Wednesday, November 08, 2023

Google Home Saves the Day

Earlier this year we bought an HBN outdoor smart plug to control the light strings we set up in the backyard. The control app we installed was the BN-Link Android app, which is the one the documentation said to use. It's not a great app but it worked, at least until I got a new phone with Android 14. After that it would not work due to constant crashes and I had to uninstall it.

After thinking about it a bit, I looked up the plug again on Amazon and yes, it supports both Alexa and Google Home. So I found HBN in the "Works with Google" list in Google Home app, linked it to my BN-Link account and added the plug as a device. And yay, it works, and I can now turn the lights on and off again. 

I also noticed that our video doorbell may also be supported (at least the brand is in the list), so I may check that out later.

I guess the moral of this story is that if you have any smart home devices and their default app is flaky, Google may be your friend.

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