Happy Father’s Day! The curbside gods were smiling down at me today!

[edy]

Happy Father’s Day! I was picking up kids from an activity and happen to drive by a neighbour who dumped a pile of stuff on the curb, so I picked up the electronics you see here! A few months ago I missed an opportunity to grab an even better system with cassette decks because I was walking by another house and by the time I got home to get the car and pick up the stuff, it was already gone!

What I have is a Denon AVR-S730H. I know nothing about this, I have to research it. The other devices are just a 5–disc CD changer from Sony CDP-CE500, and an old JVC CD/DVD player XV-S30 with only composite output and S-video. There was another box which I grabbed with what look like 7 Google Home devices, a ton of cables and mounts that go with them (nice USB-C power collection). As a bonus, the CD player still had a couple of Elton John Greatest Hits CD’s in it!

As Dave would say… winner winner chicken dinner! Now what do I do with all this stuff before my wife kills me?    Can those Google Home devices be factory reset and re-used or do they get locked to the previous owners account? Are they still compatible

[RoGeorge]

Can those Google Home devices be factory reset and re-used or do they get locked to the previous owners account?

I don't now, never had one, but in case they auto-login, I'd be tempted to troll a little the former owner, you know, innocent things like, "Hey Google, turn all the lights ON!", then OFF, and so on. 

[5U4GB]

Now what do I do with all this stuff before my wife kills me?

If she's a Queen fan, leave the CDs in the car for awhile and Elton John's Greatest Hits will turn into Queen's Greatest Hits.

(Or does that only work for tapes?).

[tom66]

I wonder if part of that haul could be related to Google discontinuing the products, although they say they'll continue to work.

https://www.techradar.com/home/smart-speakers/its-official-the-google-nest-audio-and-nest-mini-are-dead-heres-what-that-means-for-current-owners

I have the AVR-S760H, it's nice, although the software/UI is bonkers, looks like three different teams worked on it and they could only communicate by Morse code. 

[edy]

So the Google stuff are apparently for creating a WiFi mesh. I believe it should just be configurable using a Google app so hopefully that still supports them. They don’t have any microphone or speaker capability… my understanding is you plug the H2D device into your main router or modem, and then you spread the other AC-1304 devices around your house. It creates a separate network that you can login to and you don’t want too many as the signals may actually start to interfere and crowd the WiFi bandwidth. There is also something about duplicate NAT and how to avoid that, so your network configuration needs to be properly set.

But as long as you can still configure each then it should work… unless Google pulls the plug on the apps that let you do that. I’m assuming it establishes either a Bluetooth or local Wifi connection to each device during configuration. I don’t know… I’ve set up smart switches and plugs before and after connecting to the local wifi of the device just for configuration, it copies the settings to the main wifi and connects to that afterwards.

I haven’t yet tried the Denon but looking forward to plugging it in and playing around with the network features. Also the Sony CD player apparently is well regarded for its ability to rip CD in the unit to MP3 files on the USB drive and you can also play directly from the USB as well. I’ll have to see what audio formats and bit-rates it supports. The JVC CD/DVD player is nothing exciting.