I have been running HA for about 4 months now and love it! This my first home automation attempt and I went with all z-wave hardware which has been very stable (10 z-wave devices). I initially tried to install HA on a spare Dell X86 workstation and was not successful. My second attempt was to install HA on my OMV (Open Media Vault) server using docker and Portainer. This has been working very well.
I am to the point where I need to get Alexa to talk to and control my HA devices. This is imperative because my buddy at work who got me into home automation has no problem controlling his z-wave devices with Alexia via Hubitat⌠and I am not able to⌠I simply canât bear the shame!
The whole Amazon Web Service thing is out. For one, I donât want my home automation dependent on my internet connection. It also seems way more complex that I am willing to spend the time to figure out. Paying a monthly fee for Nabu Casa would be just too embarrassing to bear! I donât want internet dependence and I despise monthly fees!
Please correct me if I am wrong but to use Emulated Hue I need to be running HA OS on a Raspberry Pi so I can install the Emulated Hue package? With the high price of Piâs and the extra trouble of setting up and configuring an SSD for the Pi it really seams like I should just admit I am defeated and buy a Hubitat?
Is a Raspberry Pi running HA OS and Emulated Hue the only way to have a non-internet dependent link between Alexa and HA?
After spending hours on this forum I havenât read anything about any new development on Alexa / HA integration projects? Is there any development on the horizon that I missed? YEs, I am very aware this is a user supported product.
I am sorry for whining, I love HA but it seems like I have wondered beyond my nerd engineering envelope.
Alexa ha integration use internet access as i know.
You can try to pair alexa with ha using bluetooth. I paired it but I never tried to control any devices. I donât know will this work.
I donât really know how you expect the Alexa integration (a cloud based service) to work with your HA devices (located inside your house) to work without an internet connection?
Does your friends hubitat work using voice control without an internet connection? I really doubt it.
There are all local voice assistant AI services but I donât think there is a local only Alexa emulator.
All Emulated Hue does is trick your cloud based Alexa into thinking that all of the devices are Philips Hue devices. You still need an internet connection for that to work.
As far as Nabu Casa feesâŚ
that is going to be by far the easiest method to get your devices connected to Alexa.
But there is also another free option called âhaaskaâ (It think that is still around and workingâŚ) but itâs more complex to set up and not as functional.
Not on HA, not on Hubitat, not on SmartThings. Alexa REQUIRES thier cloud you do not send instructions to individual echo devices you are addressing the service. The service is in the cloud.
Now you also have a fundamental misconception that âi dont want to rely on the internet for home automationâ is the same as relying on your voice assistant.
You can rely on the internet for Alexa voice (or Google pretty much everything I mentioned above applies to Google as well) but still run all local control. The only thing that goes âoutâ when you lose Internet is voice control. This is exactly how Iâm built here. All ZWave / zigbee a little esp32 and soon some matter gear and Alexa voice.
You mentioned multiple times about how youâ cant bear the shameâ of using Nabu and a few. Other items. I would instead submit that while the Alexa AWS route is one way to go. There is nothing wrong with using Nabu Casa. In fact youâre supporting the HA team when you do. Thereâs nothing to be ashamed of if you look at a configuration and say hey you know what. I donât have the time or patience to spend a weekend configuring a web service and voice skill. Iâd rather trade money for thatâŚ
Finally so letâs say you build a system like mine with local controls and Alexa and your voice assistant goes out because the internet is downâŚ
Good home automation means the system is doing things for you WITHOUT YOU HAVING TO YELL AT IT. I use my Alexa integration to override behavior and respond to queries from the house (entirely possible with the Alexa Media Player integration in HACS) but nothing time sensitive or that will explode if i dont respond. Trust me, the new wears off of telling the computer to turn on or off a light and go to âparty modeâ
Its much more useful for me for Alexa to notify me that the trash can is still next to the garage and itâs trash day about two minutes after the circuit that has my coffee pot drops back to idle.
Edit: added missing sentence about misconceptions, thanks autocorrectâŚ
Owned an Alexa from day 1. Have used it on 4 different platforms. Local control on all of them was through reverse engineering the hue bridge, limited to devices represented as lights and switches, with other usability issues.
I tried that path here too. I broke down and paid (after the free trial) for the Nabu Casa subscription.
Couldnât be easier and very solid, worth the money and that is the only feature I use. Also helps to support the cause.
I have gone through the integration docs a few times and didnât have any luck. The docs reference config files that I was not able to find. I recall not knowing for sure if the docs were pertinent to HA installed in a docker container without the HAOS.
Now that I know that the configuration I was trying to make work is a valid configuration I need to read through the documents and try again.
It has been a few months since I have tried to get Emulated Hue working. If you happen to have a link to the documentation handy and wouldnât mind posting it I would appreciate it! It would definitely save me some time searching.
Or were you asking which part of the install document I was having problems with? If that was your question I do not know, it has been a while. But I will attempt again and post here when I run into problems. Thank you!
Emulated hue has itâs fair share of headaches and you will most likey run into problems if your network isnât set up well. Alexa has a hard time discovering hue these days and the interface has changed so much. Not to mention, last I checked, you needed a gen1 or gen2 echo dot to even talk to a Hue Bridge V1 (which is what emulated hue emulates).
Personally, I jumped ship from emulated hue in 2018 and moved to Alexa Smart Home Skill using the âAWS Thingâ. I havenât touched it since I set it upâŚjust works. Exactly the same way as NabuCasa.
EDIT: My memory is probably off and Iâm thinking of Harmony Remotes and the emulated hue issues.
Anyways, I suggest you get used to searching integrations (linked at the top of every thread) for documentation.
I am using a Fire TV Cube with Alexa built in. I believe it is gen 3 (one version under the current version that was just released) but I donât know how that translates to the Echo Dot hardware versions. Is trying to get a Fire TV Cube to talk to Emulated Hue unexplored territory?
Just try it. Iâm probably miss remembering, it was 4+ years ago for me at this point. But I stopped using it because amazon doesnât support hue bridge V1s anymore. I wouldnât be surprised if a release breaks itâs functionality. It happened once to me prior to 2018. As I said before, Iâd personally go the AWS route if you donât want to pay. Alexa doesnât work anyways without internet connection, so you arenât losing anything when HA loses connection.
I donât know if a Cube + Emulated Hue is unexplored, but realize Firetv devices (including the cube and the new Firetv Omnis) arenât quite bog standard Alexas⌠Theyâre a different animal.
Im not entirely sure what is exactly different other than they donât always behave the same - sending TTS or media requests. So much so Iv modified my automations to avoid trying to do âAlexaâ stuff with them and just stick to the media player functions.
Im. With Petro, try it but⌠Also realize you may see weirdness.
Now the question I havenât seen answered⌠Why emulated hue? What problem are you actually trying to solve? I ask because often we think we know how to solve an issue and try to plow through the issues not realizing there was a better way to handle the situation all along.
I received a Hubitat Elevation hub for Christmas and integration with Alexa was VERY quick, simple AND FREE giving me control of all my Z-Wave and other Hubitat devices. Adding Ethernet / WiFi devices like a Samsung TV and Yamaha receiver to Hubitat was laborious, imprecise with horrendous documentation! While Home Assistant just found these Ethernet devices and asked me if I wanted to add them Hubitat required I hack together various driver scripts (.groovy) files from all over the internet (mainly github) and manually create them in Hubitat before manually adding each device based on its IP and then having to create a static DHCP assignment for each device so its IP address never changes.
Having spent time with both I feel Home Assistant is much better quality and much easier to use, I just canât bring myself to pay $5 for Alexa integration. If there was ever fast, easy and free integration of Alexa in Home Assistant I believe I would switch back VERY quickly.
Just my experiences from my limited interaction with each system.
I am wondering whether the Fire TV Cube could be a replacement of tbe Harmony Hub, which I currently use, but has been discontinued.
The Harmony Hub is included in my wake-up automation, turning the TV on with the desired channel. Can the same be achieved with the Fire TV Cube ?
Old thread but hereâs my experience as of May 2023. I just tried using the Hue emulation and the steps (outlined here among other sites) have changed when setting up the Alexa app. After adding the emulation lines to my configuration.yaml, restarting HA, I tried to add a Device â Hub but that took me to Phillips registration to set up a Hue account. I went back to the Alexa app and added lights instead and it found dozens of entities (all from the emulated Hue, I assume). From there I could easily configure my binary switched devices and control via Alexa. Yes, it requires internet access and is strictly binary but as a backup to physical switches and (more importantly) to please my SO this is a godsend.
