Did google stop supporting their Nest/Home mini speakers?

[masterdam79]

Recently (last weeks) my Google Nest speakers (all 5 of them) stopped responding to the "Ok, Google" voice prompt.

Predominantly it's the case with the Home/Nest Mini speakers and the only way how to fix it temporarily is to reboot them.

Factory Resetting them is also tried, but results in temporary fix, after which the speakers become unresponsive again, sometimes with the LEDs zigzagging, sometimes with the LEDs turned off.

Am I the only one experiencing this, or did I miss some news post somewhere?

[David_K]

All models of speaker and display are still very much supported. Aside from rebooting them, there are some things you can try:

Google Assistant doesn't respond - Google Nest Help

Let us know how you get on!

[masterdam79]

Thanks, but only restarting the devices helps at this stage, strangely enough only the Nest Mini devices, not the bigger Google Nest speakers.

[Muddi]

Hey masterdam79,

I hope we were able to answer your question with the info provided by @David_K. If you have additional questions, feel free to respond to this thread and we'd be happy to further assist you.
 

Cheers,

Muddi

[masterdam79]

I've rolled back a version of Home Assistant, which is also integrated with the Google Nest speakers, as this is my next suspect.

[Muddi]

Hi there,

To confirm, is it the Assistant app on your phone? Have you tried connecting one of your devices on a different network to see if your device will have the same behavior?

Cheers,

Muddi

[masterdam79]

It's not my phone, only the Google Nest Mini speakers in my home, the bigger Nest versions seem unaffected.

[Muddi]

Hey masterdam79,

How was your device? Have you tried connecting it to a different network?

Cheers,

Muddi

[masterdam79]

Yes I tried switching a couple of the Nest Mini devices to a 5G WiFi network, the other two remained on the 2.4G WiFi network.

All four are still having trouble after about a day without problems.

[masterdam79]

I've ruled out Home Assistant as a root cause as I removed the Google Home integration, but as before the problem is returning after about a day.

[masterdam79]

I'm also pinging the devices every minute using a cronjob on a raspberry pi and posting the exit code to a Grafana dashboard.

Network (Orbi 6 Pro mesh) doesn't seem to be the issue, latency is very low.

[Muddi]

Hello there,

Sorry for the delays. I want to make sure that I understand it correctly. Are you able to use your Nest Mini now? Is it responding to your commands?

Cheers,

Muddi

[masterdam79]

No worries, thanks for the help.

In order to use my Nest Minis, I need to reboot all of them daily, if not multiple times per day.

They function fine for about 8 hours after that.

[Muddi]

Hey masterdam79,

Oh no! Have you tried setting up one of your speakers to a different network to see if it will have the same behavior?

Cheers,

Muddi 

[Muddi]

Hi nosht82,

Sorry to hear that. Have you tried connecting your speaker to a different network to check if it will have the same behavior? Also, is iPv6 enabled on your router?

Cheers,

Muddi

[nosht82]

I moved it to a different network and with in 24 hours its dead again.  The old network was Wi-Fi 6 5GHZ only the new was 2.4 and 5 Wi-Fi 5.  I use wpa3 with backswords compatibility for 2.  I have had ip 6 turned off at my router because my isp has a weird configuration of it that doesn't work well with my router.

[Muddi]

Hey nosht82,

Could you try switching your network security to WEP, WPA, or WPA2 only?

Cheers,

Muddi

[nosht82]

Switched all my networks to wpa2 only and same problem with in 2 hours.   I did receive a AP update that has "[Gen6] Fixed Multicast Enhancement not working. This affects IPTV and other multicast-heavy traffic operations." in the change log.  I'm applying it now and will follow up on if it works in a day or so.

[Alex_S]

Hi there,

Thanks for the update. We'll keep this thread open for 3 days and then check for your follow up till then.

Best,
Alex

[nosht82]

By the next morning some can receive broadcasts but not send.  As masterdam79 said I can ping them even when they are frozen and don't respond to voice commands.  I usually reboot them threw the home app so they are network connected.  I have also tried hard booting them.

[masterdam79]

I concur, network connectivity doesn't seem the case.

I also tried switching off "Continued Listening" to no avail as I suspect they are still in listening mode.

I reckon it's something to do with them starting to listen for whatever reason, but never closing the cycle and at some point giving up on voice prompts.

It happened once whilst watching TV through connected chromecast, the volume of the TV was reduced significantly (similar when you activate the assistant using voice prompt) until I reboot the Nest Mini in that room.

[masterdam79]

With me the network doesn't seem to be the issue, I'm continually pinging all Google Nest (including Mini) speakers and the latency is very much within normal limits.

[masterdam79]

My dedicated IOT network is also maximum WPA2, no WPA3.

Also no IPv6 configured on the DHCP server

[nosht82]

I'm experiencing the same issue, I have 6 mini's 1 is a nest the others are homes and they all do the same thing.  Resetting works for a few hours.  I was thinking it might be a issue with Wi-Fi packets causing them to freeze.  I'm using a Ubiquiti AP (U6LR) but this is the only post I've found about the issue and it doesn't mention what access point your using.  There was a firmware update to the AP around the time the issue started, but that's not uncommon because Ubiquiti updates about every other month, and there has been another since it started.

[masterdam79]

Hi @nosht82,

Sorry to hear, but also sort off happy I'm not the only one with this issue.

The WiFi setup I'm using is Netgear Orbi Pro 6 Mesh with 1 router and 2 satellites.

I'm lost here and about to throw them all out of the window!!

[masterdam79]

@nosht82 Do you also see a difference in problems between Nest Mini and the larger Nest speakers.

I have a pair (larger) Nest speakers in the livingroom downstairs, they are completely unaffected somehow.

[nosht82]

I only have minis 6 with 2 in a pair that seem to never have issues while the unpaired ones do.  5 1st and 1 2nd gen, and it has the same behavior on both generations.

[masterdam79]

Another finding in my investigation.

Google Support asked me to factory reset the devices, which I'd already done earlier but to comply with support I performed it again.

Somewhere along the process of reinitializing I found that I got an error when reselecting the groups these speakers belonged to pre-reinstall.

So I figured it might be something to do with the groups, so I deleted all groups.

I'll check if that solved anything and report back in a few days.

@nosht82 do you use any groups in your Google Home app and if so, did you already try removing these groups?

Some time ago (around the time Google got sued by Sonos for multi-room audio patent infringements) the multi-room audio experience degraded to a degree that I don't use these groups anymore and am thinking of switching to Sonos (guess the lawsuit worked).

[nosht82]

That seems to have fixed the freezing and not receiving / sending broadcasts.  I deleted the pair and its been stable for a few days now.  I still have the chasing lights issue but it responds and receive / sends every time now.  The pair was 1st gen home minis.  Weird that they were the only ones that never had issues but caused issues with all of the other ones.

[masterdam79]

I'm specifically referring to speaker groups, not pairs as speaker stereo pairs have been unaffected completely in my case.

It seemed stable for a few days so I was cautiously optimistic, but the issue returned unfortunately.

Google Support returned back to me saying their Dev team figured something out and I should let me speakers on for it to receive updates.

Will report back if I see any version upgrades (took screenshots) and if it has helped or not.

[Juni]

Hi folks,

We just want to check if you need further help. Could you also provide us with the case number that was provided by the support team so we can check for you?

I look forward to your responses.

Regards,

Juni

[Princesss]

Hey there,

We just want to check if you have seen our response posted above. Let us know if you have additional questions and I'd be glad to assist you further.
 

Best,

Princess