If you can no longer control your Xiaomi devices from Google Home, know that you are not alone and that it is not your fault. It is Google, in fact, that has completely disabled compatibility with Mi Home (or Xiaomi home automation, which also includes Yeelight, Aqara, Roborock and many others) for its smart home platform.
Everything seems to have started from a Reddit thread where a user claimed to see images of random users when he asked to see images from his own security camera. The evidence brought to Reddit are photos where you can see different situations in different houses. All “made worse” by a glitch effect and a black and white reproduction. Which gives this story a horror veil that does not help.
Gizchina News of the week
Xiaomi security cameras showed other people’s homes
Obviously the user could have falsified everything without too much difficulty, but this does not seem to be the case, given that Google has replied to Android Authority that it is aware of the bug and that is working with Xiaomi to resolve it. If the bug were confirmed of such severity it would surely be a problem that nobody would like to face. Being spied on by strangers in one’s own privacy is not anyone’s home automation dream.
The entire Xiaomi home automation system will then return to Google only when the bug is resolved. We will update you promptly in case of updates.
Update: Xiaomi apologizes for the inconvenience and said that the issue is now fixed.
“We have found out the issue was because of a cache update on December 26, 2019. Which was designed to improve camera streaming quality. This has only happened in extremely rare conditions,” the company noted in its email.
Moreover, Xiaomi says that 1044 users have integrated their Mi Home security cameras with Google’s Nest Hub. Of these, only a few with extremely poor network conditions might be subject of this problem. The company adds that this issue will not happen if the camera is linked to the Mi Home app.
