Google Nest Hub as a Roon Display

Hi,

I just joined Roon, it’s awesome. Would be great to use the nest hub on my desk as a display for what’s playing. I saw there was a thread on this and @dylan mentioned that the devs are aware of this: Google Home Hub as Roon Display?.
Since that thread is closed, I wanted to create a new topic for this here, wondering what’s the status now?

Thanks,
Arka

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Hi, yes I would also like to know what is happening with this.

For a good 2 months the display was working great on my nest hub max. Displayed all the time something was playing. Then all of a sudden a few weeks back it started behaving as described in the other thread linked above. The display comes on for a minute or so when playback starts and then stops. Really annoying as the display on the nest hub is so good.

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Agreed. This has been broken for a long time, and roon is the only thing I’ve run into that’s incapable of maintaining a casting session.

I’d love an update / confirmation that this is a known (and hopefully understood) issue for the roon devs. :slight_smile:

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Actually, just realized this isn’t posted in @support. Maybe it should be?

ANyone given this a shot yet?

I picked one up over the weekend and tried it out briefly as a Roon display and everything seemed fine. I bought another one for another room to replace a Pi running Ropieee with a display and just started using it about 45 minutes ago and it seemed to be working fine for several tracks but then one of the Hub’s status pages popped up followed by its home page which is currently configured to show random Google pictures. Once the home page was displayed I’ve not been able to get the Roon display to reappear. I’ve turned it off and back on from Roon several times but nothing from Roon shows up on the display.

I’ll do some reading and check out the setup options and report back.

Tim

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Did you try swiping the screen (l>r)?

The hubs are kinda stuck between being voice activated and kinda/sorta touch enabled lol.

Edit. I just tried it and when i click on the screen saver i can see roon on my “home screen” and can click it back to full screen

Edit 2. I was able to reproduce what you were seeing. Roon isn’t trying to reconnect. If you pres the start/stop button there is no delay like there is when it tries to connect. It just toggles on and off.

Funny I’ve been using it for a couple weeks and never ran into this. Maybe something broke in an update.

My other one is still working. If I click on the roon “icon” on the home screen it goes back BUT as soon as that icon is replaced by something else (i. e coming up…) Roon is lost for good. !

It does seem to be able to be reactivated after a few minutes. But I don’t think it comes back on it’s own.

Probably not somthing it was designed to do.

Counterintuitively, the software for the Google Home Hub is completely different from the others. From 10/22/2018 Ars Technica article:

The Google Home Hub takes an odd departure from the other Google Smart Displays when it comes to software. While the interface is identical to the smart displays from Lenovo, JBL, and others, the base OS for the Home Hub is the Google Cast platform. Other Smart Displays were the launch platform for Android Things. So while something like the Lenovo Smart Display could be seen as a stripped-down smartphone, the Home Hub is more a souped-up Chromecast. My only guess as to why Google did this was to keep costs down. The Cast Platform should have lower system requirements than Android Things.

Looking for some clarification on what the issues are here, are the problems arising from using the device to merely show Roon information as a display, or as an end point?

Hi everyone,

We are aware of the issues with using the Google Home Hub as a Display. I don’t have an exact timeframe to provide, but it is something we hope to resolve in the future. We appreciate your feedback here!

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Hi folks, I’ve just bought a Home Hub and it does the same. There’s a workaround to get it to display Roon again, but this isn’t ideal, as it drops the display again after a certain amount of time.

Basically… once the hub drops the display, go into the Google Home app on… in my case… An iPad, click on the Home Hub device, then click ‘Stop casting’ button, bottom left. Then go back into Roon and ‘Start Display’ again.

Looking forward to a fix. Thanks for letting us know @dylan that you’re on it! :smiley:

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Hoping for a fix for this too. It’s a great little display in addition to all the little tricks you can do with it.

Has anyone heard any news on this? If Roon can get this working smoothly I would be keen to buy one. At present I am using an old smartphone propped up on my hifi rack to show the album art for what is playing.

@support
When playing MP3 music from my local storage using Roon to my Google Hub display, there is no artist or music info. It only states, “Playing Roon”? Is this by design? I have the “Display On” setting for this source to “Display Now”, but still it does not show any music info.

I have Roon 1.6 installed on a Windows 10 x64 system.

Was hoping this was working - following.

Hi @dylan. Just wondering how you folks are getting on? Any news yet?

Thanks,

Dan.

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Hi @support Any resolution on this issue? I am bummed this has not been fixed yet. I have a Lenovo Smart Display. The Roon Display starts fine, then it loses connection

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Mine Google Nest Hub does same - starts and then looses connectin after random time.

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Hi Dylan!

Do you have an update for us?

Thanks in advance!

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