{"id":5468,"date":"2016-11-24T09:39:27","date_gmt":"2016-11-23T20:39:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.local\/?page_id=5468"},"modified":"2016-11-25T02:46:15","modified_gmt":"2016-11-24T13:46:15","slug":"google-home-experiments","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blog.local\/google-home-experiments\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Home Experiments"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I finally got my Google Home and have enjoyed setting it up. This page details things that I&#8217;m trying to figure out how to do\u00a0or have done.<\/p>\n<p>Tweet me @bwagy with thoughts, questions.<\/p>\n<p>Why not Alexa? No issue with Alexa but my feeling was my data would be more protected with Google so I went with that.<\/p>\n<h2>About the device itself<\/h2>\n<p>Challenges of Google Home:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The biggest challenge is the lack of interoperability with my existing Apple infrastructure AND sonos.<\/li>\n<li>Limited integrations and at present lack of an open app marketplace.<\/li>\n<li>IFTTT provides the in route for most solutions.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>What can they improve?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Audio is good but not great.<\/li>\n<li>Would like to see a second version with better audio.<\/li>\n<li>Or acquire Sonos run it as the high end line.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Would I recommend buying one?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Absolutely.<\/li>\n<li>The voice recognition works well, I can yell from upstairs and get a response.<\/li>\n<li>Design is great. The IOS App works seamlessly.<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s a great piece of tech even if you&#8217;re not an early adopter.<\/li>\n<li>It is the kind of thing you&#8217;d get your parents etc.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>Google Home Use Cases<\/h2>\n<p>What I have done:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Hooked it up to Uber. Built in integration.<\/li>\n<li>Enabled, <a href=\"https:\/\/ifttt.com\/applets\/44400465d-tell-google-assistant-to-call-your-phone\">find my phone via IFTTT.\u00a0<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Changed to Celsius.\u00a01. Open up the Google Home app -&gt; 2. Tap the three lines in the upper left hand corner next to the word &#8220;Home&#8221; -&gt; 3. Tap &#8220;More Settings&#8221; -&gt; 4. Scroll down and tap &#8220;Personal Info&#8221; -&gt; 5. \u00a0-&gt; Tap &#8220;Preferences&#8221; -&gt; 6. Change your weather temperature units to Celsius.<\/li>\n<li>Used the timer whilst cooking. &#8216;set a timer for 6 minutes&#8217;.<\/li>\n<li>Asked for the weather or Will it rain tomorrow?<\/li>\n<li>General knowledge.<\/li>\n<li>Add items to my shopping list in Evernote. Use IFTTT to create a recipe, and create the note in Evernote.<\/li>\n<li>Lodge tasks with FancyHands. | Use Google Assistant + Gmail to email a request to FancyHands.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>What I want to do:<\/p>\n<p>(And fair comment is -&gt; how much of this can you already do with Alexa)<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Play Sonos. | Not sure how to do this yet.<\/li>\n<li>Find out how many bikes in the citibike\u00a0dock near me. | Think can use their public API calls for the docks near me, then maybe hack a solution via IFTTT.<\/li>\n<li>Read out what got achieved from ASANA overnight. | Maybe an API call.<\/li>\n<li>Give me bank balances. | Not optimistic here at present.<\/li>\n<li>Make a call and\/or text.<\/li>\n<li>Change Google Homes accent.<\/li>\n<li>Store recipes in it, and I can ask what next, i.e. I&#8217;m hosting a cocktail dinner and have 3\/4 recipes. | No idea here.<\/li>\n<li>Integrate with Hello Alfred, to add things to my todo list. | Same, need to get a API to do this. Maybe I can do via IFTTT. Awaiting info from their team around how to add to the list.<\/li>\n<li>Have it understand my accent.<\/li>\n<li>Ordering food via Seamless\/Caviar\/Maple etc.<\/li>\n<li>MARSBOT! Let me hit the FourSquare Marsbot app to find recommendations. | Think I can do this via a text interface.<\/li>\n<li>OpenTable, can you find me table for 2 tonight.<\/li>\n<li>Notify my wife (when she wants to know) how far from home I am.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Packaged Services<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Things I can see bundled or created specifically for Google Home.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A personalised daily radio run down, tells me the weather, what&#8217;s done overnight, any pressing issues. As I get ready.<\/li>\n<li>Daily run down when you get home, from Gyroscope, you travelled X km today, via bike, train, this many steps, 85% productive, 6 hours online. etc.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>Thoughts on where the platform is going<\/h2>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Google Home Vision<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The slack of voice assistants.<\/li>\n<li>Easy enough to pull in your own &#8216;actions&#8217; to add extra features.<\/li>\n<li>It connects and routes you to the right information (like Google does).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Product Insights<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It helps when you&#8217;re moving, when you&#8217;re going out or coming in. So it&#8217;s about homestages, settling in, or heading out. Making that process handsfree.<\/li>\n<li>It removes the need to open and check your phone as much ideally.<\/li>\n<li>Strong overlap with Apples new wireless Earpods I suspect, they will open up Google Home like features on the go.<\/li>\n<li>You end up saying thank you, as a matter of courtesy. Be a nice touch if it acknowledged that.<\/li>\n<li>Be amazing if you sneezed it said bless you.<\/li>\n<li>I can imagine &#8216;OK Google&#8217; are going to be some of our kids first words at this rate. Is that a good thing? I&#8217;m not sure as yet.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>IFTTT Notes<\/h2>\n<p>How you can use IFTTT to create your own apps\/bots for Google Home.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/developers.google.com\/actions\/\">Google Home SDK<\/a> launches in December.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I finally got my Google Home and have enjoyed setting it up. This page details things that I&#8217;m trying to figure out how to do\u00a0or have done. Tweet me @bwagy with thoughts, questions. Why not Alexa? No issue with Alexa but my feeling was my data would be more protected with Google so I went [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5468"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5468"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5492,"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5468\/revisions\/5492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}