Emulated Hue for both Amazon Echo and Google Home

Installation Home Assistant OS
1

I’ve had emulated hue working for a while now with my Amazon Echo dots. I’ve since purchased a Google Home device and would like to advertise to that as well as the Echo.

Reading on the forum here it appears possible, and I’ve added the last two lines to my configuration.yaml file to try and advertise to the Home device:

emulated_hue:
  host_ip: 192.168.0.20
  listen_port: 8300
  expose_by_default: false

emulated_hue a:
  listen_port: 80

However, the home control section of the Google Home app doesn’t see any new ‘lights’ to control.

When trying to visit:
http://hassio.local:80/api/pi/lights
http://hassio.local:80/description.xml
chrome just reports that the ‘site can’t be reached’.

It works on port 8300.

The ‘customize’ section (also in configuration.yaml) is as so:

  homeassistant:
    customize:
      media_player.samsung_tv_remote:
        emulated_hue: true
        emulated_hue_name: "tv"
      switch.nuc:
        emulated_hue: true
        emulated_hue_name: "media server"

There are no reported errors in the log file (other than some Plex related ones I’m aware of).

Any ideas?

Thanks.

2

Have a search, you need to use an old version of the Home app to set it up initially, exact process and link to relevant file in lots of threads.

1 Like
3

Thanks once more, Bobby. FYI I had searched, but it wasn’t until I searched for ‘emulated hue google home app’ that I found the results you mentioned.

Before I remove the latest version of the Google Home application from my phone and install an older one, shouldn’t I still be able to see http://hassio.local:80/api/pi/lights and http://hassio.local:80/description.xml if it’s actually working / advertising for Google home to pick up?

Also, do you know if there’s a reason why this wouldn’t be stated in the documentation? I suspect it’d help prevent the creation of a fair few posts!

Thanks.

4

No probs, wasn’t suggesting you were being lazy.

What you said sounds right but I only use it with Alexa so mine responds to 8300 and 8301.

There’s a lot not in the documentation :slight_smile: in this case it probably worked fine when originally written and no one has updated it since the changes, most people just fix their own problems, move on and forget about it. It’s open source so anyone can do it so perhaps you could have a go when you get everything sorted and it’s fresh in your mind? It’s also possible that people thought Google would just fix it quickly so no point and time has just passed by.

5

Thanks again for the reply :slight_smile: So far my experience is that I can’t get both emulated hue working for Google Home and Amazon Echo, and also sadly the older version of the Google Home app for Android just kept crashing out for me.

However, if I set the emulated hue to work for Google Home only, unlinking my Hue account in the Google Home app and re-linking it appeared to pick up the real hue devices and the emulated ones, as long as I pressed the pair button on the hue bridge. I’ll try submitting an edit for the docs this weekend if I can figure out Github :slight_smile:

The only problem now is getting hass.io to emulate for Google Home and Amazon Echo.

6

Glad to hear you’re getting somewhere, I don’t know anymore personally but hopefully someone who has direct experience of what you’re trying to do will be along soon.

Think @anon35356645 is, our at least was, using both.

7

Reporting back to say that actually, both are working. I’m not really sure how to document a ‘fix’ as it’s been such a convoluted way of arriving at both working. This is essentially what’s happened:

  1. Setup emulated hue with Amazon Echo. Both :8300/api/pi/lights and :8300/description.xml worked.
  2. Tried to add emulated Hue for Google Home but :80/api/pi/lights and :80/description.xml didn’t display anything.
  3. Google Home wouldn’t detect anything.
  4. Rearranged the emulated hue code to emulate for Google Home first and Alexa second. Now the URLs on port 80 worked but 8300 didn’t. I assumed at this point. Echo wouldn’t work but didn’t test.
  5. Unlinked Hue in Google Home and relinked it picked up the new devices advertised by HA, after pressing the button on the actual Hue bridge also.
  6. At some point later I just asked echo to try turning on one of the emulated devices it originally had control over and it worked (still, the port 8300 URLs don’t work).

Strange, but both are working now.