Hello. I have a few questions regarding using google home automation for custom products that we want to develop as well as home assistant in general. Hoping to get some advice.
If we want to develop a product which is compatible with google home/alexa, do we need to license it somehow or purchase something? Are we allowed to label our device as “google home compatible” ?
From what I understand, in order to automate your home through home assistant, one needs a smart google hub, is that right? This can be either purchased prebuilt or person can create a home assistant service on a raspberry PI or even his own windows machine? That will also act as “hub”.
Is the hub necessary to achieve any automation through home assistant? Can I automate some device just using a smartphone and not using any hub or smart speaker? Lets say I download home assistant application on my phone and tell it to turn on some lights, The lights maybe are connected to an ESP32 device which has mqtt program running and able to publish/subscribe to some topic.
uuuuuuum, your question is kind of combining HomeAssistant questions with Google questions in a way that implies you do not understand they are completely separate things.
No.
Yes.
Yes. Hub in this case is the device running the HomeAssistant application, which is NOT the thing on your phone.
Thank you very much for a quick response. And forgive the confusion between the two.
If I want to make a device compatible with google home / alexa, I must have a smart hub which runs home assistant. A home assistant will be able to control smart devices through google home or/and alexa speakers. Is my understanding correct here?
Also, if I have a hub, I can set it up with my smartphone so I dont even need to have a alexa speaker and can just tell my phone to turn on/off the appliances?
If you are asking if HomeAssistant can act as an intermediary between devices that are not google/alexa compatible, and a smart speaker from google/alexa, I believe the answer is yes, if it is configured properly.
The phone companion app talks to HomeAssistant and gives you an interface, I do not know if there is voice control built in.
Could you elaborate on that a little please? How can I automate without a hub?
Also, allow me to clarify “If you are asking if HomeAssistant can act as an intermediary between devices that are not google/alexa compatible, and a smart speaker from google/alexa, I believe the answer is yes, if it is configured properly.”
I will give an example. I have purchased a google home hub and I have microcontroller ESP32 which is running MQTT to toggle on/off the lights. I will need to “add” this device to my home assistant service and configure it before I can toggle the lights, also will need to program the microcontroller properly to send the required mqtt packets. Is that correct?
There are many ways. The ESPHome or other integration specific API that works via wired or wireless network. Restful sensors, MQTT, and too many more to list.
Okay thanks. I am mainly concerned about google home and alexa since I want my product to be compatible with those. In that case, a user will need to have its hub to use my product.
Hoping to get some clarification regarding developing product for commercial use which is compatible with smart home hubs such as google/alexa
To be honest I’m having a hard time understanding what you are saying.
Home assistant can be considered a ‘hub for hubs’. i.e. it allows control of devices connected to one hub by devices connected to another hub. But Home assistant itself can talk to many devices directly without a hub using many different protocols and APIs.
Well I assumed that the most average customer is not going to have a “custom” raspberry pi home assistant built in his home. I assumed that most people will be using a smart home hub such as echo hub or google nest hub. This hub is already running a home assistant service and they would need to “configure” it slightly to connect to any smart device that supports required protocols.
Then as I said, you are in the wrong place. This is a Home Assistant forum. Everyone here has Home Assistant.
This is not the place for advice on developing for Google Home or Alexa. It’s the place for advice on configuring and using Home Assistant the product:
Not home assistant the generic term for all hubs and such.
Those devices are not running, and cannot run, Home Assistant. They are running a service that you can describe as a home assistant, but not this Home Assistant which is unrelated to the Google and Amazon services (although it can be configured to take advantage of them).
Okay thanks for clarifying… And I appreciate your patience.
So if a person have google nest hub setup at his home, he will be using google assistant?
If a person is using amazon echo, he will be using alexa.
but what is common between these two, that in order to automate their home, they both need Home assistant service which routers all the commands to the required smart devices? Am I getting close to understanding how it works?
Most people that have a Google home hub have a few devices they use it to control. Usually this control all works via the cloud, each device maker has to provide and maintain cloud access for their devices.