View all of your cameras on your desktop - nest, home, dropcam, etc

[jjay]

Like many of you, I am suffering from the disintegrated Google Home experience.  Nest app for some thing, Google Home app for other things.  Browser occasionally.  It reeks of poor product management.

But we're stuck with the products we bought, installed, and faithfully expected to deliver a tolerable experience.

So, until they get a capable person to lead the product team internally, I wanted to share my workaround for seeing cameras on my desktop.  (I have zero affiliation with this company.)

I run BlueStacks (it's free) on my Windows PC so that I can see all of my cameras.  It's resource intensive and is designed for playing Android games on your Windows computer, but it works for running the Google Home app and seeing all of your cameras in a single place.  Another benefit is that you can edit routines on a computer with a keyboard (since GH doesn't let you edit routines on ChromeOS - or at least not on my Pixelbook.)

I hope this helps someone who is frustrated and looking for a workaround.

[jproz]

Thanks for the tip. I've started playing with it but the initial results aren't too encouraging with lots of reconnections (spinning blue circle) and a frame update in the minutes. Will muck around with it a bit more to see if it improves. Fall-back is multiple browser windows for each camera - ick. 

[jproz]

An update on this. I have three camera's I want to display in realtime, ended up running three instances of BlueStacks with each displaying a single camera. Works pretty well 97% of the time. Still get an occasional dropout of say 30-60s which is not ideal but is working well enough for me.

[Brad]

Hey folks,

Thank you for your feedback on this issue, I fully understand the frustrations of not having your new Nest Cams in the Nest App or available on https://bit.ly/3HtBgJC web app. I can imagine having to use two different apps at the moment is quite daunting, and could lead to frustration. Unfortunately, there is not a current option to have all of your cams and doorbells in one place unless you have the older Nest cams that have never been migrated to Google.

Best Regards,

Brad

[cwalker85]

will a future option be avaible to view all cams? this being worked on?

[jjay]

That's what the Nest team says

[Brad]

@swalker85

I do believe there is the focus on bringing a Google Home web app to the surface. I do not have any timeframe besides what is in the blog post found here. 

Best regards,

Brad

[aatienza]

Hey swalker85,

I haven't heard from you in a while so I'll be locking this thread if there is no update within the day. If you have any new issues, updates or just a discussion topic, feel free to start a new thread in the community.

Thanks,

Archie

[jproz]

Just a comment on this. I have only the older nest cams and found the options for displaying camera's very limiting in both the web and app versions incl Android TV.  The challenge is the lack of flexibility in customising which camera's are to be displayed, the size of the display windows, borderless windows etc. This is standard functionality in other security camera ecosystems and my main gripe since coming across to the Google Nest ecosystem. 

Hope that makes sense.

[aatienza]

Hey jproz,

We hear you. Our team is working hard to deliver the best experience for our users — we'll take this as feedback. Keep your eye on the Google Nest Community page https://bit.ly/3h9zod5 for any updates.

Check out this link on how to file feedback.

Thanks,

Archie

[jjay]

Hey @aatienza - That's great.  How exactly is the team doing that?

It would be valuable and would probably calm your users if we had some insight into what is actually happening.  To us, it looks like we're giving you our feedback and our money but are entirely ignored.

Where on your backlog of work is this and what is the expected release date?  Surely the team knows that, and surely you have that information if you're able to assure us that the team is a) working, b) working hard, and c) focused on the best experience for us.  So, please share how you know all of that.

Do you really need us to file more feedback on this request?  It seems like sufficient requests have been submitted.  And they feel somewhat ignored.

It has been ten months since Rishi Chandra told us "we are committed to bringing the experiences and Nest devices you have come to love in the Nest app into the Home app."

Thanks

[Brad]

@jjay

We happily look forward to all the feedback that is received. However, I am afraid that our processes are not something that we can share with you openly. Please know that your feedback does go to the devs.

Best regards,

Brad

[aatienza]

Hey jjay,

Appreciate the help, Brad. I haven't heard from you in a while so I'll be locking this thread if there is no update within the day. If you have any new issues, updates or just a discussion topic, feel free to start a new thread in the community.

Thanks,

Archie

[jjay]

That's great.  Bluestacks has been a great workaround for me.

While Rishi Chandra (GM/VP of Google Nest) promised to fix this in 2022, I expect it's another of their empty promises.  If you intentionally make and empty promise, is that a lie?

https://www.googlenestcommunity.com/t5/Blog/Message-from-our-GM-Updates-for-our-Nest-customers/ba-p/...