That voice assistants make our lives easier and more comfortable at home (and also behind the wheel with Android Auto and voice commands) is a reality: answering questions, setting timers, listening to music, turning on or off devices devices such as lighting or a smart thermostat… but it can also be used to discourage friends from doing other people’s things when we are away from homefor example on vacation.
Yes, Google Assistant on a Google Nest-like smart device with Google Home can become a great preventative security measure. As? Pretend there’s someone at home with some activity: turning light bulbs on and off, listening to music or turning on the television, among others. This way, I could confuse curious people waiting for our absence by not seeing any light or movement at our windows.
How to pretend someone is home with Google Home: routines
Beyond connectivity and having compatible connected devices to make this simulation more complete (the minimum would be to ask our speaker to tell the news, play music or speak in general), The essential thing is to Google Home app routines.
Routines are automations that perform chain actions when calling or programming something.For example, when we say something like “Hello” to Google, it tells us the news of the day and turns on the grill outlet where we left the bread so it can toast. In the scenario of going on vacation, the routine will aim to simulate presence and is open to our imagination and the devices available.
To configure a routine we will go to the Google Home application and go to the tab ‘Automatic‘. You will see several suggested routines that may be useful to you or simply to discover their potential, but the button that interests us is the ‘Add‘. On the next screen we choose if we want the routine to be modified by the members of the house or only by you and then we start with the routine. (Note: in previous versions of the app and before Gemini, the path was a little different, but the main Routine screen has barely changed)
Now we start to personalize the routine. The first thing is to give it a name, preferably descriptive of its function, in our case we chose “Vacation”. In the “Activator” section we select the days we want it to be active and the times and in the last section (“Actions”) we detail Google Home what actions we want it to perform at certain times of the day.
For example, we can set music to play on days we are away at a certain time. However, I recommend the section “Try adding your own commands” for the versatility it offers, since it allows you to write a command for Google’s voice assistant that you want it to execute at that precise moment.
And already, Power to the imagination: that in the morning you listen to the news, in the afternoon you listen to the radio, that you turn on the lights around 9 p.m. and be careful, because you can also choose with which devices the actions are executed, for example the radio in the Google Nest Mini in the kitchen and the bulbs to turn on are those in the living room.
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