I am considering adding Google Assistant to my HA setup. Before doing that, I would like however to understand whether Google Assistant reacts to specific orders, or does it try to interpret them?
In other words, can I set up the order “OK Google, switch on the right lamp”, where I explicitely configure
"switch on the light lamp" = "homeassistant.turn_on(entity_id='group.kitchen')"
Or will Google try to find in my configurations something that resembles a “right lamp” or “lamp on the right”, or “lamp in the room called right”, or something else - and fail because it does not exist?
I would greatly prefer the first version, where a specific sentence corresponds to a specific action.
It’s the way you want.
But not like you need to write commands like that.
In HA you expose enteties to GA.
GA then sees a entity called right light and depending on the type it will react to different sentences.
So a light will react to turn on and switch on. But a coffee maker will work with different sentences.
So long story short, what you configured will be mirrored in GA.
If it fails then it will either say that it can’t find that entety or do something else (sadly)…
Sometimes you want to do something and it doesn’t understand and guesses that you want to listen to music instead and start playing that.
It’s not terrible. But you have to be very articulate with them and say “turn… On… Lights” instead of “turn on lights”
GA then sees a entity called right light and depending on the type it will react to different sentences.
Thanks. So this means that:
I have to have an entity with a name that is recognized by GA (which would not be my case, the “right lamp” does not exist, what I wanted is GA to react to that concept to actually switch on a group)
it is going to interpret what I am saying. In other words if I say “shazam wazoo”, it will not recognize that I want to switch on the lights in the kitchen, and I cannot program it to match “shazam wazoo” to “switch on the lights of the group kitchen”
You can do that in GA app with routines.
There you can make one word do anything pretty much.
You create a sentence it reacts to and then you type the real commands it should do.
Example you say:
Hey google shazam wazoo.
Command:
Turn on right light
Turn off left light
Set timer on 10 minutes.
Or something like that.
Look at the routines in GA app and you will see.
Ah yes, I see now. Your example is very clear, I will give that a try.
Would you know if there is a way to discriminate which google home appliance made the call? So that “switch on lights” coming form “mini google home in Michael’s room” acts on a some lights, while the same order coming from another one targets another light?
Since it’s just past Christmas I’ll advice you to look at the second hand market for Google Home’s since there is a lot of people who got one and has no clue what to do with them so they sell them cheap.