If your Google Home was telling you, “sorry, that device isn’t set up yet,” when trying to control smart home devices like your thermostat or lights today, you aren’t alone. Not everyone is affected, but what appeared to be an Assistant-related outage affected Assistant-based smart home device controls for many. According to a Google spokesperson, the issue was due to a “limited experiment” and has now been fixed. Things should be back to normal soon.
We aren’t sure what the cause of the issue was, but the effect seemed to be clear: Controlling connected devices via the Assistant was failing, with the Assistant stating, “sorry, that device isn’t set up yet” on displays and speakers, or “it looks like that device hasn’t been set up yet. You can do that in the Google Home app” on phones.
The Assistant on smart speakers, smart displays, and phones was affected, but controls in Google’s Home app itself continued to work, giving those impacted a workaround.
Google support representatives instructed those affected to provide feedback on their devices by asking, “Hey Google, send feedback,” and then stating, “GHT3 can’t control home automation device via voice.” Presumably, this helped Google determine the precise cause and commonality among those affected, since not everyone was, and it has since been tied to the rollout of a “limited experiment.”
#Google #GoogleAssistant voice/natural language commands controlling #GoogleHome devices are currently broken for many.
This error when attempting to control devices:
“It looks like that device hasn’t been set up yet. You can do that in the Google Home app.” pic.twitter.com/BVR0IQ3D6Y
— David Breslin (@DaveBr) February 2, 2021
Reports at venues like Reddit and Twitter regarding the apparent outage were widespread, though no other Google services indicated they were having trouble at either the Google Cloud Status Dashboard or the Workspace Status Dashboard.
A Google spokesperson tells us the issue only affected a subset of customers using voice commands, and at no point were touch commands (i.e., the Google Home app) affected.
“This Tuesday, a subset of Google Assistant users experienced an error when using voice commands to control their home devices. Upon investigation, we found this issue was connected to a limited experiment that had been rolled out to a limited number of people. This issue has now been fixed and voice actions are restored. We apologize for any inconvenience caused.”
Anecdotally, I’m still having trouble with my devices, and reports indicate some others may be as well, but the issue is starting to resolve for many, and it sounds like we should all be back to full functionality soon.
