The Nest Hello Doorbell, several months in -disappointment
I’ve been using the Nest ecosystem of products for a while now. In that time I’ve had one external camera blow up for no reason I could determine, one doorbell transformer undervolt (this was not Nest’s fault,) a Nest thermostat lose WiFi and be unable to turn on, and now we’re back to some weird software issues with the doorbell.
I get notifications at 4am many nights that I have been spotted in the front yard wandering around. When I check there’s not even movement on the camera. There needs to be something where it points out what it’s recognizing as the face.
A person ringing the doorbell will trigger an alert on my phone and when I tap the alert half the time I’m asked if I want to set up a second factor authentication (this is the rare service I don’t,) and the other half I’m taken to a blank screen with a spinning wheel and the number of seconds since the doorbell was rung.
Usually about 30 or 40 seconds in I get a picture, usually broken and incredibly low bandwidth, and can try and talk, but talking seems to be hit or miss. Everything after them pressing the doorbell is hit or miss. This doesn’t matter if I’m on my house wifi, work wifi, or Sprint. Looks like complete garbage.
I did some testing and as long as I’m connected to the doorbell I can start talking as someone comes up and there’s no issue. It’s not a bandwidth (internet,) issue, and it doesn’t appear to be a bandwidth (wifi) issue either as I’m quite able to operate the bell if I can just catch them before they press the button.
My only guesses here are that it’s attempting to direct stream video to either of my smart displays and hard failing.
So it’s good for getting video of people, and it’s good as a doorbell, and good if I get it before someone presses the button, but talking with someone’s mostly miss.
Here’s hoping for a software upgrade.
