@mooturner I have the same problem. I was hoping that creating a Routine to play music and naming it “Turn on music mode”, then issuing the command “Turn on music mode” from this addon would work, but it does nothing.
Community Hass.io Add-on: Google Assistant Webserver (broadcast messages without interrupting music)
@masterfink It’s not a problem you can fix. This was made to take advantage of the “broadcast” feature, which isn’t involved in casting media (you don’t broadcast to a single device, but rather all google home devices). The “command” stuff was discovered later almost by accident and it doesn’t support casting media either. You can turn off lights and switches, but Home Assistant automations already cover that, so using command is not so useful. It’s not anything you’ve done, or the addon…it just isn’t supported on Google’s end.
Can you add aarch64 arquitecture please?
Addon fe49a976_google_assistant_webserver not supported on aarch64
I think this info should be noted in the 1st post like a FAQ @AndBobsYourUncle
What you can do or not with the addon, the DND setting etc…
Casting media is actually supported by Google with the Google Assistant Library but it’s only available for linux-armv7l and linux-x86_64 architectures with Audio capture and playback.
I use it everyday for my morning alarm.
Isn’t that basically the Google Assistant SDK though (a different addon for Hass.io) and not this “relay”? Or are they the same thing?
My solution is a mix between the official Hassio add-on and this one.
To summarize:
| Official add-on | This add-on | My solution | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hassio ready (Docker) | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| SDK component used | Google Assistant Library | Google Assistant Service | Google Assistant Library |
| Supported architectures | linux-armv7l and linux-x86_64 | All gRPC platforms | linux-armv7l and linux-x86_64 |
| Webserver embedded | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Input method | Voice only | Text only | Voice and text |
| Broadcasting | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Remote media casting | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
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I’m not sure why it’s not spoken of more on these forums or with this addon, but the command feature is extremely useful and might save you a bit of cash.
A fair bit of cheap smart devices that are not yet or unable to be implemented into HA do have Google Assistant support. There are occasionally other methods to get these into HA including IFTTT, but they are very slow to react. This is a great solution to use these devices in HA and have them react just as fast as officially supported devices.
Before finding HA I had a good number of Meross smart plugs, they were cheaper than sonoffs at the time and I built my own solution from Google’s SDK to do this once I fell in love with HA, but now I don’t have to worry about all that.
Thanks for this.
Is your solution something that will be published for all of us or home brew only?
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Maybe I haven’t followed something but isn’t the official Google Assistant add-on a way for Google Home devices to interact with Home Assistant using DialogFlow (basically run custom commands on HA by voice input).
There’s also the Google Assistant component which is a way to expose Home Assistant controlled devices to Google Home so that they can be operated by voice using “standard” interactions.
How do the official add-on and component support broadcasting from Google Assistant to all Google Home devices, or more generally execute commands (e.g. remote media casting) on Google linked devices in place of the user? It seems they are designed to work in the other direction.
Actually I’ve already shared the code in a previous post:
It’s not a plug and play solution for sure. I wish I could make into a Hassio add-on, but I don’t have the knowledge nor the motivation yet (I’m not a Hassio user)
By “official Google Assistant add-on” I mean this one made by pvizeli (outdated doc)
To be honest I haven’t really used any add-on (again, I’m not a Hassio user) but from my understanding the official add-on just create a new voice controlled Google Assistant device and is not directly related to Home Assistant capabilities. It is not a requirement for the Dialogflow component and is only useful if you don’t already own a Google Home device.
The Google Assistant component does not support broadcasting. As you said it is a way to expose Home Assistant entities to Google Assistant.
How hard would it be for you to bundle this up into a single docker container?
I’m trying to get this working on a QNAP nas, and unfortunately they’re pretty locked down in installing random software. Docker works fine though (through “Container Station”).
I am thinking of moving it onto a spare rpi3 I have lying around if we can’t figure it out, but I’d prefer to keep it all on the one device.
I’m getting the same error. Did you ever find a way around this?
Hello there my names Craig, I hope you can help, as I am pretty technical but not to the level of programming or linux and stuff like that. I’ve never used hass.io before so I need to start from scratch. I basically want my google home to do what your addon can do, ie type some text on the computer and have google home anounce it in the assistant voice. quite amusing dont you think if I’m talking to someon and suddenly google says “I agree!” and everyone will think she’s listening in! would you be so kind as to give me some step by step instructions on setting up home assistant and your addon so i can do this? I believe I need a raspberry pi, which I can get from amazon, and if I find the setup too difficult or parts of it are inaccessible, I’m totally blind and use assistive technology, I’ve got a tech friend who should be able to help, its just the instructions aren’t really clear on here, the link to the add on that you say is similar says its broken and going to the google assistant page says the addon has been updated, but no idea where to find the updated version and instructions
any help greatly appreciated!
take care
craig
Just following this up, is there “any way” to play a short audio file* in the same way that broadcast works. Eg doesn’t stop any existing use of the google home devices.
*cookoo clock
*door bell
*other audio notifications
Unfortunately, it’s not currently possible. This is a limitation of Google Assistant and not this add-on.
I don’t know but first make sure your QNAP nas meets the requirements of the Google Assistant Library. You could try for example to install the official add-on, if it does not start my solution won’t work either as both use the same library.
Technically you can send audio data with the Google Assistant Service so if we concatenate the sound “broadcast” + a custom audio file it might work.
Care to elaborate? Have you managed to get any interaction with broadcast other than repeating the input? For example, if you tell the assistant to “broadcast the weather” your devices simply say “the weather”. I’m fairly certain that functionality does not exist yet, broadcast is simply for broadcasting messages.
No I didn’t (well except the predefined broadcasts such as “broadcast it’s movie time” etc…) but the idea is to send an audio file being a record of yourself saying “Broadcast” + another custom sound like “Ding Dong” so the end result would be a sound file “Broadcast Ding Dong”. Then Google Home devices would repeat the sound “Ding Dong”. This is of course a hack but might worth a try.