Affordable personal assistant speakers have made it more reasonable to have multiple speakers throughout households. For the most part, they offer easy access to your digital assistant, as well as controlling smart home devices. One feature Amazon already has for the Echo family is a PA type system which you can use the speakers to speak with another Alexa unit in the house. This is a handy feature and allows you to let other family members know it’s time for dinner, notify them that the laundry is done, or whatever message you need to pass along. Google hasn’t pushed out that feature to their Home units yet, until now.
As of yesterday, Google updated the Assistant on your Google Home speakers and phone with a feature that will let you broadcast to all other speakers in the house. The trigger word or phrase is “Ok Google, broadcast…” and then you can go from there. Say it’s time for the kids to get up for school, or you’re coming home from work and picking up dinner, you can tell the Google Home speaker or your handset, “Ok Google, broadcast it’s time to get up for school,” or “Ok Google, broadcast I’m on my way home from work and will be picking up dinner.” Once that is said, a bell will ring on all connected speakers along with what you’re broadcasting. Just think, with Thanksgiving right around the corner, this will help everyone know it’s time to eat, so you don’t have to shout at everyone notifying them.
All Assistant phones and speakers will need to be signed in to the same account in order for this to work. For now, the update is rolling out to only the English language in the U.S., Australia, Canada, and the U.K., while other language support will be coming soon according to Google.
I haven’t seen the update yet on any of the three Google Home units in the house, even the Google Mini that was recently brought home, so this could be a phased update. If any of you readers out, there have tried this out already, please let us know how it is by leaving a comment below or on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook.
[button link=”https://www.blog.google/products/assistant/communicate-around-the-house-with-the-google-assistant/” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: Google Blog[/button]Last Updated on October 18, 2023.
