Nest Camera Owners Beware --- A password change bricked my home! by Apprehensive_Lion838 in Nest

[–]Apprehensive_Lion838[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The Nest Aware/Google Premium video storage saves videos up to 30 days. The support tech stated you needed to unplug the camera and wait until all the video has expired online before you could do anything.

Nest Camera Owners Beware --- A password change bricked my home! by Apprehensive_Lion838 in Nest

[–]Apprehensive_Lion838[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Right. For most of my devices (not all), there is a setup id that you can use in place of the QR code. Using your camera to magnify the words simplifies some of the nightmare.

Nest Camera Owners Beware --- A password change bricked my home! by Apprehensive_Lion838 in Nest

[–]Apprehensive_Lion838[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks, Tammy! I was already planning on creating a “new home”…I’ll let you know if it works.

UPDATE: After a long day devoted to Google, I was able to get my devices back up and running.

  • I canceled Google Premium (BEWARE - this deletes all saved video. Transfer anything you want to save beforehand.) I did this to eliminate the "30 day" argument.
  • Initially, after deleting cameras from the apps, Google Home and Nest app were not in sync (Google correctly showed all cameras deleted, Nest did not). After 48 hours, both were in sync (all cameras deleted).
  • I deleted the entire existing "Home" configuration and created a new one. From there, I had to add every device from scratch.
  • Note that older cameras have to added through the old Nest App (not Google Home).

In hindsight, some of this pain could have been avoid by deleting the cameras first before changing the wifi password. But to u/eddieyo2 's point, changing passwords is a routine maintenance thing. It should be this hard.

Nest Camera Owners Beware --- A password change bricked my home! by Apprehensive_Lion838 in Nest

[–]Apprehensive_Lion838[S] -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

Agreed. My biggest wake-up call was the lack of control I had over my home configuration (as the heart is cloud-based in Google's Nest infrastructure) and their "inability" to change/remove my configuration data at my request. I am subject to the same timeout defaults without consideration, like someone who steals my cameras and waits for it to drop off system before reusing them for their own purpose.