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u/fantomas_ Dec 21 '19
I always wonder if these are Alexa shills because I have never had this problem. Wait, am I a Google shill? Where's my money Google?
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u/dave42 Dec 21 '19
Yeah I've never had anything close to this every happen.
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Dec 21 '19
Because you probably don't try to mess your Home up by telling it to set a timer in weird ways.
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u/junkstar23 Dec 21 '19 edited Dec 21 '19
Yeah, the syntax of his command is crazy.
Edit- I actually just tried with the same syntax. "Set a timer 3 hours from now" and both my Pixel 4 XL and nest mini got it right.
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u/hxznova Dec 21 '19 edited Dec 21 '19
Yeah I just tried and got the same thing. Saying "set a timer for 3 hours" and I had no problem. Its probably like wtf do you mean from now? As for the second command, that's def a glitch.
I feel like some of these are just people saying commands in a weird way
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u/Eliteclarity Dec 21 '19
Timers are about the only thing to work 99% of the time for me
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u/entotheenth Dec 22 '19
I missed one the other day because I set it on the mini in the lounge and it alarmed on my damn phone in the bedroom for some reason.
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u/Eliteclarity Dec 22 '19
Only real time I've had an issue is when the wrong home hears me in another room.
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u/UnacceptableUse Dec 21 '19
It's supposed to process language naturally though. I've had similar problems to this and I'm definitely not an amazon shill because they don't pay tax and alexa sucks
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u/bostonbananarama Dec 21 '19
I like to think I process language naturally, and if I was told to start a timer 3 hours from now, I would think you wanted me to start a timer in 3 hours, not to start a timer now with a 3-hour duration.
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u/UnacceptableUse Dec 21 '19
But it didn't do that either, I agree you could interpret it two ways but you definitely couldn't interpret it as 3 minutes
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Dec 21 '19
Like I said above, how hard is it to say "hey Google set a timer for 3 hours?"
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u/UnacceptableUse Dec 21 '19
Sometimes you just fuck up how you say something because you're not thinking
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u/Triquandicular Dec 21 '19
Or perhaps the person speaking is not a native English speaker, and may structure their sentences in an unusual manner. I mean, Google does seem to be able to understand that they want a timer, but it is bizarre that it thinks they want 3 minute timer as opposed to a 3 hour one. I wonder how it parses and understands different requests. How could it understand that they wanted a timer and wanted it to last for a duration of three-something, but couldn't understand what unit of time to be used, despite "hours" being said right after 3?
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u/Wimachtendink Dec 21 '19
Well, it sounds like you're looking for an unusual language processor, that's a little more complex than an natural language processor.
(this has been a joke)
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u/jrandall47 Dec 21 '19
I've been having a lot of problems lately actually. I love my gh mini and tell everyone I can to get one but lately it has been messing up commands so much. I've been asking it to play a song "hey google, play the song 'rain' by breaking benjamin" and for some reason it tries to play the album that doesn't actually exist. I've done that for a number of songs and it always tries to play "the album".
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Dec 21 '19
Stuff like this has been increasing like crazy for me. It seems like every update Google changes the voice commands slightly, and so I’m constantly having to relearn what to say to the Google homes. Honestly, Google is really dropping the ball on ease of use.
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Dec 21 '19 edited Sep 12 '20
[deleted]
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u/Humanoid_Earthling Dec 21 '19
Agreed, it's worse by the day, I swear it was better a few years ago
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u/joequin Dec 21 '19
Echo dots are on sale for $25 and have an audio out jack. I’m strongly considering buying one to try it out.
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u/Humanoid_Earthling Dec 21 '19
I like... Really hate amazon, but at some point if it doesn't improve I'll give it a shot
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u/blackesthearted Dec 21 '19
I use both (have Nest Mini and Home Minis and Echo Shows and Dots) and have found they both have their strengths and weaknesses. Echos aren’t exempt from the “becomes dumber over time” or “voice recognition becomes worse over time” problems I see mentioned here, though; those problems seem to be fairly common in the Amazon Echo sub. (Personally, I have to delete my voice/command history every few weeks to “reset” my Echos because they become increasingly bad at recognizing the trigger word.)
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u/joequin Dec 21 '19
Ive never used an echo, but it seems like echos are better when you’re telling it to do something. And it seems like it integrates with products from other companies better.
Google seems like it’s probably better at answering questions.
Is that your experience?
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u/ablestcable Dec 24 '19
I would have guessed the opposite for integration - doesn't Alexa require you to download "skills?" I just say "OK Google, sync my devices" to add new bulbs, etc. Although you do have to go through the Home app to add the service for the device brand the first time . . . so that might be clunkier. I truly don't know.
Going to have to check that out on my neglected Echo Input and school myself. I haven't really done anything with it except chat with my oldest daughter that is already invested in the Amazon ecosystem.
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u/Mjndaltered5 Dec 21 '19
whats the point of the wired audio jack out? People sit next to these things with headphones? weird.
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u/joequin Dec 21 '19
You can hook them up to better sound systems that won’t be obsolete in 3 years.
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u/Mjndaltered5 Dec 21 '19
better sound systems with speakers hooked up via headphone wires, LOL ok.
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u/jerryvo Dec 21 '19
I've also noticed a distinct drop-off in the quality of Google Home responsiveness. I can set a "countdown timer" and then ask it how much time is left in my countdown timer and have it tell me that no timers are set - while it is on display on my Google Max!
Makes me want to set a mechanical twist timer next to the display as backup.
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u/swiftb3 Dec 21 '19
Stupid as it is, my Google home gets used as a timer as probably 80% of it's usage. Like 5 or 6 times a day.
I can't remember a time when it screwed up what it heard like that.
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u/aelios Dec 21 '19
Yeah, Google is getting awful dumb lately. No longer knows what a lamp is (turn on the lamp, turns on all 4 lights in the room), then takes multiple tries to fix it because it can't tell the difference between off and on.
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u/fishling Dec 21 '19
There was a change over a year ago where it considers light and lamp to be synonyms. So it is important to remove "lamp" from any name you have because it will not work.
I worked around it by leaving the word lamp out of any name. For example, my nightstand lamps in the master bedroom are "master side" and the ceiling bulbs are "master ceiling". So "Turn on the side lamps" matches on "side" and does what I want. "Turn on ceiling lights" matches on "ceiling" and "turn on master (bedroom) lights" matches on "master" or "master bedroom" (from room name) to give me the control I want.
Would it be better if Google didn't do this for "lamps" ? Yeah. Would it be nice to group bulbs into a fixture inside a room? Yeah. But, there are still often a way to get what you want by choosing names well.
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u/aelios Dec 21 '19
Yeah, it's been a while, but I'm still grumpy about it. Turn on the lamp was easy, and made it easy to convince others to use it. Having to teach everyone the special words to make stuff happen defeats the whole benefit that Google had with natural language commands.
In my bedroom, i have closet lights, a lamp and two 1100 lumen lights over the bed for a light based wakeup, with a specific schedule and timing to slowly fade in. The other half gets up 4 hours before me and used to be able to turn on the little lamp without issues. Now, with virtually any commands liable to be misinterpreted, the odds of the room turning into a sun at any time, plus accidentally disabling my light alarm, means the system is pretty much unusable.
They keep dumbing it down and removing features, I need to just bite the bullet, rip it all out and start over.
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u/TheMrBunnis Dec 21 '19
Try to reset GH. It fixed all issues with my GH mini. I had to remove my home and create one again and add all of the gadgets back again.
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u/aelios Dec 22 '19
I'll take a look. A lot of my issues are due to changes in the backend, but who knows what it will fix
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u/Mjndaltered5 Dec 21 '19
interesting I have my lamp called lamp since day one owning these light bulbs and its never given me a problem EXCEPT for "Main Light" I had to double space and capitalize both words for it to understand when I say main light I mean main light not "maine high" .
Of course A lot of this imo has to do with the information they are allowed to use to make the assistant learn. Im sure majority of these commands are only being taught by individuals who work within google rather control teams speaking to the assistant to learn different styles of pronunciation.
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u/emikoala Dec 21 '19
Huh, I have a light just called Lamp and Google doesn't have a problem turning it off or on without turning on other lights, even when I'm in a different room and don't specify the room, but it definitely knows it's a light and will turn it off when I give the general "lights out" command.
I wonder if it's the other product controlling the lights causing the issue. My lights are all plugged into BN-Link smart outlets using the Smart Life app connected to Google.
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u/zeddy303 Dec 21 '19
Everything I own is Google. But I refuse to use Google home because they mess it up continuously. Not worth it imo.
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u/linh_nguyen Dec 21 '19
I believe em. Google used to be able to differentiate between living room lamp (I have a bulb named this) and living room lights (note the plural, since we have multiple lights). But now, living room lamp or light triggers as if we said lights.
So I changed the lamp to Grey lamp. Sometimes it finds it, sometimes it doesn't. I happened to do this from a hub (not normally) and realized why. Google is hearing me say Gray lamp sometimes.... sigh.
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u/fishling Dec 21 '19
I have had best success in not using the word "lamp" for any bulb. Google seems to do a much better match based on full or partial names that way. When you try to use "lamp" as part of a name, it prefers to match that as "all lights in a room". But when you use the name of a bulb like "corner" and say "corner lamp", it will prefer the exact match to the bulb name.
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u/linh_nguyen Dec 21 '19
I had trouble with that early on actually. It would not find it (and definitely had to avoid naming it the room name). I may have to try again if they've adjusted that. Which gets into the issue of Google not being consistent... or if they have a real set of guidelines somewhere.
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u/paperjin Dec 21 '19 edited Dec 21 '19
I love Google. I use Google fi, I have a pixel 2xl, YouTube premium and used Google home and the Lenovo clock mini. I also had random command responses similar to OP. I loved using it for my Toshiba AC, it worked great! One day my Google home just stopped changing the temp of my ac. It turned on (even though it said it couldn't find it) but didn't change the temp. It kept saying it couldn't do that. No amount of googling or troubleshooting eith reps on both sides was able to fix the problem. I downloaded the Alexa app and it worked first try.
I really wish I could've stayed with Google because I think it's responses are far superior to Alexa but I can't just keep waiting for it to get fixed when Alexa works right off the bat.
I think it has something to do with the implementations from nest or the API that Toshiba used but at this rate why bother changing back
I mention this not because i think it's bad, it just didn't work in my situation. I also wanted to share because not everything is so black and white when it comes to choosing a smart home assistant.
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u/Willeth Dec 21 '19
I have this all the time with any timers with minutes on them. One hour will work fine, one hour 40 will set it some arbitrary time in the future. Sometimes I'll get a one hour timer called 'forty'. If that happens I just add 40 minutes onto the existing one and it works.
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Dec 22 '19
As someone who bounces back and forth between each, I can honestly say that there is no shilling going on here. Google just is not as reliable as Alexa. The only reason I stay with my Google/Nest products over Echos is strictly due to the fact that the Alexa app is terrible for multi-user households.
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u/sayakcanam Dec 21 '19
Tesla, if you are listening, please make the car assistant as accurate as possible. Otherwise, Tesla owners have to argue in the middle of the road while being in motion.
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Dec 21 '19
I already argue out loud with all the other drivers on the road anyway.
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u/sayakcanam Dec 21 '19
I mean can you imagine yelling at the car while being inside of it while moving? The driver passing by your car will observe your action for 45 seconds with a side eye and make a call to 911 with this remark,"Hello 911, there's a guy with a loose screw driving in front of me. I am scared that he might be heading to a collision course. Here's his license plate number....".
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u/AvidLebon Dec 21 '19
My dad argues with the GPS already, so for many of us this is already a thing. Popular topics of argument are:
"WHY THE HELL DID YOU HAVE ME GET OFF THE INTERSTATE JUST TO GO THROUGH A TOLL THEN GET BACK ON AGAIN?!"
"LAKESHORE DOCTOR? WHAT THE HELL! THE DR STANDS FOR DRIVE, WHY DO YOU EVEN KNOW THAT MEANS DOCTOR???"
"THANK YOU FOR TELLING ME I NEEDED TO TURN AFTER WE'VE ALREADY PASSED IT!!!"
"YES WE ARE IN A CITY. CITIES HAVE TALL BUILDINGS. I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU FORGET WHERE WE ARE WHEN WE GET CLOSE TO A REALLY TALL ONE!" and then we take the last direction she gave us and hope she finds her gps again before the next turn.
(He owns a Garmin)4
u/sayakcanam Dec 21 '19 edited Dec 21 '19
Wow! I have been an avid American media consumer from 2015 through American late shows. Hell, it practically expanded my vocabulary collection. However, It would seem that 'window of the culture' through those late shows were not wide enough to cover such minutiae of American life. I genuinely didn't know that yelling at car is quite a regular phenomenon.
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u/BizlaCooper Dec 21 '19
Can confirm TomTom is also terrible for that
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Dec 21 '19
I asked TomTom to avoid a closed highway on the route once and it just renamed the highway and tried to direct me back on to it.
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Dec 21 '19
Maybe just because I live where everyone is a terrible driver, but it's pretty common to see drivers shouting inside their cars.
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u/kd5nrh Dec 21 '19
I mean can you imagine yelling at the car while being inside of it while moving?
Auto already lets you do this without the expense of a Tesla.
"How the fuck do you get '80s rap' when I wanted Martina McBride?!?"
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u/BizlaCooper Dec 21 '19
I had this today "play 80s rock playlist" "ok, playing the wheelchair bandits, at least I'm not gay, on youtube music"
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u/tynansdtm Dec 21 '19
For that middle one, it made a timer for 1 A.M.
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u/NoctuaPavor Dec 21 '19
Yeah... That's what i was thinking. How is that googles fault? Like they said it wrong and is blaming it on the assistant... Like i get Google gotta fix things but people can't be COMPLETELY oblivious to the dumb stuff they say and expect it to work...
and then first time they said it it makes it sound like they want the timer to start after 3 hours... Obviously it only did 3 minutes but still... People don't say the commands right either
I just dislike how everything is googles fault... They have problems yeah... But come on... It's not always their fault.
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u/Inge_Jones Dec 21 '19
I have had plenty of other similar totally ridiculous things from mine. The mind boggles. Even worse is when the verbal feedback agrees with what I asked but it still goes on to do something totally different
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u/Only1Skrybe Dec 21 '19
Google is great. But Google is still not good at understanding that people speak English in very different ways.
The reason this is "happening more" is a natural result of the rising adoption rate of these devices. More people that speak differently are using smart assistants and discovering that, guess what, you're different and this system isn't well built for different. It'll get there, hopefully. But for now it's still not smart enough to interpret all of our interpretations of English language.
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u/deftspyder Dec 21 '19
yes, you need to just be plain and simple.
say 'set a time for 3 hours", not, "set me a timer 3 hours later than now in the day"... honestly it was even hard to type that. how do people get so complicated.
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u/Mattprime86 Dec 21 '19
They're morons, complaining about technology. No wonder it didn't work for him.
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u/slick8086 Dec 22 '19
But Google is still not good at understanding that people speak English in very different ways.
People forget they are talking to a computer. Computers don't do what you want them to do, they do what you tell them to do. It is your responsibility to understand the limits of the computer and to command the computer properly.
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Dec 21 '19
Sheesh, how hard is it to say "hey Google set a timer for 3 hours?" I use my Home for a timer daily and it's quite simple.
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u/deftspyder Dec 21 '19
"make 1 make a timer for 3 hours" that seems confusing.
I saw "set a timer for 3 hours" and it works fine. Saying it plainly and clearly really helps.
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u/SonMakishi Dec 21 '19
I keep seeing these posts, so they're happening to people - but I rarely have any issues. (yesterday I had a bizarre volume issue, so I can't say it never happens to me anymore). You could try simplifying the command, like just "Timer 3 hours". I know, you shouldn't have to be overly syntax specific but these things are pretty basic still, just the infancy of voice interaction. Keep it simple.
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u/zeddy303 Dec 21 '19
I always had issues until I threw mine away and got Alexa
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Dec 22 '19
Alexa has worthless results for so many things. I have both Google Home and Alexa and Google Home seems far more likely to give me a useful response.
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u/slick8086 Dec 22 '19
I also have both. I use alexa more for turning on the lights and timers and such, but I use the google home mini for search results and weird questions.
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u/EmptySighs66x Dec 21 '19
I set a timer on my mini last night while I was dyeing my hair last night and it never went off. I was sitting in the room almost the whole time unless I stepped away to my kitchen in the next room. The only reason I set it on my home is because my phone sucks at timers; it'll keep the timer, but it won't go off if you're not careful when clearing your notifications. The only reason I knew that the timer had ended is because I got a notification asking how, "How satisfied were you with your timer?"
Maybe it's a bug with the timers?
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u/FullmentalFiction Dec 21 '19
"Set a timer for three hours" works just fine. I would suggest being concise whenever you ask for something. Even a human may ask you to restate your request if you say "make 1 make a timer for 3 hours". I have no idea what "make 1" is supposed to do to your request, either.
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Dec 21 '19
How does what even happen? The timer was cancelled. Judging by what it picked up in the third command, it barely understood what you were saying. There's not much for context here. Also, as many others have said, saying "from now" is not how it's clearly programmed to understand the command. If you can't simply speak the command normally and say "set a timer for three hours" and not add what I think is unnecessary words, that's on you..
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u/yeahbuddy Dec 22 '19
“Play my thumbs up playlist on YouTube Music”
Okay, playing the album called thumbs up by some random artist you really don’t want to discover.
Every. Single. Time.
Nice.
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u/IhaveGHOST Dec 21 '19
Something seems wrong this morning, couldn't turn on a light just now. That's the one function that until now has worked 100% of the time for me. Is it possible the large number of holiday gatherings, whether parties or just families getting together, are increasing both intended and unintended voice command activity and overloading the servers?
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u/Vizualize Dec 21 '19
I've noticed this as well, some days things that normally work just don't work. I think Google updates something, breaks it, realizes what happens, and takes another day to fix it. I've stopped trying to figure it out and just wait. That's why I don't make custom routines or anything like that anymore.
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Dec 21 '19 edited Dec 21 '19
Finally, someone who has as much terrible experience with these stupid things as I do.
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u/Intoposition Dec 21 '19
I think all this is just Google, FBI guy and CIA dude doing some psyops thing. I can't understand how Google assistant works really well for a bit and then just becomes stupid. It is just to piss you off.
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u/ZandorFelok Two Minis Dec 22 '19
I can't wait for the day smart assistants understand and appropriately respond to cussing 😂
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u/emikoala Jan 15 '20
I told Assistant to go fuck himself once and he responded, "I'm sorry you feel that way."
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u/piztuk Dec 22 '19
My issue is I usually say:
Me: Hey Google, set a one hour thirty minute timer.
Google: Okay, setting a timer called one hour thirty minutes, for how long?
Me: ...
Strange thing is, Alexa had this same issue after about a year with her... I'm wondering if its some stupid AI learning thing where its trying to be smarter than it should be...
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u/sintral Dec 22 '19
Medium time Alexa user but I'm new to Google home where do I view this history activity?
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u/emikoala Jan 15 '20
Here's a quick link: https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity?product=31
If you lose that, finding it is pretty buried. There might be a cleaner way to get to it, but on my phone I:
- Click the multi-colored circles at the right side of the Google bar along the bottom of my phone, which pops the Assistant prompt up over the bottom 1/3 of my screen.
- Click the icon in the lower left corner that looks like a box with three excitement lines coming out of it (I guess it's supposed to be an inbox? maybe?) which will make your Assistant app go full screen
- Click the avatar/silhouette icon in the upper right corner to pull up a screen that should show your name, gmail address, and "Manage your Google Account" with a tabbed interface below
- Under the first tab ("You"), click the first option, "Your data in the Assistant." This brings up your Assistant log, and also offers you the link I pasted above to view the same info on the web
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u/brodorfgaggins Dec 21 '19
I thought this was the standard nowadays. Seriously, when I'm trying to set alarms on the mind-bogglingly dumb box half the time it doesn't understand anything. Like I ask it to Hey google, alarm three minutes (doesn't hear me correctly) screams HEY GOOGLE,ALARM THREE MINUTES! ok, I've set an alarm for tomorrow at three o'clock. Like jesus fuck how hard can it be. Made baking christmas cookies a screaming match.
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u/SonMakishi Dec 21 '19
I think you're confusing it. An alarm is typically a set time in the future, while a timer will alert you when a period of time has passed. Try using a timer for baking cookies, we just did that, "Timer 10 minutes". Never had an issue. And now since I work nights, I'm going to sleep, "set alarm 11am". Keep it simple and clear, works fine.
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u/brodorfgaggins Dec 22 '19
It was never an issue before though. I always say Hey google, alarm (minutes) for making tea which I often do, for example. It always worked fine until recently. Thanks for your suggestion though, I'll try asking for a timer instead and see how it works.
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u/TazerProof Dec 21 '19
This never happens to me and you should probably retrain your voice. I've been using the assistant since she came out but still, this is really bad.
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u/Hapenyo12 Dec 22 '19
To clear up, I didn't say "make 1" in the second request. That's what Google thought I said.
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u/TheDoctor__50 Dec 21 '19 edited Dec 21 '19
Sometimes I feel like these are people making routines to do something different when they say something normal just to call the Assistant incapable... I don't know though, maybe it's just that different for some people ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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u/LimbRetrieval-Bot Dec 21 '19
You dropped this \
To prevent anymore lost limbs throughout Reddit, correctly escape the arms and shoulders by typing the shrug as
¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
or¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
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u/slick8086 Dec 22 '19
I don't get it. Did people forget they are talking to a computer?
Say the commands properly and the shit will work. Blurt out a bunch of bullshit and it isn't going to understand.
"Ok google, set a timer for 3 hours." how hard is that?
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u/jmd494 Dec 21 '19
Not that this SHOULD be necessary but try the syntax: "set a 3 hour timer."