Wanted to share something I discovered today and my apologies if this has already been offered previously. While trying to find a solution for the recent gutting of the nest API and becoming increasingly frustrated by the no path forward solution google has offered developers, I did happen upon a weird but viable solution to get around it.
If you have google home devices, you can control your nest thermostat by voice. What I had never realized before though was that your google home can control other google homes by its voice. Google home minis are cheap (especially with the holidays coming up) and most of the time you can even find numerous ways to get them for free. I have one in my office that is a room away from our family room where a Google Home V1 is at. If you write an automation that makes the google home “speak” and say “Hey Google, set my AC to 73” the other google hears this and does it. This works annoyingly well.
I have seen some creative tinkerers be able to hack their home minis to get auxiliary audio inputs and I wonder if it would be possible to set up a RPI as an audio device on one and make it control this without the need for the audible command? Probably not as simple as my initial thought is, but wanted to share this and see what the community could possible come up with as a way to use it as a work around?