Off topic a bit maybe - Went and bought a Google Home Min

After seeing all of the success and stories of integrating Google Home and being able to cast to it, I finally said ok, and I bought one last night. So far I haven’t done anything with it other than plug it in. Hoping to find some time to play with it.

If I have really good success with it, then my wife will hate me, because I’ll probably replace our 7 existing echo’s :smile:

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I have both and personally I think that the echo has the edge here. Google home is better at answering questions but the echo has better device integration. I’m also a fan of the drop in feature on the echo if you have multiple echos in the house. when we lose the remote for our fire stick I find it pretty easy to just use voice commands to control it with my dot. I’ve never tried to do the same with our chromecast but since it doesn’t have the apps preinstalled I’m not sure it would work as seamlessly.

It will be interesting to see how the hardware battle plays out. Both companies are trying to lock you into their ecosystems (Fire tv vs. chromecast for example).

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At this point since I have more experience with the Echo’s I will say they integrate really well with lots of stuff. The one and only reason I’m interested in the google mini’s is the broadcast feature. I want to play with that and see how well it works. It’s a cheaper system than buying several raspberry pi’s and speakers to have whole home TTS and media capabilities. I don’t need whole home audio I have that through the Echo’s.

I do have a few TTS things setup that I like and would like to have a “cleaner” solution than rpi’s everywhere with speakers attached and I have some media clips I like to play when certain events occur. If the google mini can fill those gabs that I can’t currently do with Alexa that will be great.

The next best is the expensive route and either buying Sonos or Samsung or Bose speakers around the house and that, to me is way too much for just TTS and playing mp3 clips on events.

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There are a couple cool options here (which I know you’re well aware of @jeubanks, from your activity on the thread). Adding this for others looking at your post - here’s a link to a cool GH relay option. Includes ability to send broadcasts (e.g., The garage door is opening) as well as custom commands (e.g., What is the weather today or other questions you might ask GA/GH). Also integrates Nest cam streaming to cast devices. I’m kinda in love w/this capability. :slight_smile: (Requires “always on” laptop, pi raspberry, or other device running node.js.)

One thing you may like w/GH is you can create shortcut commands in the GH app…take a look at Menu> More Settings> Shortcuts. Might be useful to you/family to simplify GH commands.

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Yes I have been following that thread. I have another pi sitting and waiting for this. I bought the GH last night thinking of this very thing.

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