So I have an odd issue I think. I currently own three Echo Dots that work great. However, I have recently started using a Google Home Mini. I have not setup any rooms with it. I have a simulated switch called ‘the kitchen lights’ that turns on other lights.
When I tell Alexa to turn on the kitchen lights, everything works great, and has for a long time.
When I tell Google to turn on the kitchen lights, it turns them on, along with a light in the dining room and a couple of lights outside.
It sounds like Google Home is getting the context wrong somehow. Without seeing your setup it is hard to say. Make doubly sure there aren’t any groups set up in the Home App and that you don’t have similarly named devices.
I’ve confirmed that I don’t have any switches assigned to a room. The Mini is assigned to the room ‘kitchen’, but that’s the only device that is.
Hmmm, looking through my devices, I also have another simulated switch called ‘the party lights’. That switch controls the other lights that are turning on! Obviously, both switches have the word ‘the’ in them, but why would it grab both?
You’re not doing anything wrong, this is exactly the reason why we returned to google home that we bought in November.
Echo allows you to assign each device to the groups that you want it to be in.
Google tries to be smarter than that by guessing what groups a device belongs in based on its name.
Which means when you have several devices with similar names it may decide that they all belong in the same group.
The straw that broke the camel’s back for us was we have three bedrooms that each have a “ceiling” light in them. “Michael’s ceiling,” “JD’s ceiling,” etc.
When one of us would ask to turn off the ceiling, the lights in the other guys’ bedrooms would go off also.
It’s a known issue with Google and their only suggestion is that you try coming up with more unique names and use the nickname feature.
Both google home and the echo are good devices, and different ones will work for different people, but getting the group names right is definitely more challenging with Google home. See the FAQ:
