist you again.


Sincerely,

Carlos

TuneIn, Inc.

randombar

Just wondering if anyone wants to swap two google home minis for a google home? I have the home but for the size of the room I reckon a mini would do fine.

jogdish

digitaldr wrote: »

I contacted TuneIn support about the RTE 1 issue - looks like the ball is firmly back in Googles court! ...

I keep bugging Google Support once/twice a week...it's infuriating at times.

BionicRasher

Bought a Google Home Mini (3rd one now!!) in Dixons Manchester Airport
Reduced to £32 - decent price. Handy if you are going through a UK airport as I think there are Dixons in all the major UK airports
Not sure how long it will remain at that price

Gulliver

Spocker wrote: »

Plenty of options there, have a look at this link

You can also try using the holder that came in the box, but it's a bit ugly to be honest

You got a holder in the box?

AngelaRI

Gulliver wrote: »

You got a holder in the box?

I was wondering the same!
Google UK Store details only the Mini, USB Cable and Power Adapter, and guide, and that's exactly what I got, no holder. Could that be the US version that comes with holder? I know I've seen mention of this before somewhere....

digitaldr

I particularly like this one from Etsy. Postage is a bit of a shocker though. Pity not available on Aliexpress - would probably be €2 including postage!

OldBean

I was away from home for the last few weeks, just got home and tried turning on my Hue lights with GHome, was told to update the software in the app. Went into the app and was told to relink my account, did that and all my hue lights disappeared - Have been trying to reconnect or find them, but no luck - Is there a recent issue?

digitaldr

Try "ok google sync my devices" and it should find all your bulbs again.

OldBean

Still not perfect, but it's gotten things working - Cheers! The 'home control' section of the app is currently showing every possibly lighting tone/setting/mood as a separate device. I've been meaning to spend a day resetting and configuring all the smart tech in the house, I guess this is good enough reason to make that happen this weekend!

MentalMario

digitaldr wrote: »

I particularly like this one from Etsy. Postage is a bit of a shocker though. Pity not available on Aliexpress - would probably be €2 including postage!

Amazon US will ship some of the home mini holders to Ireland

THE ALM

OldBean wrote: »

Still not perfect, but it's gotten things working - Cheers! The 'home control' section of the app is currently showing every possibly lighting tone/setting/mood as a separate device. I've been meaning to spend a day resetting and configuring all the smart tech in the house, I guess this is good enough reason to make that happen this weekend!

Seems an update to the home app with the scenes now added, you may need to re-sync everything for them to appear.

BionicRasher

Google Home will now connect with Bluetooth speakers.
Great for GH mini if you have a decent Bluetooth speaker hanging about. Give the sound a bit of a boost.

I could see this working in the car also by connecting to the car stereo.

https://www.blog.google/products/home/google-home-and-bluetooth-speakers-make-perfect-pair/

adox

BionicRasher wrote: »

Google Home will now connect with Bluetooth speakers.
Great for GH mini if you have a decent Bluetooth speaker hanging about. Give the sound a bit of a boost.

I could see this working in the car also by connecting to the car stereo.

https://www.blog.google/products/home/google-home-and-bluetooth-speakers-make-perfect-pair/

Wow thats a great addition.

I have a mini in the bedroom and use it nearly every night for listening to music while falling asleep. Its more than fine in itself for that purpose.

jones

BionicRasher wrote: »

Google Home will now connect with Bluetooth speakers.
Great for GH mini if you have a decent Bluetooth speaker hanging about. Give the sound a bit of a boost.

I could see this working in the car also by connecting to the car stereo.

https://www.blog.google/products/home/google-home-and-bluetooth-speakers-make-perfect-pair/

This is brilliant i linked my mini to my denon heos 5 for music. Fantastic addition and i was thinking of selling the denon and getting the max when it was released here but no need now

jogdish

So now movement yet on getting RTE radio 1 to play via tuneIn, I went looking around online and found there are - this is where my tech knowledge goes off a cliff - API's and SDK's for the home.

I am looking into DiaglogFlow with API.AI for Google home.

I *think* I can create basic things like question -> reply stuff, zero idea how to ask it to fetch a URL stream directly from RTE.

So, is there any out there than is good with API's and the like? Perhaps help me?

aaronm13

Google home has been pretty much useless for me the last few weeks. Nothing will play on Tune In, Hue lights won't turn on or off and playing completely wrong stuff on Spotify. These 3 features have been rock solid since I bought it. It spends more time turned off now as it just doesn't work. Really hope these issues get resolved.

BobbyT28

aaronm13 wrote: »

Google home has been pretty much useless for me the last few weeks. Nothing will play on Tune In, Hue lights won't turn on or off and playing completely wrong stuff on Spotify. These 3 features have been rock solid since I bought it. It spends more time turned off now as it just doesn't work. Really hope these issues get resolved.

I have a google home & 3 x mini's around the house.

I've had zero issues with TUnein and Spotify.

Are your Tunein & Spotify accounts links, I remember when I received an update from Goole my two accounts unlinked.

Have you tried to factory reset it and start from scratch?

BobbyT28

jogdish

BobbyT28 wrote: »

I have a google home & 3 x mini's around the house.

I've had zero issues with TUnein

ask it to play RTE Radio 1