Setting up Google services

This page is written for Vizy software version 0.1.100 or earlier. You can find the most recent documentation here. Vizy uses several Google services such as Google Photos, Google Sheets, and Gmail to communicate to the outside world and share its findings. The main advantage of these is that they are all free and robust services that many of us are familiar with.

It's strongly recommended that you create a new Google account exclusively for your Vizy camera instead of using a personal Google account. If you have multiple Vizys, they can easily share a single Google account. Using a separate account for your Vizy(s) will prevent any thorny security issues if the credentials are compromised for some reason (theft, etc.) Particularly, you should keep all personal information (passwords, credit card numbers, etc.) free and clear of this account. You can create a new Google account here.

Once you have a Google account for your Vizy, you need to give Vizy credentials so it can access this account. Begin by turning on your Vizy and pointing your browser to it. (Please refer to the getting started guide if you need help with connecting to your Vizy, etc.) Click on the ☰ icon in the upper right corner and select Google Cloud.

then click on Authenticate:

This will create a new browser tab, so if you have popups disabled, you may need to provide Vizy permission to bring up the new tab. Within the new browser tab, you will be asked which account you want to use – choose the Google account that you created for your Vizy. It will likely require that you type in the username and password. You will then get a somewhat troubling message:

What this is saying is that Google can't vouch for whatever you are giving access to. Go ahead and click on Advanced …

and Go to Vizy (unsafe Since it's a separate Google account, you can be confident that you're not doing anything too unsafe such as compromising any personal information, etc.

Next, give Vizy access permissions to whatever it's asking for:

and press Continue.

You will then be given an access code that you must copy and paste into Vizy. Go ahead and click on the copy icon and then paste the code into your Vizy browser tab as shown and click on Submit.

If all went well, you will be presented with an Upload test image button:

And you can go to https://photos.google.com to see if the test image made it.

If so, nice work! Your Vizy now has access to its very own Google account! You can remove Vizy's access at any time by clicking on the Remove authentication button in the Google Cloud dialog. (So Vizy had better behave…)