Radio Automation no longer working

[Karmulian]

For over a year I've had an automation for an alarm on on Home Speaker.

When the alarm is dismissed, it starts the radio "BBC Radio 2"

It's all worked we'll, until recently when it no longer played the radio (even though that's the automation) and instead starts some Spotify playlist.

If I ask Google Assistant to play BBC Radio 2, it's fine. This is specific to automation on the device. I've tried various edits to other radio stations but experience the same problem, always Spotify starts instead. 

Not sure why it's suddenly changed.. 

[Juni]

Hi Karmulian,
 

Thanks for reaching out and letting us know about your routine concern. We'll work together to identify the cause of the problem and find a solution. A few questions: what Nest speaker or display are we working with? When did it begin? Were there any recent changes made? Also, what troubleshooting steps have you taken so far?

Try to refresh your devices and observe if it makes a difference. First, reboot your Wi-Fi router, and once the network is back up, do the same thing to your Google Nest speaker or display.

Regards,

Juni

[Karmulian]

It's a Google Nest Mini, the current version.

I've made no changes to the configuration of the device, or the automation.

Devices has been rebooted, as has the WiFi (although I can't see how that possibly affects it) 

The music is does play instead is a playlist of the same name on Spotify,  native not streamed as Spotify doesn't link up from my phone. Which is again odd

I have considered resetting the device, but this feels like it's an issue on the automation side given if I ask it to play the radio station directly.. it does.

[Juni]

Hi there,
 

Thanks for the details you’ve shared. You can try to factory reset your Google Nest Mini. This erases all your personalized settings and restores the factory default settings. It won’t automatically reconnect to WI-Fi, and you’ll need to set it up again. Check out the article below to know more about it.
 

Factory reset Google Nest or Home speakers or displays 

Best,

Juni

[Karmulian]

I've reset the speaker, no success

I've run the same automation on a different speaker and my phone, no success

I deleted the automation and made a new one, no success

[jds403]

I have a similar problem with BBC Radio 4. Not an individual speaker problem - I see it on multiple devices. It's got to be a software issue instead of hardware.

[Juni]

Hi folks,

Karmulian, thanks for trying that, and sorry that you are still experiencing it. Could you delete the routine and recreate it, then observe if you get a different experience?

jds403, thanks for posting. Is BBC Radio 4 not working on routines as well or just playing it using voice commands? You can try the steps provided in this thread.

I look forward to your responses.

Thanks,

Juni

[Karmulian]

As stated above, I already deleted and recreated the routine/automation.

Experience is the same, it continues to play BBC RADIO 2 (playlist) on Spotify, rather than the radio when via automation.

[Juni]

Hey Karmulian,

Thanks for the details you’ve shared. Since the steps didn't work on your end, we'd be happy to take a look into this for you. Please fill out this Contact Us form with all the needed information, then let me know once done.

Best,

Juni

[Karmulian]

Did that yesterday l,

Interestingly the problem appears fixed today.. 

[Alex_S]

Hi there,

We got your form—thanks for filling it out. Let’s continue to monitor its behavior and let us know how it goes.

Warmly,
Alex

[DrWig]

Radio on Google nest just seems a bit broken.  Asking to play a radio station works consistently (example "Play BBC Radio 1".  However, media alarms stopped working with it probably over a year ago......I know that's now being retired, so setup an automation to do the same thing.  It only works 30% of the time.  I added another thing to the automation to check it was triggering (weather forecast) and that works every morning....it just rarely plays the radio afterwards.  Asking google to play the radio works fine, but that's not good for an alarm!

[DrWig]

p.s. yes, I've fed back on the problem on the app.  Yes, I've factory reset the device (I even bought a 2nd gen nest to replace the google mini I had the original problems on)....nothing fixes it......

[DrWig]

p.p.s. unlike the original poster, I just get silence when the radio should play.....

[DavidLo]

For me, rather than playing radio 4, it wants to play "a selection of radio 4 singers on Spotify" (or something like that).
While playing radio 4 from my Good Morning automation used to work reliably, it only occasionally does so now; specifically asking to "Play Radio 4" always seems OK.
I've resorted to deleting the play radio step from my automation.

[jds403]

Exactly the same for me. There's clearly something broken in the media player that doesn't recognise BBC Sounds as a source of media, so it "guesses" and tries Spotify.

I've deleted that step and instead added a manual command of "Play BBC Radio 4" (typed in exactly like that) which works 50% of the time. The other 50% it just does nothing.

[DrWig]

Exactly what I've done, and exactly what I've found.....it now works about 50% of the time.....other bits of the automation don't always work, either.  I get it to dial down the volume to lower levels for the morning....this sometimes doesn't work either, so the announcement I've put in is sometimes too loud.

[Karmulian]

I put the formal support ticket in and am currently going through telling them exactly the things I've already said in this thread..