Our home is getting smarter.

You all know me, I love my apple products.  But lately I’m noticing that as tech advances go on, apple is not keeping up.  I recently bought a second phone, and decided to go android with a Huawei, and oh my it does some amazing things that my iPhoneX can only dream of. But I digress.

I want to talk about the Google Nest Hub that lives in my kitchen, and does everything from controlling my vacuum cleaner, the lights, playing music and news, and telling me what my day will hold.  It has a huge list of capabilities, that I’m not going to go through in detail here, but you can find out more by clicking here.

This little screen has become a very useful teaching tool for our four youngest children.  And it operates simply, all they have to do is go up to it and say Hey Google.  It understands their prattle mostly and gives them an answer, and this is the best part. Unlike Siri where it will just say it has found a website, the hub will read out the answer or even show you images.  It will also play games with them, and a number of other fun features, at Christmas you can even ask it to connect you to the North Pole.  Here is a list of funny stuff you can get it to do.

This device has been a valuable learning resource for our autie kids, as their reading levels are not keeping up with their desire to learn about the world.  And look, Mum just doesn’t know everything.  When my ten year old runs up and says Hey Google what is the smallest dog in the world, she shows him and he runs off happy.

It also keeps me entertained while cooking and yes you can ask it how to cook something. And you can use it as a digital photo frame for your favourite images in your google photo album. We now have two google devices in the house and they are well used, and I honestly never thought we would be that kind of family.

Oh I forgot to mention the Saturday morning bonus.  The broadcast feature.

This feature alone was worth getting the device for.  Picture this, it is Saturday morning and you really need a sleep in, but you have two early risers that fight over what cartoon to watch at 5am.  You can say ‘Hey Google Broadcast’ to your bedroom device (or even the google app in your phone) and then you can use the device to broadcast a message to all the devices in the home using your voice.   Hey Google Broadcast “DON’T MAKE ME COME OUT THERE” is often heard early in the morning from our Hub.  The downside is that the kids can reply, so expect to hear much tattling on your end about who started the fight, but hey there’s a mute button.