Hi,
I have Philips Hue lights in bedroom and I am trying to add some noise-making device to trigger an alarm after my morning sunrise experience. The aim is to eliminate mobile phone from the bedroom altogether.
Ideally, the device should be fully automated (i.e. not requiring manual setup of alarms on the device itself, but read it from elsewhere, e.g. via HomeAssistant Android alarm time integration).
Ideas so far:
Sonos Era 100 - alas, this does not support Google Assistant (and I don’t use Apple devices at all)
Google Nest Mini 2 - low-quality speaker; doesn’t show time
Lenovo Smart Clock Essential - shows time (yay!), but probably (?) requires manual alarm configuration
I am currently leaning towards Google Nest Mini 2 as a poor-man’s solution, but… perhaps there are some better alternatives?
Let me know what you use - I would love to hear your ideas!
Assuming that uses the same software as my Sonos speakers, a simpler solution would be to just use that. The Sonos App has a quite full featured set of alarms/timers
I started with the same ambition as you, connected my Sonos devices to HA, and put them on the front page of my HA dashboard, with a variety of media sources I can chose from
…. But I never did automation from HA because it was so much more convenient to do alarms and schedules through that software, and otherwise use voice control through Alexa
Have you tried the Sonos voice assistant yet? I tried it when it was new, with disappointing results. It couldn’t control Spotify, control of Prime audio was very limited, and I couldn’t find a way to do timers. Meanwhile when I want to sleep I can say “Alexa, play Billy Joel in the bedroom for one hour”, and it will.
On weekdays, Sonos wakes me up with some Jazzy Blues, for either half an hour or until I tap the speaker. I set this once in the app and never had to worry about it again
Wow, that looks cool. Unfortunately I no longer have enough reason to get that …, I wonder if my kid needs this for college …. It looks really cool … HA and partial Spotify were released … and it looks really cool
How does HomeAssistant work with multiple voice assistant sources? Sonos Era 100 supports Alexa, but it doesn’t support Google Assistant. I have a primarily Google environment (with Google Assistant in another room). Is it “ok” to have multiple voice assistant sources on the same HomeAssistant network?
If you use Sonos to set up alarms, can you integrate… backwards from it? I.e. ensure that Philips Hue lights are lighting-up on the basis of the alarm time set up in Sonos? (like you would be able to use Android alarm as input for HA)
There is also the option to go for Sonos One (2017) or Sonos Roam (2021), which do have Google Assistant support.
Have you tried the Sonos voice assistant yet?
No, but I am confident it is bad. Doing voice assistant is a technologically complex task, and Sonos is far from being well-positioned to do it properly, integrating with all random devices.
No, sorry, I don’t have any integration on the alarms and don’t know whether you can. My point was that sometimes the devices are capable enough to just work
To wake up on weekdays, I set my watch alarm and I set my Sonos alarm, in their respective software. While there is no integration, they both are capable enough that I had to configure it only once, and both have time synched over the internet so it always seems to be coordinated.
I believe multiple voice assistants will work fine with HA, but would be kind of annoying to use. I only have Alexa integrated with HA, but also use Siri through the HomeKit bridge. I briefly had Google Voice set up but it was too annoying having to use different phrasing for different capabilities depending on what room I’m n or what device I’m talking to
Alexa Echo Dot might do it. Mine talk to “emulated hue” in HA and I use node-red to voice out on it. So basically both ways, in and out of HA are possible.
Can they be easily integrated/controlled in HA, or are there any problems with that? And if so, how? I haven’t been able to find any integration for it.
And do you perhaps know whether the normal Sandman Clock can also be integrated into HA, or is that only possible with the Doppler version?
I look forward to hearing from you.
Best regards, Auhrus
I have an old tablet that I setup to display the time in large numbers from HA (and dim at night) but I have all the lights in the room get brighter in a sunrise to wake me up. This works well enough for me. If I have to get up at an earlier time (for a flight or the like) I use a regular alarm clock, but almost all the time it’s just the HA sunrise lights to wake up. We charge our phones downstairs, so I don’t have to worry about having them in the same room and the tablet is old enough that it only runs HA, so I don’t get distracted by that.
Thank you for your idea for solving the problem. However, I don’t want to have a whole tablet next to my bed, especially since I don’t really have much space on my bedside table. That’s why I’m looking for a clock like the Sandman Clock.
I would like the clock to be controllable via HA (at least the alarm times should be adjustable) and also to be fully functional as a standalone device, behaving like a normal alarm clock (so that I can take it with me to hotels, etc.).
And in case HA is unavailable, the alarm clock should still ring at the set time.
I am also looking for something similar. I have a hacked Lenovo smart clock now, but that’s somehow not always updating the screen anymore.
I’ve tried with Android tablets, but most of all, I have found nothing that combines Hass integration and a great auto-dimming screen as good as the (hacked) Lenovo does. And I don’t mean turn off the screen, but lower the brightness to a minimum so it doesn’t keep you awake, but it’s still readable in the night.
I got an old Samsung tablet to work great by putting two layers of 40% sun-blocking film for a car on top of it and using a custom HTML color scheme to use dark red at night. It works great: visible in the day and not too bright at night.
Dynamically changing the HTML colors was a bit hard. What I did was set a custom theme and then had a script that swapped the theme file by copying theme_dark or theme_light to theme and then calling update themes.
I found the Samsung tablet did not respond reliably to brightness adjustment, so I had to do: set 5%, wait 1s, set 4% wait 1s, etc.
