I’ve had an iPad on the fridge for a few years now and was using Siri to set timers, but not a lot else. It’s always been maybe 80% in even doing just that and lately that rate was closer to 40% in getting it right first time.
To be fair I am using an old iPad 3 so maybe the mic isn’t good enough and/or it’s just getting old.
A week or so ago when they were on sale at JB I grabbed the two pack of Google Home Mini’s with the intent to go halves with a friend making them more like $40 each. I already use Gmail, Google calendar and Google Play Music so I’ve already got plenty of ties to their ecosystem (mostly I like that it’s online and hardware independent).
After some quick setup I’m pretty impressed at just how accurate and consistent it is at doing things like setting calendar entries, timers, conversions (for cooking) etc. It even works reasonably well as a speaker in the kitchen. At this point my friend seems to have lost interest so I’m considering dropping the other one in the lounge room
(PS. The kids like asking Google to tell them a joke… and so do I ).
On a related note, a few weeks ago I ordered some Xiaomi Smart Home “Mi” things. At this stage just the hub and a couple of temperature sensors.
https://www.zapals.com/xiaomi-smart-wi-fi-remote-control-multifunctional-gateway-upgrade-version.html
These are great in that I have a widget on my phone letting me know the temperature/humidity at home (in various places) at a glance, their ecosystem also allows for control of various other devices including an IR AC controller.
Which leads to the next point and my current struggle. None of these systems talk to each other.
We are a house full of iPad/iPhone users so have built an ecosystem around AirPlay. The mini system in the dining room (which is what we usually listen to music from in the kitchen) has Bluetooth and AirPlay (and DAB+), so it’s convenient to play music from the fridge iPad or one of the other iOS devices via AirPlay knowing that you can control the volume as well as skip tracks from either the Sony remote, the iOS device, the stereo itself or even your Apple watch.
So while the Google Home things can play music, they can’t integrate with all the other things. Sonos speakers would be nice, but I already have nice speakers. The idea of Google Chrome Audio is there, but when it gets down to an analog 3.5mm jack I start to lose interest.
My temperature things can’t be read by Google (or Siri)… I’ve also got a little IR blaster thing that’s controllable via an iPhone app and ITTT stuff that would allow me to control “things”…
What I need now is some sort of aggregator software that connects to all the different standards and allows control from Google / Siri / Alexa… I’ve seen something things around that can do something things, but they usually need some sort of coding to get things working with different things. On the upside, they will run on a Raspberry Pi.
Off track completely, other than to say I really do like my $40 Google Home Mini.