Xiaomi: why your connected objects no longer work with Google Home?

Xiaomi markets a variety of products for connected homes, including security cameras that take advantage of integration with Google Home/Nest devices. Following a bug that compromised user privacy, Google has decided to temporarily cancel the integration of its personal assistant with certain brands of products. It all started with complaints from one user. Google Nest Center and a set of Xiaomi cameras in its home, in this case the Xiaomi Mijia 1080p Security Camera.

When he asked Google Assistant to display the feed from their camera on the Nest Hub screen, he got images of other homes that were completely black, including a baby in his bassinet and even an old man lying on the sofa. and sometimes white with a jerky rendering. Few users are potentially affected by this bug.

Google cuts access to its ecosystem pending a fix

All images transmitted to the wrong person are from a Xiaomi Mijia camera. The problem is therefore on the side of the Chinese manufacturer, which poses a great risk to the security and privacy of users. While waiting for a fix, Google had to take drastic measures: “We are aware of the issue and are contacting Xiaomi to resolve it as soon as possible. By the way, we have disabled the integration of Xiaomi services on our devices.describes the firm in a press release.

For now, many Xiaomi Mi Home products have been disconnected from Google Assistant, including their cameras and connected bulbs. We are following the situation closely and we will not hesitate to inform you if there is any new information on this subject.

Following the publication of our article, Xiaomi sent us an official press release:

“Xiaomi has always given priority to the privacy and security of its users’ information. We know that when connecting the Mi Home Basic 1080p security camera to the Google Home hub, there is a problem in acquiring images. We apologize for the inconvenience caused to our users.

Our team has since taken immediate action to fix the issue and it has now been fixed. After researching, we discovered that the issue was caused by a cache update on December 26, 2019 designed to improve the quality of the camera stream. This has only happened in extremely rare circumstances. In this case, it happened during the integration between Mi Home Security Camera Basic 1080p and Google Home Hub with a poor network connection.

We also found that 1044 users are using such integrations and only a few with extremely poor network conditions may be affected. This issue does not occur if the camera is connected to Xiaomi’s Mi Home app. Xiaomi has forwarded and resolved this issue with Google and has also suspended this service until the root cause is fully resolved to ensure that such issues do not occur in the future.”

Source : XDA Developer