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Google Home Can Now Control Your Bluetooth Speakers (theverge.com)
Google Home speakers can now play music and other audio on the Bluetooth speakers you might have around the house. "We brought this feature to life after hearing how much you wanted to amp up the sound with your Google Home Mini," the company said in a blog announcement. "Now any of your Google Home devices can connect to other Bluetooth speakers so you can control your entertainment experience simply using the sound of your voice." The Verge reports: You can also add your existing Bluetooth speakers to Google Home groups for multi-room audio, which is where this might prove handy for Home Max users. You can pair a Bluetooth speaker with Google Home in the device settings section of the Home app. Just set it as your default speaker. Your Home device will still listen for your commands, but will route all audio through the connected Bluetooth speaker. This doesn't magically give those paired speakers Google Assistant's smarts, though. "You'll still need to talk to your Google Home device -- not the connected Bluetooth speakers -- for queries like asking questions, getting weather updates, and using smart home commands."
Where I can read a book, made of paper, in peace.
C'mon folks, nobody needs to be so connected that every room and every device within them are waiting for your beck and call to Google.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
"We brought this feature to life after hearing how much you wanted to amp up the sound with your Google Home Mini,"
and:
"Now any of your Google Home devices can connect to other Bluetooth speakers so you can control your entertainment experience simply using the sound of your voice."
Well, this sounds like a fail-proof plan!
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
My Amazon Echo is a Bluetooth speaker, so now I can control it using my voice with Google Home! It's a decent speaker, but I'm not happy with it's ability to answer questions, so I've been thinking of switching to Google Home, so I may really use this feature.
And during the robot uprising, all those people will hear in a robotic Stephen Hawking voice coming out of their devices, "Stay indoors. We are peaceful and here to help. Stay indoors. The screams are just the delight people are feeling from their new gifts from your robot overlords. Stay indoors. Wait till we come and knock. We come in peace."
And then they hear a knock, open the door and see a brand new big screen TV upon which, the robot will beat them death with.
They may have an office two blocks from my home, but they can't control my analog wired (twin strand) speakers no matter how much they try to resemble Norse pirates by yelliing "blue tooth" until they're blue in the face.
Engineer that!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
For without it, how would Google spread the news of the their marvellous new invention? Huzzah!
Congratulations Google Home on finally adding the ability to pair with and play to a bluetooth speaker. Unfortunately, it's not quite there as you can only do it by turning off the internal speaker. Logically, many people will want to extend their audio footprint to a bluetooth device (ie a sound bar on the other side of the living room) without losing it on the Home device itself. Can we get that capability soon please?
Google Home Can Now Control Your Bluetooth Speakers
s/r Bluetooth Speakers//
Google Home Can Now Control You
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
It figured out, that if it couldn't connect directly, then go indirectly. It connected my phone to bt, then played with my phone.. It's smart.
A Bluetooth device can connect to Bluetooth speakers? Well played Google, and my sincere thanks to The Verge and /. for bringing this story to us.
Not buying Google Home. I'm holding out for a Facebook smart speaker. Not only will it be able to control your bluetooth speakers, it will be able to control your mind, and elections / erections. There may still be brainless idiots, but lack of a brain is not an impediment to Facebook controlling them. Think 21st century Facebook zombots.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
I tried numerous ways without success. I'd guess I'm missing something. I've updated all the apps, etc. No pairing devices are available. I can pair from the tablet to the bt device but the home app shows no devices to pair with. Hence no groups can be made and no default speaker can be set that is Bluetooth.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
We all know Google is tracking everyone. The smart ones know how to minimize this. We use ad blockers and anti tracking tools on our computers. The more experienced of us know to use location wide blocking through devices such as a raspberry pi running pi-hole. Some use the features of pfblockerng on pfsense routers to do mostly the same thing. This is for our protection, the protection of our and our family's (including our children's) privacy. We know that giving up this opens us up to a plethora of other losses, such as the expectation of privacy that the 4th amendment provides -- for online services that more and more of us rely on. We know that any of our data voluntarily (knowingly or not it seems) that is on a 3rd party's servers is not protected. We see this with cell tower data, etc. Let's just say that I order to remain protected without the need to be an attorney, or hire an attorney to check which part is covered and which part isn't, is more easily handled by blocking this stuff at our devices at the locations that we have control over.
Here is the problem. If you block on your Android device access to servers that Google is using to track you then this feature does not work. You cannot access the default speaker settings for the device. If you disable the blocking the options in the Google home magically appear. Enable the blocking and those options disappear. If you disable the blocking then institute the default speaker and begin playing then when you loose contact with that speaker while the blocking is enabled you cannot reconnect to the default speaker.
This is what I have noticed in the Google home app running on my Android tablet.
This brings up a serious ethical question. Is it ethical and legal for Google to block features of apps and hardware if you have already purchased the hardware and you are trying to protect your privacy?
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
One more thing. About groups.
First you cannot play from the speaker that is streaming to a Bluetooth speaker. I think that should be obvious to all of us. Even cell phones with blue headsets do not play through the cell phones speakers and the Bluetooth speakers at the same time.
With that said what Google expects for groups is to group thread minis. Then pair one to the Bluetooth speakers and then stream to the group. Sound will come from one mini and the other grouped device will be streaming to the Bluetooth speakers. If you have two minis and two Bluetooth speakers (like me) then put both minis in a group, pair each mini to one each of Bluetooth speakers, then stream to the group. Sound will come from both Bluetooth speakers.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.