Turn on the lights no longer working with solution

[cawauk]

Sharing my recent experience as I'm sure others will be experiencing similar issues. Yet another bug recently introduced by Google's development team.

Context

I have a Nest Audio in my living room alongside 10 smart plugs controlling lights (mix of Tapo Matter devices, SmartLife devices, etc.). I've never had a problem telling Nest Audio "switch on the lights" or "switch off the lights" for it to successfully switch on or off all the lights in the living room. But in the last 10 days, this stopped working: only one single smart plug would switch on or off.

Countless reboots, resets, re-syncs, re-pairings, nothing worked. Then I noticed: if I added "Living Room" to the instruction things would work as expected: "Hey Google, switch on the living room lights". But why did the Nest speaker no longer think it was located in the living room?

After hours of troubleshooting moving devices in and out of rooms in Google Home app, I finally found the bug. The only plug which was switching on and off is called "Microwave lights", it's been named that way since the first day I plugged it in, 5+ years ago, and I have never changed anything since. 5 years of continuous reliable use until 10 days ago.

Well, I discovered that by removing this device from my "living room", Nest Audio would suddenly work again on the instruction "switch on the lights" for the other 9 devices, without having to specify "living room".

So how is this troublesome plug different to the other 9 devices? Its name, specifically, it has the word  "lights" in "Microwave lights" unlike the other devices which have a singular name e.g. "Table light".

So, whatever recent update Google decided to release without proper QA, their new algorithm interprets "switch on the lights" as "let's find a device - any device - which has the word 'lights' in its name, and instead of switching on the lights, let's turn on that device (in my case, the "microwave lights"). That's plainly ridiculous. After 5+ years without an issue.

What next, ask Nest Speaker to "switch on the heating" and it will turn on a device called "doll's house fireplace LED heating light" instead of the central heating? I'm just happy Google isn't making robots, otherwise you'd get served up a bowl of Android 4.0 when asking for ice cream.

Solution

Long story short: the solution was for me to rename my smart plug "Microwave lights" to "Microwave light" (without the "s") and my home is now working again.

[SmartHomeH-TAGS]

By changing the device type from 'Outlet' to 'Light' in each device's settings would have been the easiest solution instead of worrying about names 

Then the command "Turn on lights" would work as long as the Nest speaker and Light/s are in the same Google Home app Room.

An even better way to control devices is the solution I found is in my YouTube video. "Hey Google, Light/s" to turn them on or off (instructions are in the description)...

https://youtube.com/shorts/5z69ruHrU3I?feature=share

[cawauk]

Hi, thank you for the response, but the outlet has always been defined as a 'Light' and shows as a Yellow bulb in Google Home, and appears in a group created by Google Home for all living room lights (single on/off switch for all lights in that room). This device has been defined as a 'Light' ever since since Google Home introduced this option a year or more ago.

As I say, I've changed nothing on my end, a this bug just started last week. If you have multiple lights in a room, feel free to rename one of them to include the word 'Lights' (e.g. bedside lights) and then ask your nest speaker in the same room to "switch on the lights", and watch it toggle the power for that single device!

[ByronP]

Hi Folks,

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. I apologize you're experiencing trouble when your smart lights don't respond to commands as expected. I truly appreciate your troubleshooting efforts. Let's work together to find a solution.

I'm glad that this situation has been resolved. To ensure we continue to improve and prevent similar situations, please consider sharing your detailed experience through our feedback form. This will allow us to address this concern in future updates and make things smoother for everyone.

Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Regards,

Byron

[Nbphil]

I am having similar problems, saying 'Turn on the lights' to the mini in the Living room used to turn on all the lights whether smart bulbs or socket outlets. Recently it has only been turning on one light which is a smart bulb named Onyx lamp. It reports one of two lights turned on when there are 13 smart bulbs and numerous socket outlets.  Rebooting the mini fixed this for one evening but then was not working the next day. Saying 'turn on the living room lights' still works. Having re-read this community post I tried saying 'Switch on the lights' and that works correctly.