Nest camera support for "Sign in with Google"

[CamectArup]

We just rolled out support for "Sign in with Google" last week.  Not many people have used it yet, so please let us know if you have problems.  

We're not recommending that people switch to it, as "Sign in with Nest" is probably the better place to be for most people. 

Please be sure to review our recommendations here too. 

[Daryl Yourk]

Just received my Camect. No such luck signing in with Google on my main or newly invited account (per instructions).

Just keeps saying failed to sign in. Confirmed the accounts work via home.nest.com though, so it's definitely a Camect issue.

[CamectArup]

Hi Daryl ... I'll send you email directly if you're willing to help us figure out what the issue is. 

"Sign in with Google" does work for some people, but yes, others have problems. We haven't yet been able to get details from any of the people who have had problems. 

[CamectArup]

To expand on Daryl's issue, as we haven't heard back from him yet: We do have one other report of someone having problems with "Sign in with Google". We also have some people reporting that it works, and it works for all the accounts that we have access to, so we're looking for some help in tracking down the issue that affects accounts that are having problems.  (As mentioned in the forum's welcome message, we enabled support for "Sign in with Google" very recently, so it's not surprising that there are still some cases for which it does not work.) 

We'll be enabling additional debugging soon to help, but if anyone out there is having problems with "Sign in with Google" on Nest and would be willing to work with us to help us figure out the issue, please send mail to sup...@camect.com. 

Thanks, 

Arup

[CamectArup]

We've pushed out some changes that address all known issues with "Sign in with Google". Since only a relatively small number of people have used it so far, it's still possible that there are more bugs to be found. 

If you are still having problems signing in with Google for nest cameras, please let us know by using "Report Bug" from the dropdown right after a failed sign in attempt.

Arup

[Daryl Yourk]

Confirmed that the update you pushed has resolved my issue.

Sorry for not getting back to you. For future reference, I don't believe many customers would be willing to share their user names and passwords to access their Nest devices.

[CamectArup]

Thanks Daryl ... We're glad to hear that your Nest cameras are working now. 

To be clear -- We certainly do not expect customers to want to share access to their account.  In order to debug the issue we did need to find a way to access a single Google account that was seeing the problem -- but we were hoping for access to a brand new Google account only -- one without any personal info in it, and with the camera access for that account revoked before we looked, as all we needed to see was what was happening during the sign in attempt that was different from what we could see on our own accounts.  

In any case this is all moot now -- we think all or most of the "Sign in with Google" problems are resolved, as we have not heard any new complaints in the past few days. 

[Paul Love]

WRT to Sign in with Google; had I realised that switching to Sign in with Google meant giving full access to my connected home to Camect, I would not have made the transition.

Any thoughts on this? I.e. i'm reluctant to create a new user for Camect, that will enjoy unfettered access to Sonos, Logitech, Hue, Google Wifi, Wemo and Honeywell. Any way to restrict access to "just" cameras.

- or perhaps i'm being paranoid?

[CamectArup]

As you might be aware, we don't recommend switching to Sign in With Google due to the various drawbacks, and because there's no going back. 

Unfortunately there's no real way around the issue that you mention -- Google's security model, oddly enough, does not allow you to restrict access by device type. This is the case with nest logins too -- but I assume your concern is that you have non-nest devices that were not controllable as long as your cameras were under a Nest login. 

[Paul Love]

Yes. Exactly.
- how is the google home login handled? Or by the camect without passing to your servers?

Can it handle two factor authentication?

[CamectArup]

I think you're asking if Camect servers see the Google password when signing in(?). They do not... it's handled between the Camect device and the Google servers. 

Signing in to Nest with nest.com or with google.com can handle two-factor authentication. However, if you use two-factor auth, you'll have to sign in again with two-factor every month or so. You may have a better experience if you create an account just for Camect access, share your cameras with that account, and use a long secure password _without_ two factor. (If you do this, follow the suggested sharing steps exactly or you'll probably be asking us why it doesn't work :-) 

[Paul Love]

Cool. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so paranoid about camect having access to my google home then. Thanks!

[Paul Jardetzky]

Hi Arup,

I tried signing in with Google to get rid of my Nest Thermostat (I keep it hidden). The two factor login procedure completed, but Camect still wants me to login (the dialog box just loops). Is there a solution for deleting Nest Thermostats?

- Paul

[CamectArup]

If you use "Report Bug" to send logs right after a looping sign in we can take a look to see why this is happening. Perhaps we are not handling the absence of cameras properly. 

However, for Nest Thermostats our recommendation is still to just disable them and ignore them, as we don't recomment providing credentials to Camect when there are no cameras to access.