Friday, April 30, 2021

A Replacement Nest Speaker

I've been playing with Google Home products for nearly three years. For example, it's now second nature to say, "Good Morning," to the Google Hub clock on my bedside table. This causes the 'do-not-disturb' on my Android devices to end, turns off the night lights, stops the white-noise fake fan, and depending on the time of year, turns on a few lights around the apartment. It also prompts the device to tell me the day's weather and any of the day's activities I have in my Google calendar.  I'm never ready at this point to listen to the radio or turn on the TV.  I need to get a coffee in my hand first.

During the day, I frequently ask questions of the speakers around the apartment. They're great for US to metric conversions or odd questions about something we see on TV.  When I want a copy of something from the wifi printer, I yell to turn it on. If I want to print something on the 3D printer, I do the same. Anytime I want to play Spotify or our local 24/7 news radio, I ask a speaker to play on the appropriate device, or set of devices. 'Couch' plays on the Hub and the Google Mini in the living room. The kitchen has a Mini on the fridge. Even the hallway closet has a spare mini.  They were so cheap,  they became impulse buys.

Towards evening, I control almost all the lights in the apartment and on the balcony by voice command. 'Turn on the living room lights' activates four different bulbs in the room.
  A Pair of Nest Speakers in Sage

As soon as I was assured of our arrival date in BC this spring, I ordered a new phone from the Canadian Google Store.  I popped a Pixel 5 into the basket.  Then, I noticed that the newly-designed Nest Speakers were available in the same colour as my phone.  Something called 'sage' is really just a light green but appears to the hot this year.

I noticed Nest speakers were on sale if two were purchased.  I'd always wanted to test the stereo capabilities of my smart speakers.  Two can be configured to work together as left and right channels.  At nearly $US 75 each, they weren't an impulse purchase.  But, hey, I figured I'm worth it.  I have so few costly bad habits that I can splurge on tech once in a while.

My phone and speakers came by UPS in a very big box.  I enjoyed changing over the phone and left the speakers for a while.  When I did get to them, I could make only one connect to wifi.  I'm no novice at setting up Home devices and I knew I'd received a defective item.  I had to print out the RMA and shipping label.  As soon as it arrived back at Google in Ontario, they credited me a full price on the speaker as a replacement would no longer be on sale.  Yet, I found one online store still offering to sell to me for $US 75.  I jumped.   So, I think that means I got a better deal than just the regular discounts.  Higher math functions such as addition and subtraction are not my forte though!  

Today, I picked up my speaker at THE SOURCE up at the mall as I had them sent it to the shop rather than the apartment.  THE SOURCE used to be the Canadian Radio Shack before they bit the dust a decade ago.  I have my two green speakers set up as 'Nest Stereo' in my app.  Spotify sounds great playing on the bedroom dresser.



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