Brainstorming: combining Home Assistant with SEPIA voice-assistant

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Hi Home Assistant community,

I hope I’ve chosen the right place to post my idea ^^. If not feel free to redirect me :wink:

TL;DR: I would like to create a smart-service for SEPIA that integrates Home Assistant as main smart-home control interface and I’m looking for some help to get started. Maybe some dev-docs about the Home Assistant REST interface?

Long version:

I’ve recently released a project of mine I was working on for quite some time now called SEPIA:

SEPIA is an full-scale, open-source, voice-assistant and successor of the now ~3 years old ILA voice-assistant (some might still know it, probability very low =) ) expanding the whole idea of a desktop app to a private server-client combination.
SEPIA is still a bit rough around the edges, but I’m already using it on a day-to-day basis running the backend on a Raspberry Pi 3 with NGINX and Let’s Encrypt (I’m sure most of you here are familiar with that ^^).
Currently it has a nice set of basic features in German and English like radio, weather, to-do and shopping lists, alarms, timer, reminder, news and soccer-results (German only) and all that stuff but the one thing that is still missing is: Smart-Home controls!

I once made a proof-of-concept controlling my Philips Hue bridge with some HTTP REST calls and thought about creating a smart-service for SEPIA out of that but since Home Assistant has already implemented all this I think it makes sense to combine these two projects.

My question now is: where to start? :smile:

Brainstorming:

Basically the first step would probably be to create a new smart-service template in SEPIA (all done in Java right now, SDK is in beta phase) to control lights (“switch on the lights in the living-room” etc.) then setup a Home Assistant and find out how I can connect both.
I have to admit that I haven’t played a lot yet with Home Assistant but I’m assuming that you have some REST interface I could start with? Maybe someone could point me to the right docs here?

Thanks in advance for any help or ideas. I’d be really happy if we could combine forces on the open-source front 'cause I think we are driven by the same philosophy :slight_smile:

Regards,
Florian

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@fquirin The developer docs. https://developers.home-assistant.io/

You can also check in with developers on https://discordapp.com/invite/c5DvZ4e

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@zarthan thx for the links.

I had some time to check out the dev docs and it looks like the external REST API is what I need: https://developers.home-assistant.io/docs/en/external_api_rest.html

There is an example to turn on a specific light:

$ curl -X POST -H "x-ha-access: YOUR_PASSWORD" \
       -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
       -d '{"entity_id": "switch.christmas_lights"}' \
       http://localhost:8123/api/services/switch/turn_on

Guess its time to set everything up and build a first PoC :slight_smile:

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Good luck. You might want to start a post in the Development category as you get going.

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Hi, I have Homeassistant for all my appliances and currently deployed SEPIA home. I am also looking a way to integrate two instances.

I tried to bridge HA & SEPIA via mesh-node server however I am lacking Java knowledge, therefore require python-based soluton. I checked for python-bridge-server, however it seems for integration regarding NLU kind of modules for the framework.

Are you able to have any progress so far?

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Hi @averneus , I haven’t been active here for a while, if you need faster support feel free to create an issue inside the SEPIA docs repository or start a new discussion about HA :slight_smile:

When I implemented the default SEPIA smart-home interfaces a few years ago I thought about HA but due to the limited interest from the community it was never really on the priority list. I think what some people managed to do though was using the MQTT interface of SEPIA to send data to HA.
Are we talking about the classic stuff like “switch on the lights in the living room” etc.? Maybe it is time to explore HA again ^^

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Hi, yes I would be so happy if the community continues to explore the possibilities :star_struck: . I will be creating an issue asap. Thank you!

To response your comment, I would say yes. As first iteration I aim to use simple light switches with my voice. Since there are more than 5-6 switches I control at home and ever increasing, GUI on HA started being mentally exhaustive for manual interactions. Therefore a selfhosted VUI assistant to handle those for me would be perfect :).

By the way last couple of weeks I am tinkering with SEPIA. Its modular architecture is just awesome! :love_you_gesture: However unfortunately I do lack the Java knowledge and fail to write custom service plugins. Currently I deployed SEPIA home & stt modules, used custom LM for my native language and teaching simple commands. It is working flawlessly and I look for a solution to integrate it with HA. I am definitely going to check for the utilization of MQTT interface. Thank you very very much!

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I’ll probably install a HA instance on one of my Raspberry Pis the next days and start exploring the HA API (again) :slight_smile:

I’m exploring ways to make that easier with less Java code, more drag & drop, maybe some Python and Javascript options, but it will take a while to get to a first prototype. It is on my list though ;-).

I’m happy to hear that :star_struck:

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