Google Mesh WiFi is a great solution for homes that have bad or spotty WiFi signals. You can get as many nodes as you want and then put them in different parts of your home. They mesh together and provide good quality WiFi coverage throughout your home.
You can also use the Google WiFi app (only available on your smart phones) to manage WiFi connections to all your devices and schedule when they can have WiFi access or filter unsafe, inappropriate contents for your children.
It supports typical router functionalities such as port forwarding, static IP, prioritized streaming, and more. However, it doesn't log what websites your WiFi devices are visiting.
Google Home series of devices (Google Home, Google Home Max, Google Home Mini, Google Hub) are voice assistant devices similar to Amazon Echo series. You can ask them to look up information such as knowledge facts, weather, traffic, news, or control smart home devices with your voice (by the way, Vivint products such as thermostat, locks, lights, etc., are all compatible with Google Home). But most people use them mainly for music and alarm/timer. My kids like to use them to check their homework.
Since I have both Amazon and Google voice assistants, I only have 3 Google Home devices.
Both Google products are useful. But when I got my Google Mesh WiFi and tried to get my Google Home devices connected to my Google Mesh WiFi, it became a disaster.
Google Mesh WiFi supports both 2.4GHz and 5GHz WiFi signals. One "nice" feature of Google Mesh WiFi is that for both frequencies, the WiFi network you create will only have one name. This eliminates the confusion when you try to add devices to your home WiFi network because there is only one network to connect to. However, this also created big problem when connecting Google Home devices, because there was no way to specify if you want to connect a device to the 2.4GHz network or the 5GHz network. After I successfully connected my main Google Home to my Google Mesh WiFi, installing Google Home mini turned disastrous. Following the app flow to install mini would get stuck and no error message is given on why it would get stuck.
The funniest part was that when I called Google Home support line, the support staff actually told me that Google Home devices are not compatible with Google Mesh WiFi! Come on Google, you can't even make your own products work together?
Of course, that customer service representative just didn't know what he was talking about, and the knowledge base he used to search for solutions didn't return a viable solution. There is actually a way to get them working together!
The core problem with the set up is really that all the Google Home devices need to be on the same WiFi frequency. Of course, I wish Google would have either:
After hours spent troubleshooting to identify this problem, I finally found the solution: you can force all your Google Home devices to connect only to the 2.4GHz WiFi network.
The benefit of 5GHz WiFi is that you can get higher throughput, meaning you can transfer data much faster. However, the benefit of 2.4GHz WiFi is that the WiFi signal can travel much further. Typical range for 2.4GHz WiFi signal is 150 feet (46m) indoor and 300 feet (92m) outdoor. The range for 5GHz is only one third of that. So in order to make sure you only connect to the 2.4GHz WiFi network, you just have to make sure you are far away from your router (or your Google Mesh WiFi nodes).
So there I was, outside my home a long distance away from my router with a long extension cord on a code rainy night way past midnight, using my smart phone to make sure I could only connect to my 2.4GHz WiFi and not my 5GHz WiFi, and then one after another, installing my Google Home series devices. But at least I proved the Google Home CSR was wrong! Google Mesh WiFi and Google Home devices DO WORK TOGETHER!
Well, once I got them working, they worked pretty well since, and I never had to reconfigure them again. So if you were also struggling to get them working together, now you know how.
Best luck with all your daily battles!
You can also use the Google WiFi app (only available on your smart phones) to manage WiFi connections to all your devices and schedule when they can have WiFi access or filter unsafe, inappropriate contents for your children.
It supports typical router functionalities such as port forwarding, static IP, prioritized streaming, and more. However, it doesn't log what websites your WiFi devices are visiting.
Google Home series of devices (Google Home, Google Home Max, Google Home Mini, Google Hub) are voice assistant devices similar to Amazon Echo series. You can ask them to look up information such as knowledge facts, weather, traffic, news, or control smart home devices with your voice (by the way, Vivint products such as thermostat, locks, lights, etc., are all compatible with Google Home). But most people use them mainly for music and alarm/timer. My kids like to use them to check their homework.
Since I have both Amazon and Google voice assistants, I only have 3 Google Home devices.
Both Google products are useful. But when I got my Google Mesh WiFi and tried to get my Google Home devices connected to my Google Mesh WiFi, it became a disaster.
Google Mesh WiFi supports both 2.4GHz and 5GHz WiFi signals. One "nice" feature of Google Mesh WiFi is that for both frequencies, the WiFi network you create will only have one name. This eliminates the confusion when you try to add devices to your home WiFi network because there is only one network to connect to. However, this also created big problem when connecting Google Home devices, because there was no way to specify if you want to connect a device to the 2.4GHz network or the 5GHz network. After I successfully connected my main Google Home to my Google Mesh WiFi, installing Google Home mini turned disastrous. Following the app flow to install mini would get stuck and no error message is given on why it would get stuck.
The funniest part was that when I called Google Home support line, the support staff actually told me that Google Home devices are not compatible with Google Mesh WiFi! Come on Google, you can't even make your own products work together?
Of course, that customer service representative just didn't know what he was talking about, and the knowledge base he used to search for solutions didn't return a viable solution. There is actually a way to get them working together!
The core problem with the set up is really that all the Google Home devices need to be on the same WiFi frequency. Of course, I wish Google would have either:
1. enabled Google Mesh WiFi to take care of this, or
2. allowed me to specify which WiFi frequency to use when connecting Google Home mini to my WiFi network, or
3. at least returned informative error messages on the limitation.
After hours spent troubleshooting to identify this problem, I finally found the solution: you can force all your Google Home devices to connect only to the 2.4GHz WiFi network.
The benefit of 5GHz WiFi is that you can get higher throughput, meaning you can transfer data much faster. However, the benefit of 2.4GHz WiFi is that the WiFi signal can travel much further. Typical range for 2.4GHz WiFi signal is 150 feet (46m) indoor and 300 feet (92m) outdoor. The range for 5GHz is only one third of that. So in order to make sure you only connect to the 2.4GHz WiFi network, you just have to make sure you are far away from your router (or your Google Mesh WiFi nodes).
So there I was, outside my home a long distance away from my router with a long extension cord on a code rainy night way past midnight, using my smart phone to make sure I could only connect to my 2.4GHz WiFi and not my 5GHz WiFi, and then one after another, installing my Google Home series devices. But at least I proved the Google Home CSR was wrong! Google Mesh WiFi and Google Home devices DO WORK TOGETHER!
Well, once I got them working, they worked pretty well since, and I never had to reconfigure them again. So if you were also struggling to get them working together, now you know how.
Best luck with all your daily battles!
BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com
Isn't there that one problem where it's like google home doesn't connect the best with Google wifi that was funny!
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