Assistant Relay Alternative

adryyy · November 12, 2022, 5:49pm

@brintal Great, that’s exactly what I’ve been looking for.
Now I suppose I can broadcast a message directly and don’t need a script to resume music.

However, I’ve spend too much time to configure the resume and everything in the hacky way, with Cast, etc. that I don’t want to change it again. At least I’ve made a custom video and cast it when phone ring, that looks quite good and it loads almost instantly.

Now they should users to load custom URLs in browser on Nest Hub, as you can only load domain name page, frontpage, right now.

donparlor · November 14, 2022, 3:44pm

Hello @brintal!

Your solution is working for me. My original goal with Assistant Relay was to control my HaoDeng bluetooth smart lights which could not be added to Home Assistant in any way… HaoDeng is already integrated into Google Home therefore I had to find a way to tell Google Home to open/shut those lights from Home Assistant. Your solution is working flawlessly. I wish it could be faster, but still, it’s working! Thank you!

Illmanism · December 4, 2022, 10:50pm

@donparlor @brintal

Hey everyone, I’ve been trying to use the Helper toggle as the trigger device for google assistant but I’m unable to get it to show up in the google assistant trigger devices.

Is there anything additional I need to be doing other than just building the helper? I can see my light groups within Google Assistant so I believe the integration is working properly.

donparlor · December 5, 2022, 3:40am

Hello @Illmanism, as @brintal said, you need Google Assistant integration properly setup:

You can follow this tutorial from Lewis: Google Home with Home Assistant Local for FREE Without Subscription - YouTube

Once it is done, you can specify which entity you want to expose. As you can see in my configuration.yaml file below, I expose my whole covers domain + specifics helpers:

Illmanism · December 5, 2022, 7:09am

Thanks @donparlor

I followed the set up and everything works perfectly now.

Thanks so much for your help!

ctml · December 12, 2022, 1:26am

Same thoughts, works great but the only downside is it is a little slow. Google can take 10-20 seconds to update the state of the entity so routines are triggered with a large delay.

Have you found any solution to getting the HA entity state updated quicker in google?

donparlor · December 12, 2022, 5:00am

I wish there was a solution, but I guess we must keep an eye for future developments. Smart home items that cannot be integrated in Home Assistant might someday be available through Matter retroactively with companies adopting the standard? I know it’s not so fast yet, but at least you can interact with those devices now through HA dashboard and automations…

wflammenspeck · December 17, 2022, 12:22am

@donparlor

thank you for posting this approach to controlling GH devices from Home Assistant.

I recently had permanent led Christmas lights (https://www.gemstonelights.com/) installed on our house and I have been frustrated that I could not integrate them with HA. They integrate with Google Home and I used this helper trick to connect them to my Home assistant environment.

I did have to create 4 separate routines to get it working:

GH light turn on → HA helper turn on
GH light turn off → HA helper turn off
HA helper turn on → GH light turn on
HA helper turn off → GH light turn off

This gives me bi-directional control and a current status of the light switch in HA.
My response time is virtually instant, hopefully it is reliable.

Thanks again

donparlor · December 17, 2022, 12:25am

Wow! Great idea @wflammenspeck to add bi-directional control/status. I will certainly do it so that if anyone use either GH or HaoDeng to control the lights, HA will still know the current state of the lights. Your contribution is much appreciated!

THANKS!

MiguelAngelLV · December 18, 2022, 5:58am

It look like the next HA version will have a integration for this

mupsje · December 23, 2022, 3:45pm

Hi, can you please share us your code how you did this?
Thanks

wflammenspeck · December 23, 2022, 4:04pm

There isn’t really any code to share. I created a helper toggle in Home assistant which is made available as a switch in google home.

I created a routine in google home using this switch as a starter to turn on the lights.
Then I created another routine where in Lights are the starter and the helper is set accordingly.

Hope this helps.

Mahko_Mahko · January 4, 2023, 9:21pm

Ohhhh… This looks like a new native alternative?

This integration allows:

Sending text commands to Google Assistant to control devices supported by Google Assistant but not by Home Assistant. Examples:

Set Nest Guard to home and guarding

Start vacuuming

Stream front door on living room TV

Turn off kitchen TV

Play rain sounds on bedroom speaker

Broadcast messages to Google Assistant speakers and displays without interrupting music/video playback. Examples:

Coffee is ready

Someone is at the front door

Smoke detected in the master bedroom

Water leak detected in the master bathroom

wflammenspeck · January 5, 2023, 12:30am

I got the Assistant SDK set up and it working great.

I hope in the future it will be possible to do something with the response from google.
The response is there in the log, if we could access it via the integration it would allow us to ask devices what their state is.

donparlor · January 5, 2023, 6:37am

notify.google_assistant_sdk is not working in french-canada for now.
google_assistant_sdk.send_text_command works.

I guess it will be corrected with next HA upate.

tronikos · February 28, 2023, 11:50pm

For getting responses in automations see GitHub - tronikos/google_assistant_sdk_custom: Custom integration of Google Assistant SDK

dsch · December 28, 2023, 4:46am

Sorry for resurrecting an old thread, but I was wondering if this solution still works for anyone. Google Assistant now has restrictions on which types of devices are allowed to start routines, and “switch” (input_boolean in HA) is not one of the allowed ones. Any good workarounds?

Edit: It looks like none of the entities exposed through HA are allowed to start routines.

Keith.Lovatt · September 19, 2024, 3:45pm

Try using a cover helper.

I have success with this - google thinks it is a blind.

Note:
I have two instances, each with separate clound integrations. One is working perfectly, but the other one stopped working a couple of weeks ago. Google assistant routine looks ok and accepts it, but ignores the change of state. Hence I am looking for a method of sending the command directly.

All this is to conditionally play a radio station that won’t play through HA