 Hello, and Merry Christmas Eve. So I got this today. It is a Google Nest mini Which is what they're calling their Google home minis now, I guess. I don't usually follow this stuff I really don't get this stuff the whole smart speaker thing I Have a phone if I need to look up something or play some music. I don't need a device It just doesn't make sense to me But I got this for free and originally when it was offered to me for free I you know, I'm not gonna pass it up. It's free I was gonna give it to a friend and I found out it has Bluetooth capability I was like, oh, well if I could just use as a Bluetooth speaker. Yeah, I'll take it You know regular price is $50 for these but every time I've looked up online there actually $35 on sale but $35 that I don't have to spend and Again, I've only had for a little bit and I haven't turned up the volume all the way because my son is sick and he's sleeping but Seems like it has pretty good sound so for a Bluetooth speaker. Hey pretty nice now It does have a little switch on here to turn off the microphone whether that's a physical disconnect or not I don't know But again, I was hoping to just use it as Bluetooth and I even hook it to my Wi-Fi when I originally turned it on It showed up on my phone I saw it as a Bluetooth device for a moment and then it disappeared and I couldn't get to come back So I ended up doing was taking one of my my spare phones because I got I got other phones lying around that I use for testing stuff, you know, I try to keep proprietary software to a minimum But if I need to test something I have these old Android devices that I can put stuff on then I can just wipe the device So I threw Google home app on there just get this thing connected I connected it to my Wi-Fi and then I asked it Can you please turn on the Bluetooth and I got it set up so now I can use it as a Bluetooth speaker Currently I have it connected to my Wi-Fi But I'm going to boot it off after I do some testing I ran some port scans so I'll show you right here. I just didn't can you can you see that? It's hard. I gotta hold the camera backwards. So anyway, it's it's ports 8,008 8,009 8443 9,000 and 10,001 are open TCP or it's course, you know I haven't dug deeper than that I tried to open up each one in a web browser even though I knew Google wasn't gonna have anything there And they didn't show anything but those ports are open The other thing is this little screw hole where you hang it up I had a little white piece of plastic in there that I popped out with a screwdriver There's a one screw in there. I'd like to get seen a part But I don't think you really can without tearing it apart at least not me I'm not very gentle, but if you look now that I've removed that plastic thing Let me shine it towards the light see there. Oh, there you go. You can get it real good right there There's some Little pads there and I bet those are used to program it. I Doubt it be something a serial as simple as hooking up a serial connector to it and and you get a root shell But that would be awesome Probably won't play with this too much more again. I'm just gonna use as a Bluetooth speaker I would love to see something to hack because I would like to Be able to stream stuff over Wi-Fi to it if possible, but I don't want to have all that Google stuff again I don't even know if I want to have my network with the hole Even though this has a switch to turn off the microphone Does it really physically turn off the microphone or is it done in software through that switch? I don't know. I wouldn't know without opening it It's hard to find information on these vices because they're pretty new you can look up stuff on the older version the home mini But this is the new nest mini Relatively news there's not a lot of information out there on there So I thought I'd do this video to share some information with you guys so again, I guess older models powered through USB and Some people didn't get very far from what I've looked but you would be able to put it into a certain boot mode and at least show Up as a device, but these ones don't even have that. It's it's just a regular round power So I guess these are louder so they need more power than Standard USB could put out so I mean the only way of hopes of Getting to this thing would be again Connecting to it directly again If we can get the lighting just right Right there. I might those look so much like connector pads So if you if you are good with that sort of thing, maybe you want to buy these and see what those do, you know Cheap devices. I like cheap devices because usually those you can get serial connections on but Google's Google doesn't want you doing that They're too smart to do that. They're not just gonna let you hook up through serial reprogram It would be if they did I would buy these if I could get if this thing was running Linux And I can get a root shell on it with just anything I can get clinics with a root shell on I can program to do even at the simplest things I would buy these I would you know for 35 bucks if I needed a Speaker the wireless speaker. This would be a good deal for me But since I can't I'm not gonna buy any more of these because it's I don't want to use your Google home app I don't want to use your YouTube apps And I mean just going through on that test device to get this hooked up It's like do you want to hook up sling do you want to hook up Netflix? Do you want to hook up YouTube? No, no, I don't want to do any of that I just want to get Bluetooth running on this and I had to connect it to my Wi-Fi to get to do that now Maybe you don't have to again I saw the Bluetooth device when I first turned on but then it disappeared but again, it's hooked to my Wi-Fi now and To hook a new device to Bluetooth, I have to turn on the speaker and say pair a new Bluetooth or something like that And then it will allow me to pair something new I don't know if it's gonna require me to be hooked to a network to do that I'm guessing maybe so what I'm probably gonna do is I'm probably gonna go into my router settings and block this device that way I can easily go back into my router and Renable it if I need to hook up a new Bluetooth device. It just seems like a very roundabout way, but again, it's all about control That's why they want you to install their their their devices They want you to install their apps on your phone so they control all so I'm trying to avoid that, you know I don't mind buying the hardware. I just wish the software was more usable without the whole You know, I'm not even that concerned about the spine I just want control of my own device you want it you want me to talk to it And it sends my voice up to your cloud and you hear what I'm saying You know, I'm not saying I want that but I wouldn't care too much if I had control over the device myself But yeah, I think it's gonna have good sound and again, and once I bump it off the network and turn off the speaker I'm pretty I'm not worried about security in that aspect And just having as a Bluetooth device will be useful, but I really really would love to see somebody hack this and get some sort of You know open-source software they connect to it or even just just if I could physically plug something in here reprogram it to open up a port that I could Stream stuff to it from my desktop or even stream stuff from YouTube but without using the YouTube app I do that on my desktop all the time with YouTube DL and MPV, you know I do stuff. I do that to my my TV in the living room. I've got a Raspberry Pi running Kodi or yeah It's called Kodi now and and I haven't set up so I can just send an H HTTP request and give it a URL to a YouTube video and it will play it and I do that all you know From my desktop or whatever device. I don't need to install anything specific So anyway Just thought I'd talk about it for a minute, you know again There's open ports, but I'm betting that if I even if I network scan them. I bet they're all encrypted You know, I'm sure that when I first hooked up the Google home app Probably swapped keys with it or something or probably doesn't even connect directly to it probably goes through the cloud for everything I don't know I guess it might in case you don't have a network it might connect to it directly after it pairs through the internet, but um Yeah Google will nest mini which is confusing because the nest I yeah Home mini made more sense to me, but again these devices don't make sense to me in general Again, I get a wireless speaker, but I don't need to talk to it. I don't need to ask it stuff That's what my phone is for and I always have my phone with me But yeah, one interesting thing I do know somebody who has a few of the older models and they said that they can be used as intercom systems in your house Which would be nice. It'd be cool to be able to do that, but again, I'm not going to install an app to do that It'd be nice to just Be able to have them connect directly to each other and do that, you know Anyway, it is Christmas Eve again. My son's not feeling well. He's throwing up this morning But I think he's doing a little better. He's napping now so hopefully he feels better tomorrow and hopefully the rest of us don't start throwing up tonight and yeah, Merry Christmas and I already have like at least three more videos scheduled between now and the end of the year and I also have videos coming up in January Android bootloader and partitioning and formatting coming up in January and Well run devices made by big companies again, I briefly talked not too long ago about Amazon fire again, there's a device that you can get for a good price because They're expecting to use all their services and the tablet is a cheap tablet But you can get them for 30 bucks if you look at the right times and they're really they're not great tablets But they're really good for 30 bucks and it's very easy to get rude on them and clear out the device And I have a video at the end of January coming up on that I've already did a video on rooting it talking about this a long stuff but I've actually made a list of Commands to clear out all the Amazon all day and you end up removing. There's originally. I think there's like a hundred and sixty applications installed on there and By the time we're done after five ten minutes or so we've removed over a hundred of them They think there's only like 60 left and then It makes it a pretty decent device In fact, I got another one for my son that he's getting tomorrow for Christmas So they both have one and the most intense thing they do on those is going to be playing mind tests and it runs fine on there When I did a video on that previously someone they come as a oh, you don't get yourself a real talent Well, again, it's for my that when I got for tomorrow's for my four-year-old son He doesn't need something more than a 30 if I'm spending more than 30 bucks I'm not buying him a tablet and it's more powerful once you clear out the software hardware is a good thing but If you have the right software even slow hardware runs great so On that anyway, I've been talking long enough Again, I'm not recommending Getting one of these but I just thought I'd Point out some of the things because there's not a lot of information out there by right now But I think the most interesting thing is going to be these pads on here Somebody somewhere is going to figure out that or one of those open ports. I talked about Fingers crossed it'd be nice to get a root shell on there and be able to set up Small little web server that I can just do HTTP request to tell it to play something and then I can pass it URLs or something to an audio file and have it play that would be so cool I doubt it's going to happen and you know what I could probably build something like this Pretty cheap, but not for free, which is what I got this for Anyway, Merry Christmas Have a great day