I woke up at 7AM yesterday and discovered that two of my Nest cameras were showing as offline. After hours of troubleshooting and hard resetting the cameras to get them working again, I realized the problem was a peculiar issue on Google’s end. Hundreds of Nest Cam owners have reported their cameras showing as offline over the past week or so, but Google hasn’t notified owners or even posted the issue on its Nest service status page.
Reddit users in the UK started reporting Nest Cam outages yesterday with similar reports on Google’s own support forums. Twitter is littered with complaints about offline Nest Cams. 9to5Google even reported on the issues earlier this month, but over the past day the problem has affected a lot more Nest Cam owners.
Most of the reports are from the UK or countries across Europe, but all mention that the Google Home app shows the cameras as offline when they’re actually still able to record events. Both of my cameras wouldn’t let me view a live feed, but would happily record me trying to fix them. Hard resetting the cameras back to factory settings allowed me to get them fully working again and some Nest Cam users have simply had the cameras spring back to life hours later.
“A recent server update caused an issue in the EU that prevented some devices from connecting properly, and resulted in those devices losing connectivity for a short period of time,” Google spokesperson Mia Nicholson says in a statement to The Verge. “Most users have been restored, and we’re working quickly to fully resolve the issue.”
Google Nest’s Twitter support account acknowledged the problem earlier this month. Strangely, Google has failed to update its own Nest support site to let owners know about the “offline” Nest Cam problem. After I reset my cameras I noticed the issue reappear briefly last night, and others are still waiting for their own Nest Cam devices to show as online in Google Home.
Separately, I had to get Google to replace my Nest Learning Thermostat last month after it decided to stop connecting to my Wi-Fi only a few months after the original installation. The issue returned on the replacement unit again this week so I’m waiting for another device to get it up and running again. The Nest thermostat Wi-Fi issue has been an ongoing issue since at least 2020, with units failing randomly and having to be replaced by Google. I’m starting to wonder just how smart Google’s smart home devices really are if they can’t reliably connect to a Wi-Fi network.
Source: The Verge
