Lenovo Smart clock gotcha

 I'm a fan of Lenovo Smart clocks.

Minimalist, functional, simple, intuitive, they are essentially a small linux computer which incorporates Google Assistant and emulates all the features of a 1980's clock radio, telling you the time, allowing you to set an alarm, listen to the radio and play music.

It also helps that we got our smart clocks for the cost of shipping. (I had a pile of Telstra loyalty points, and Telstra were selling off their stock of smart clocks.)

Recently I noticed that all of them, and the Google Hub in the study that I use to play podcasts on had taken to telling me it was sunny and 26C. (Actually the Google Hub decided to simply say it was --C).

I wasn't worried, and decided it was most likely a glitch with the weather data feed and that it would fix itself.

It didn't.

Now I control all my Google Assistant based appliances via Google Home running on my Huawei mediapad, which I bought through Amazon AU's marketplace as as a grey market device from Amazon UK.

At the time it was the only recent Android device I owned, so using it to administer the various smart devices seemed sensible.

So I had a look at the Google Home settings.

It said I was in the UK and didn't have a street address. Obviously not correct.

So I changed the location settings to my address in Australia, and immediately the weather settings corrected themselves.

Obviously something must have changed, perhaps as a result of an upgrade to Google Home Assistant, and the application became confused as to location. The fact that I'm running it on a grey market tablet originally destined for the UK possibly didn't help.

So, if you have one of these and the weather details stop working, or are just plain wrong, check the location settings inside of Google Home Assistant ...