Blinds not controllable via Google Assistant (Nabu Casa User)

[RobertD502]

I currently use Nabu Casa to expose entities from Home Assistant to Google Assistant. I exposed a few Soma Blinds to Google Assistant. They show up in the Google Home app. However, when tapping on a blind (within the Google Home app), the blind doesn’t open or close. I did notice that on the Nest Hub itself, the blind doesn’t show any controls - only the current state is reported unlike other blinds (not exposed from Home Assistant) which do show control options. The same seems to be happening with other cover entities (non-Soma blind devices) as well - tapping on the device in the Google Home App shows the device as opening or closing, but nothing actually happens. Controlling all other entity types in the Google Home App that were exposed by Home Assistant works just fine.

I also noticed that if I try to control a blind via voice command, Google reports “Sorry, it looks like that device hasn’t been set up yet” - seems rather odd since the Google Home app and the Nest Hub show the blinds.

For what it’s worth, I have tried unlinking Home Assistant from my Google Home account and re-adding it. I’ve also set a pin and made sure to ask the Google Home to sync devices.

Has anyone else been experiencing this?

[samuel81 (Matte)]

I think I understand what you mean, I’m a Nabu Casa user myself, but I think this all mostly related to how you’ve setup your blinds in HA. What blinds are they, what Zigbee Addon do you use, what firmware of your zigbee adapter, what firmware of the blinds?

This might sound like a lot but made all the difference for my Aqara controlled blinds.

[RobertD502]

Using Soma Connect integration. No Zigbee/Zwave involved. When accessing the manage entities setting for Google Assistant, I can see the cover(blind) entities support open and close.

[juanitobebe]

Where you ever able to solve this issue? I’m having the same problem with my blinds in Google home.

[RobertD502]

Nope. Just ended up exposing the blinds via the Soma google home integration. I also exposed them to Homekit for local control of positioning since it wasn’t happening through Google Home. I have to say I don’t even control the blinds via voice since I have automations that handle the opening and closing based on time of day.

[cipnt]

I also had a similar problem – my iBlinds 3 work great within Home Assistant but when exposed to Google Home app they would show as unavailable and can not be controlled:

I worked out that Home Assistant was exposing to Google Assistant just the ‘state’ of the entity, not its attributes. And in the case of the iBlinds this was always ‘unknown’

By playing in the Developer Tools > States and manually setting the state to “open” or “closed” I could see them as available within Google Home but was still not able to control them.

Installing this cover template in configuration.yaml fixed it for me.

cover:
    - platform: template
      covers:
        bedroom_left_window_blinds_tilt:
          unique_id: bedroom_left_window_blinds_tilt
          friendly_name: "Bedoom Left Window Blinds Tilt"
          position_template: "{{ state_attr('cover.bedroom_left_window_blinds', 'current_tilt_position') | int }}"
          availability_template: "{% if is_state('cover.bedroom_left_window_blinds', 'unavailable') %} false {% else %} true {% endif %}"
          device_class: blind
          open_cover:
            service: cover.open_cover_tilt
            data:
              entity_id: cover.bedroom_left_window_blinds
          close_cover:
            service: cover.close_cover_tilt
            data:
              entity_id: cover.bedroom_left_window_blinds
          set_cover_position:
            service: cover.set_cover_tilt_position
            data_template:
              entity_id: cover.bedroom_left_window_blinds
              tilt_position: "{{position}}"

Then I disabled the original blinds entity from showing in Google Assistant and enabled this new cover template. I now have Open/Close control over the blinds and correctly reporting the current state:

It’s not perfect though: when I select the device in Google Home app (long press on it) it gives me just an Open/Close button (like the above screenshot) instead of a 0-100 scale, but it does show the correct percentage within the list of devices in Google Home:

Hope this saves someone else some time… I wish I came across it sooner

[rx78nt1alex]

This works fantastic. I essentially copied all of the example you posted, taking into account the names I am using and it worked well. I can give the command “hey google, open blinds” and the opposite command “hey google, close blinds” . I can also give the command “Ok google, set blinds to (any percentage)” with 50% being full open, 0% being closed down, and 100% being closed upwards.

The google button also shows a slider where I can set it to anywhere from 0-100%. I didn’t do anything different, just copy and paste your code and modify for my unique names.

[cipnt]

I’m also seeing a slider now within the Google Home app, so it was either updated since then or it was a temporary bug.
I guess I can now say the iBlinds work perfectly for me with this cover template workaround.