HomePod Mini is a waste of money, unless you like screaming at your dumb robot that never understands what you want it to do

Setting timers works well though

At least on the HomePod side, intercom is at best a half-baked feature and at worst an infuriation machine. It uses a cumbersome voice trigger ("siri, tell <room>…") to begin recording audio, with no clear indication of when recording began and no way to know for sure that the audio was directed where you wanted it to go.

To respond is similarly cumbersome and soon you give up completely. I can only assume it was designed by someone whose parents were killed in an intercom-related disaster and has sworn revenge.

I bought a mini for my office with this purpose in mind, but it has been a total waste.

We have Google Home Minis in every room and the screens in bedroom and kitchen and the only thing that works reliably to message intra-room is to say "Hey Google, broadcast message" because half of the time it will tell me it can't send messages yet. If someone knows what I'm doing wrong I'd love to hear it since this would be a great feature.

To be honest, I'm honestly sick of Google Home's approach to this since the Gemini update has turned everything really slow and I'm getting close to the point where I'd rather home-roll a full system myself that works reliably instead of the crapshoot that this is. Home Assistant seems to have a functionality bridge to Google Home connected devices like my blinds or cameras so I should be able to retain the edge devices but I have half a mind to just dump the whole thing and start over.

Tried that. Hated it.