rmiles7721

Google Home Review

rmiles7721February 10, 2017Android, Home Automation

So I set up Google Home a couple of weeks ago and figured it had been up and running long enough for me to give a preliminary review.

So far the WAF factor (as well as children) has been meh…

Don’t get me wrong. I love gadgets. I love Google stuff. I was a big fan of the Nexus program and now am using the Pixel XL. I have several Chromecasts scattered throughout the house and am on Google Wifi. For the time being though (and maybe only temporarily, I don’t know) Alexa is kicking Google Home’s ass at my casa. Maybe because we’ve been using the Amazon product for two years now and it definitely has a place in our home. I have an Echo in the living room and three Echo Dots in other rooms. I also use Fire TV (a lot more than my Chromecasts the last few months) and they have become an extension of my home automation system (Homeseer). I can control all of the lights with Alexa as well as my thermostat, TVs, audio receivers, my CCTV system, my coffee maker, etc. Can’t do that with Home, not easily anyway.

There are workarounds. I have Autovoice set up and can ask Google home to “tell Autovoice to…” but that’s such a pain in the ass. “Alexa, turn on the TV” just comes naturally.

I don’t use very many skills with the Echo, so won’t even compare how many are available. Most of them are crap anyway.

As far as setup and ease of use, Google Home is awesome. It was painless to set up and quick. Currently I have it in my kitchen (one of the places I DON’T currently have an Echo or Dot. I spend the majority of my time in our bedroom though, so it’s not getting used as much as the other devices.

The speaker itself is decent. I’m not an audiophile so don’t have anything to complain about as far as volume and range and all that other stuff. It sounds good to me so that’s all that’s important. I like Google Home for playing my music. That’s one thing I don’t normally do with the Echo. My wife and daughter listen to Pandora all the time so Alexa is good for them. I’m not a huge Pandora fan, or spotify for that matter. I prefer listening to what’s in my own library and all 18,000 songs are on Google Music. A very small portion of it is on Amazon so if I’m listening to music it’s through Google Music casting to one of the Chromecast Audio’s here, or through Google Home.

I also like the integration with other products. Keep for instance. Except for my oldest daughter, who has an iPhone 6, we all have androids here and there are a few Keep notes that we share with each other. Our menu and grocery list are two of them. I can use workarounds and IFTTT to get that stuff from Alexa if I want but it’s a pain in the ass and as anyone who uses IFTTT can tell you, it’s not instantaneous. Usually it’s fairly quick but occasionally there’s a delay of up to an hour. With Google Home if I add something to the shopping list it’s immediately added to a Google Assistant Shopping List in Keep. Now if I could just get the wife to use THAT one instead of the one she keeps creating and sharing.

There’s a lot of other stuff I could be doing with Home, particularly with Tasker, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. As I integrate it more fully with my system I’m sure I’ll start to like it more and more. Whether the rest of the family can get used to saying something besides “Alexa…” remains to be seen.

Google Assistant on the Pixel Gets Home Control

rmiles7721February 9, 2017Android

Looks like Google Assistant on the Pixel is finally getting proper home functionality, without having to have Google Home. Up until now you could issue commands to the Nest, for instance, from your phone if you had already set it up on the Home. For instance, I already have a few Hue lights and a couple of Wemo devices (only one switch) that I have set up through Google Home. Now though you can do it through assistant, which is awesome.

If you open Assistant and go into the settings, Home control should be there. Since I already have a few devices set up through my home these already appear for me but you can add devices from Nest, Hue, SmartThings, Honeywell, and WeMo, create rooms, and assign a device to each room. Not too bad. Unfortunately Homeseer is not in the list but they are working on it and hopefully will be there shortly. Currently I’m using a workaround with Tasker and Autovoice to coomunicate with Homeseer, as well as IFTTT although that’s a lot slower than HS with the Tasker plugin.

Not everyone is seeing it yet apparently. I have a Google Pixel XL running the Android 7.1.2 beta, with the Google app 6.12.19 and Play Services 10.2.98

Google Pixel XL, Three Months In

rmiles7721February 8, 2017Android, Home Automation

For the last few months I’ve been using the Google Pixel XL. In the past few years I have used quite a few smart phones. In reverse order my daily drivers were the Nexus 6P, Nexus 6, Galaxy Note3, HTC One M8, Galaxy Nexus, HTC Droid Incredible & the Incredible 2, Blackberry Storm, Samsung SCH-i730 and the Blackberry Pearl. I may be missing a phone or two in the list as well, IDK. Probably my favorite devices up until now were the Nexus phones and the Blackberry Pearl.

My biggest issue with the Nexus line was that the cameras have always been underperforming and slow. Until the last couple of years if I was going on a trip I always had to make sure that I carried my dslr with me. That’s changed now.

I can say without a doubt that the Google Pixel is an awesome phone. It’s responsive, fast and the camera is even faster. With one or two exceptions it’s the best phone I’ve ever owned.

The interface, for the most part, is the generic Android desktop. Google elected to replace the Google Now Launcher with the Pixel Launcher. There isn’t a lot of noticeable difference there and I like it. I’ve played around with several home replacements such as Nova (one of my favorites) and Lightning Launcher but I always seem to go back to the simplicity of the one that came with the phone. I am not a real huge widget person and I only use two screens, one with a few icons and folders containing my most used apps, and the Google screen. If Google would open up the API for smaller developers such as Nova to integrate that into it I would probably go back to using Nova but that’s something for an entirely new post.

As I mentioned above, I really like the camera. It’s super fast and takes great pictures, better than any phone I have owned, even better than the Samsung phones I’ve used. With other phones I usually have had to wait a second for the phone to focus and then another after I’ve “pushed” the button for the picture to actually take. That’s way too long and half the time the photo I’m trying to take is no longer there. With the Pixel XL it’s just point and click, which is exactly what I cell phone camera should be.

One of the other things that I am pleased with is that I don’t have to root my phone anymore just to be able to do stuff, or get rid of unwanted bloat. Up until the Nexus 6P I have rooted every single phone I have owned. I love using Tasker to automate stuff and do more with my phone and until the last year or so have always had to hack my phone in order to do so. With the 6P and now the Pixel XL I haven’t had to do that. With the fine grained permissions that have been added to Android the last couple of versions it’s much easier to get it to do things  now. Not to mention I love Android Pay and it’s not possible to use a rooted phone and use Android Pay without a lot of workarounds that I don’t really want to mess with.

There are a couple of issues I have had with it that I want to make sure and mention. They aren’t killers for me but it wouldn’t be fair to leave them out.

The biggest problem I had was that the Pixel was freezing several times per day, just completely locking up on me. When I received the Pixel I did the account and app transfer from my 6P and it started within a week. After doing some research this has been a semi-common problem with folks and the solution seemed to be to remove the Life360 app. WTF? I went ahead and did a hard reset and made sure not to install Life360 (which everyone in my family uses) and that seems to have done the trick. I am not particularly satisfied with that answer and after having left it off my phone for the month of December and most of January, I put it back on about two weeks ago. I have had one freeze up since then, just the other day, but other than that the problem seems to have gone away. Not sure if it really was Life360 that was the problem, or maybe a combination of that and the transfer I did when I first got it and all of the apps I had installed.

One other issue I have been having is with disconnecting from data after a phone call. It doesn’t always happen so I am not sure what’s causing it. I have been a Project Fi customer for about a year and a half now so depending on my location I’m connected to T-Mobile, Sprint or U.S. Cellular. The issue seems to be when I am connected to the Sprint network. I have to repair my connection or switch to another carrier (or just reboot) in order to fix the problem. Like I said, it’s not a major issue but one to be aware of. I use an app called Signal Info and one of the few widgets on my desktop allows me to repair or switch my connection.

So I spent a couple of paragraphs about “issues” but here’s the real deal…I consider myself a power user and with Tasker and a few other apps and plugins I push my phones pretty hard, so I have never owned a phone that didn’t have issues. So far the Pixel XL has been able to deal with things more smoothly than any other. Really starting to look forward to the Pixel 2…, particularly if they add waterproofing.

Merry Christmas

rmiles7721December 25, 2016Site News

Before I head out the door to the salt mines I just wanted to take a moment to wish everyone a very merry Christmas, Happy Holidays (and Happy Hanukkah, which coincides with Christmas this year…) Merry Festivus and all that other stuff.

 

Goodbye AT&T

rmiles7721October 21, 2016Android

Since 2005 or so I have always paid full price for my phone, but normally I purchased them from my provider. In the long run it’s much cheaper because you aren’t paying finance charges. From ’99 until maybe three years ago I was with Verizon and grandfathered in the unlimited data plan as long as I kept purchasing my phones like that. In 2013 I needed to upgrade my phone so I went into the Verizon store in Carrollton to buy a new smart phone. The salesman refused to sell me a phone and lied, telling me that even if I found a Verizon store to sell me one they would knock me out of the grandfathered plan. Of course it was a bald-faced lie at the time but I was so pissed off that I walked out, went across the street to AT&T and took all five lines and $400 a month to them.

Of course at that point I had to start paying for my data and was locked into a plan again lol. I went ahead and picked up an HTC One and used that until the Nexus 6 came out. For some reason I went ahead and decided to “upgrade” to the Nexus 6. After having to have it replaced five times I bought one unlocked from Amazon and started using that. Unfortunately that meant I was still paying for a phone I wasn’t using (which is in a box, ready for me to sell on Swappa or eBay.)

My line went month-to-month yesterday so I just finished canceling that line on the account!

Although I have had the line on AT&T I have had it forwarded to ad have been using Google’s Project Fi for the last 18 months. Maybe a little longer. While the coverage isn’t quite what my wife has I really haven’t had any problems with it and I live in a semi-rural area. I keep a pre-paid Verizon Hotspot for those times that I might not have coverage through Fi (which uses T-Mobile, Sprint and US Cellular towers.) My daughter has been off of AT&T and also using Project Fi for a few months now as well.

I now have three lines left on my AT&T account. One goes to month-to-month in February, one in June and one sometime in 2018. Ugh. Whar’s funny is that my bill from them will drop to somewhere around $300, maybe a little higher. I have two on Project Fi and my bill is a third of what I am paying AT&T.

Regardless of what provider anyone uses I can tell you that the nicest feeling in the world is to not be locked in to some jack-ass provider that’s holding your feet to the fire with their shitty plans. Buy your phones outright and go month-to-month. If you really want to save money shop online every month for pre-paid plans. Most of them have deals and you can switch providers. I’m not going that route since I really like Project Fi (which, knowing Google, will disappear at some point in the next few years)  but if you do, just set up a Google Voice account so you can use the same phone number for all of them. You can actually use Google Voice to ring on your mobile and landline (does anyone still have one of those?) at the same time.

BCR Game Server

rmiles7721October 11, 2016BBSing

Finally got around to adding BCR Game Server to the BBS tonight. Check it out on my board or hit them up directly here.

bcrgames

New L.O.R.D. IGMs added

rmiles7721September 12, 2016BBS

I’ve added a couple of LORD IGMs to the game. I don’t like a lot of them but
as I was a beta tester and support site for Joseph Masters’ stuff back in the
day I have always liked Sandtiger’s bar and used Lord NPC as well. I’ve added
those and Barak’s House as well.

If you have any particular IGMs that you would like to see added, please feel
free to let me know. Nothing weird that takes away from the game or gives too
much advantage though.

BBS Moved to a New Machine

rmiles7721September 8, 20161BBS

I have moved the BBS to a Windows 7 32 bit machine. This may lead to issues with some of the software, so if something is not working please send me an email. In the long run it means that I can run most of the older 16-bit DOS games that I wasn’t able to before.  It’s also a dedicated server so not having to share resources with the stuff running on my personal PC

Also, I seem to be having some sort of issues with comments here on my site. Anyone reading this, please leave a comment for me. If it doesn’t work shoot me an email, a tweet, or leave me a facebook message.

New Stuff on the Bulletin Board

rmiles7721August 30, 20161BBS

I’ve updated a few things here and on the BBS this week.

First off I created a separate Twitter account just for the BBS and my home automation system. Also figured out how to interface the BBS with Twitter and have it send automatic tweets as well. Also did a short tutorial on how to tweet from Mystic BBS that explains how it works if you are interested.

Added a couple more message networks and you can also check my seti@home status from the BBS now as well. Full on geek mode this month goddammit.

There’s a couple more things but I can’t remember what they are off the top of my head. At soccer practice with my daughter at the moment so my attention is elsewhere

Last Night’s Downtime

rmiles7721August 23, 2016BBS

If you tried to log in to the BBS last night or send mail I apologize for the downtime. While Windows 10 has been rock solid for me as an OS it has the nasty habit of rebooting whenever it wants, regardless of what you tell it to do.

I fell asleep before it had finished unfortunately.