No video recording on Gen 1?

[KCampman]

I have a number of the Nest Generation 1 cameras. They all worked great and I had video recording on all of them. One died. When I replaced it, the Gen 1 cameras were no longer available. So I have one Gen 2. Which, frustratingly, is incompatible with the Nest app. So I got the Google Home app in order to work with the one Gen 2 camera. At which point all of the Gen 1 cameras stopped recording. 

Google has no actual customer service people and all of the online Q&A posts dont really address my situation. I’m turning to this forum as a last ditch before replacing the whole system with another brand that actually has technical support / customer service people.

I had a Geek Squad security camera installation technician here Dec 31 and he couldn’t figure it out. 

The Gen 2 camera records like it should. 

Thanks for any ideas! 

[MplsCustomer]

@KCampman 

I don't know why installing a 2nd gen camera in the Google Home app would make your 1st gen cameras quit recording.

Have you migrated your Nest Account to a Google Account? (We migrated in 2020.)

https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9297676

We have two 2nd gen Google Nest cameras; the rest of our cameras and doorbells are 1st gen Google Nest. All have video history provided by the one Nest Aware Plus subscription we've had since 2020.

The older 1st gen Nest Aware subscriptions cover specific 1st gen cameras and doorbells. The 2nd gen Nest Aware and Nest Aware Plus subscriptions cover all 1st and 2nd gen cameras and doorbells in the same Google Nest "home/structure".

This is the pricing for each Nest Aware subscription in the U.S.:

https://store.google.com/product/nest_aware?hl=en-US&modal=upgrade-pricing

To contact Support:

1. Go to https://support.google.com/googlenest/gethelp.
2. Select a category/product family, and type in a brief description of the issue, then click "Next".
3. Click "Other", then click "Next step".
4. Under "Resources", just click "Next step". (Clicking one of the listed links will bring up a Help page.)
5. Under "Contact options", choose to get a phone call or chat with the team, depending on availability in your country.

[KCampman]

Thanks for trying to help.

When I choose migrate to Home in my Nest app, all of the cameras disappear from Nest — and they also do not appear in the Home app. When I choose “add device” in the Home app, it never finds any of the cameras. How do I add these cameras and why is this so amazingly difficult? Why doesn’t Google have some actual human being employees who can help solve this problem? I have hundred of dollars and more hours than I’d care to admit invested in this headache. 

[KCampman]

I was able to enter “other” in the help page and get to the point where I could request a phone call. A nice woman called and spent about 2 hours on the phone with me, screen sharing, and walking me through the process of manually removing each camera from Nest and re-signing in using Google in the Neat app to add them back. This technician was patient and super helpful as I was doing all ofthis in the middle of the night with a sleeping wife and small children I was trying to not disturb.

I still can’t believe it’s this difficult:

*for a person with average tech savvy to make this happen, and

*to connect with a Google technician to help. 
Relieved to have this saga over. Thank you for the assistance.

[MplsCustomer]

@KCampman 

I'm glad you were able to contact Support and get it resolved; it's too bad it took 2 hours to do so.