Google home mini

So, this December, I bought a Chromecast, 2 Home Minis, a cardboard voice aiy kit, and voice controlled light bulbs and outlets.  I first set up the Chromecast on a 29" TV. Because this is what came first in the mail.  I had to install Google Home app on a phone to configure the Chromecast.

I used bubble upnp on a pad computer to cast movies from my osmc raspi3 media player.  I figured out that I had to scan the files on the player before they would show up in upnp.

Once the Coral Home Mini showed up I used the Home app to configure it and it automatically configured the Home Mini to tie to the Chromecast.  As soon as I did that I was able to tell the home mini to play videos from youtube onto the chromecast.

The next step was adding the home automation light bulb and powered outlets. I had to install another app to make that work.  Once those were working I was able to add them to google home mini, confirming them with the cloud server.

The disappointing thing is that a couple of projects to tie into local home automation hubs, so people could build their own diy hardware, were killed by google so that the hubs now check with a cloud server before they will show up to google home.

I was also able to configure my cell phone number into google home, and that lets me use the google home mini to call out to regular phones, for free.

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The Google  Voice AIY kit was easy to set up.  Just add a raspberry pi zero and a power supply and follow the directions.  I set it up to run as a service and it allowed the device to restart when it crashed.  Which it does a lot.  

One thing I couldn't figure out is why it didn't start up when I took it to work and plugged the box in.