The modern smart home vision is simple. For me, all I want is a ‘set and forget’ ecosystem that works efficiently by itself. Most modern smart home platforms or ecosystem controllers make this a breeze — right until a bug/app malfunction brings it all crashing down.
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That’s exactly what several Google Home users are realizing the hard way. According to Google Home users on Reddit, several of their smart home devices have staged a mass exodus.
The issue, which has been gaining traction on the r/googlehome subreddit, was first highlighted by the folks over at Android Authority. User reports suggest that smart home devices added to a Google Home are automatically being removed. Said devices then simply appear as devices tied to user accounts with no home.
This seems to be a recurring issue
User SPekkala13 said that their devices, mainly smart lights, were automatically removed from their home twice within a span of 48 hours. Others that chimed in had similar things to say.
“I have the same thing going on with my Nest Mini. It’s driving me insane. I have added the device again and again to my home but after a couple of days it gets disconnected every single time,” wrote user StijnDv, while user carjasssso wrote “Also happened to me twice since yesterday. Even after relinking and assigning devices to the rooms, they get all removed.”
As seen in the Reddit embed above, said users are also receiving system and email notifications indicating that their devices were removed from their ‘home.’
The main problem here is that once said devices are removed from your home and the rooms they were assigned to, they break every routine and automation that they were part of. Users facing the issue need to manually add all of the devices again, which can be quite a task if you have a lot of smart home devices.
Google hasn’t acknowledged the issue yet, and there seems to be no clear reason as to why devices are staging a mass exodus. There are, however, some clues.
Most of the users that have reported the issue appear to be using the SmartLife (Tuya) platform to bridge their third-party smart home devices to Google Home. The recurring issue could be related to a hiccup between Google’s servers and Tuya’s API, though we’ll have to wait to know for sure.
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