Google home + Home Assistant with NETFLIX VOICE CONTROL on TV

Yonguelle · November 21, 2018, 2:41pm

Hi!

I’m new in this community, but i read about HA since a couple of months. I’d like to start my advanture with HA hoping I can find some good offers on devices while Black Friday is comming

Here is what I want to achieve:

Option 1: I talk to google home speaker, “turn on (movie title) on netflix on my living room tv” or something like that By this comend I’d like to turn on tv, and automaticaly start watching Movie/series on it with ability to voice control Netflix (pause, stop, turn on subtitles etc.)

My plan is to connect like this => rasberry pi with Home assistant + google home speaker + (and there is a question, what do I need to do it? ) Does the xiaomi tv box will work for what I want to achieve with voice commands via google home? Theoreticaly it supports chromecast. I don’t have smart TV, just normal Plasma.

I thougth about chromecast from google also, but I don’t fully understand how it works. It casts, so There must be turned on netflix either on my phone or computer so the device is busy during watching on tv, am I right? If yes, I don’t like this solution.I like to use my phone/computer during watching tv

Does anyone have this kind of integration at home ?

Thanks in advance!

juliusbentz · November 21, 2018, 7:29pm

Hi!

I’m also new to this community. (Registered to answer your question:sweat_smile:)

At the moment, I don’t have Home-Assistant but what you need is also possible without having HA. In my case for example, I have a google home mini, Google Chromecast and optionally one “smart” power on/off switch.

My TV starts if a Source is streaming something. So I can say: “OK Google, play [Netflix-Series].” and it streams it to my Chromecast by default. So in this Case you don’t need HA.

BUT if you want to use it, you can install Kodi on your Pi. Thats a Software what allows you to install hundreds of Plugins like Netflix, YouTube, etc. and let’s you play Music or Movies that are either on local or on network storage.

Here you can find how to configure your HA to interact with your Kodi installation.

Hope this helps a bit.

Good luck!

gurbina93 · November 21, 2018, 8:22pm

That command doesn’t work in Xiaomi Mi Boxes yet. I read somewhere that only certain certified devices.
Anyway Google announced it was going to be supported about a month ago, to cast Netflix on additional Android TV devices like the Mi Box and Nvidia Shield but I just got the Android 8 update on Mi Box 3 and it still doesn’t work…

About turning on the TV and additional components such as home theaters, lights, etc you can create a Google Assistant routine that performs whatever you want such as turning on the TV, home theater, change the thermostat, turn off lights, etc.
Not sure if it can be achieved with just the Netflix sentence, you would need to split it in 2 very likely. Do note that some Android TV devices support the CEC thingy, so when you turn ask Google to cast anything to that device, it can turn on the TV vía HDMI CEC. I got the dumbest TV of all, so mine doesn’t even that.

I do have a routine to turn on the TV and the respective home theater (in Aux mode) by saying “turn on the TV”. Sometimes it gets confused and tells me it doesn’t know what TV I wanted to turn on (I only have one). The phrase is very specific, so you’ll need to add a few but you have to recite any of them them the same way you wrote them for it to work.

Another idea is to turn on your home theater for example with an automation that turns on or off the home theater depending on whether the TV is turned on or not, if this is what you want to achieve and if you have an HDMI CEC supported TV.

And forget about the Netflix controls, they won’t work unless you convert voice commands to physical commands on a virtual keyboard or something, and again it ain’t gonna be smooth. Also it’s pretty hard for Google Assistant to pick up some sentences while there’s a movie playing, I got a few minis and I always have a hard time getting them to understand what I want. I decided to get a Xiaomi Cube to control my devices, rotation for volume, move for play/pause, throw to skip song or chapter, turn 180° to turn on some lights and shake to turn off all lights

Yonguelle · November 22, 2018, 9:29am

[gurbina93] Thank you for your answer! Routines is a great idea, and this is something I’d like to implement also.

Please tell me, the xiaomi cube works directly with google home, or you set it up via HA?

About voice control for netflix, I know it’s possible. I’ve seen a few videos on youtube where people using it via chromecast and it looked like working smooth.
Also on official netflix side there is information about such option. https://help.netflix.com/en/node/55587
Another source is here: https://www.the-ambient.com/how-to/voice-control-chromecast-google-assistant-459

Netflix sais: " Google Home works with Netflix on:

[Chromecast]
[TVs with Chromecast built-in]
- Requires [Cast version 1.21 or later]
  "

Because xiaomi tv box has chromecast built in, I was wondering if it will work via voice commands. Thanks to you I know i may be in the future, but nor yet. Right now the only solution is to buy chromecast, and cast netflix from phone or computer and it should work with voice then!

Yonguelle · November 22, 2018, 9:35am

[juliusbentz] Many thanks for registering just for me!

Please tell me, while you use chromecast, you can still use the device that casts to the TV? Or it is busy and you can’t use it?
What I mean is: If you cast netflix show from Phone to TV, does the phone also display movie on it’s screen? So it is displayed on both: phone and TV?

About the Kodi app. You think netflix via KODI on HA will handle the voice commands?

gurbina93 · November 22, 2018, 9:57am

Xiaomi Mi Box has Google Assistant, but it is not actively listening so you gotta use the Bluetooth Remote that comes with it and click on the Mic button.

It supports Chromecast, so you can cast from YouTube, Netflix, Google Music, etc to your Xiaomi Mi Box. Your phone will be a remote, you can basically look for new videos and put them in queue. For Netflix, you only have basic controls which is to look for titles, play/pause, volume, next chapter and a bar to navigate through the movie. By using Chromecast the media will only play to the device you selected, so it won’t show up in your phone and TV at the same time. It is basically an extension that acts as a remote.

However the function “Hey Google, play X from Netflix on my Android TV(or whatever name you give to your Xiaomi Mi Box)” isn’t working, at least as of Android 8.0 on Mi Box 3.
It says it is not supported yet. If you want this feature you will have to go for Chromecast or a certified Android TV. This feature is supposed to be out there already on the latest update but at least for me it is not working for me with the latest update available to me.

The Xiaomi cube I have set it on HA to control the Xiaomi Mi Box via the Chromecast support, so it works for YouTube, Google Play Music and some other services but not for Netflix or certain apps which do not seem to report any information back to the Chromecast integration.
As I mentioned previously, you set command on events, rotation for volume, move for play/pause, throw to skip song or chapter, double tap to toggle mute, turn 180° to turn on some lights, shake to turn off all lights, swing to break your TV screen, etc.

The cube reports a ton of very specific values, so you can customize it, for example for the volume it has a formula, based on the rotation degrees (either negative or positive if i am not mistaken) it will set the volume according to how much you rotated it. It is very responsive, most of the time so it feels like you’re managing a a volume dial.

johnflorin · November 22, 2018, 11:07am

I’m doing exactly what you want, with a Google Home Mini & Chromecast.

If your TV doesn’t support HDMI-CEC for turning on and off as commanded by the Chromecast, I highly recommend a Harmony Home Hub+remote, it works beautifully and you can setup an HA automation to automatically start the TV whenever the Chromecast’s state changes to “Playing” and turn off the TV when the Chromecast’s state changes to “Off”.

Also, as mentioned previously, depending on where your Google Home is located, telling it to do things while your media is playing can be very problematic, I have found that the best combination is voice command for immediately starting exactly what I want on the TV and some form of physical control for later volume adjustment & stuff.

juliusbentz · November 23, 2018, 5:54pm

You tell your Chromecast what to stream (Spotify, Netflix, YT, etc.) from your smartphone/tablet or PC with an Google Chrome Browser.
The Devices just work like a remote. You can pause etc the streamed content that’s running on Chromecast.
But you don’t need them. When the stream begins, you can even close the App or shutdown your smartphone.
Also, the content is only displayed on the Chromecast.

At the moment I am an iPhone user, so i don’t know exactly. But I think you can mirror your Android Screen to your Chromecast. Then it would be possible to have your Netflix movie running on your smartphone and the Chromecast. But the quality wouldn’t be that good.

Chromecast runs out of the box. With your smartphone but also with google home (mini).
I’m not really into HA so I don’t know how well this would work

Yonguelle · November 25, 2018, 3:36pm

Thats what I needed Thank you guys very much for help.

It’s decided. I’m buying chromecast + google home mini. Later I will figure out how to connect it with home assistant

gurbina93 · November 25, 2018, 6:39pm

Mind sharing your automation for turning on/off the TV based on the Chromecast state?
I’d like to try it with a Xiaomi Mi Box 3, but many times it doesn’t show any activity in HA (it was added with the Chromecast integration of HA, and it shows up as a media player along with my Google Home Minis). At least it does not work for Netflix or certain apps, it shows as idle or like if it was sitting there doing nothing ; however it shows activity when I’m using Google Play Music or YouTube, it will load up the media controls, retrieve the cover art, etc.

johnflorin · November 25, 2018, 7:30pm

Here you go, the automations:

- alias: Turn on Home Theater for Chromecast
  trigger:
    platform: state
    entity_id: media_player.living_room_tv
    to: 'playing'
  action:
     service: script.harmony_watch_chromecast


- alias: Turn off Home Theater for Chromecast
  trigger:
    platform: state
    entity_id: media_player.living_room_tv
    to: 'off'
  action:
     service: script.harmony_poweroff

And the relevant scripts:

  harmony_poweroff:
    alias: Power Off
    sequence:
      - service: remote.turn_on
        entity_id: remote.home_theater
        data:
          activity: "PowerOff"

   harmony_watch_chromecast:
     alias: Watch Chromecast
     sequence:
       - service: remote.turn_on
         entity_id: remote.home_theater
         data:
           activity: "35921577"`

juliusbentz · November 26, 2018, 6:32pm

I Just found a repo to fully control Kodi from your Google Home: https://github.com/OmerTu/GoogleHomeKodi/blob/master/README.md#what-it-can-do

But that could be too hard for the average consumer.

Yonguelle · December 2, 2018, 9:27pm

And do you mind sharing your configuration or automation which allows you to Control xiaomi box and movies by xiaomi cube?