Hi All,
Leaving this here in the hope that it helps someone else with a similar “problem”
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.