Google Assistant Heaven - No more Annoying Google read backs and angry wife!

Hi All,

Leaving this here in the hope that it helps someone else with a similar “problem” :wink:

Context: I run Home Assistant via a VM on unRAID and deploy a mix of Wifi and Zigbee devices. My voice control is powered by Google Mini’s (strategically placed around the house) which interfaces to HA via Nabu Casa.

Problem: Not Wife Proof - AKA - A Google Mini would pick up a voice command for a device not in the same “room” and then read back in the affirmative “Got it, Turning Nursery Floor Lamp Off”. This would often happen at times when we want quiet.

What did I try?: Removing All “Rooms” from Google Home and adding all devices to just one single Home “Room”. Then add the name of the room to the name of the device. E.g. Device would be called “Nursery Floor Lamp” as opposed to “Floor Lamp” that was in the Nursery. This worked to some extent as because every device was considered in one “Room” it would never read back. This became an issue though because I couldn’t add enough text to the device name that busted 25 chars and had some device mismatch errors with Google when I did.

Solution: Dont expose any all devices to Google Home via Nabu Casa. Create Scenes in HA that do what I want (e.g. Turn a Light On OR Turn a Light off). Expose the Scenes to Nabu CASA. Create routines in Google Home for each Scene.

Conclusion: This works great. Google Routines don’t make a peep when they are executed. All appearances are that each device is getting controlled as usual but its just activating a scene. The way Google Home works it also allows you to add alternate phraseology to each routine to cater for the way the Wife (and I) address each device - E.g. sometimes I say Nursery Floor Lamp, Floor Lamp, Nursery Lamp etc etc. This allows we to quickly and simply add an alternate phrase when needed.

Yes there is a bit of setup overhead for this (the more devices you have the more it will hurt - I have about 50 scenes now, but I also have all my 16 house light switches automated, 10 plugs, garage door, 20 Zigbee Sensors and a few Zigbee Buttons) but I love that it keeps Google Home silent and I also like keeping the power of my setup in HA. Now if I need something to change I just change the HA backend and no need to play with Google Home.

:slight_smile:

5 Likes

@danioj, thank you for sharing this. I’ll be following your lead and moving to scene’s in the near future.

@danioj , I recently changed cell phones. Google Home was installed on the new phone. I was surprised to see none of the routines I had setup on the old phone were copied over to the new phone. I thought, like google mail, the routines would be copied from my Google account to the new phone. Have you found a way to save the routines so they my be copied to a new installation?

Hi @rcblackwell. This was very surprising to read as I expected them to be attached to your Google account. I have not had this experience. To test, I logged out and logged in and they are still there. I logged onto my partners iPhone with my Google account and they are still there. Not sure how to help you or why you might be experiencing this. Are you “Sure” you are using the same Google account?

I am now! Turns out I was logged into the wrong account. Must have been a seniors moment! Thanks for pointing out the error of my ways.

No worries mate. We’ve all been there. Glad you got it working.

Hi, struggling with the same issue here. To the OP, did you create a Scene then for turning off lights as well as a different one for turning on lights? ty