Woke this morning to an early Christmas!!! Great work everyone!
I’m going to work on getting it setup here in a few hours, just had a couple questions in relation to emulated hue.
I read through the docs and wasn’t to sure if I need to remove emulated hue and if I need to customize what is exposed and what the exposed name will be?
Thanks!
From what I can tell, you should be able to use both the cloud and emulated_hue at the same time.
The docs for the cloud mention how to get going…you need to have in your configuration.yaml both config and cloud enabled. Next use the include and exclude domains and/or entities. Finally, create an account in the Configuration area and sign in through the Alexa app and discover devices.
Hey Jer, thanks for replying. I agree the setup sounds simple from the docs. I was just curious, if and why I would keep emulated hue around? And if we were able to customize what we call the entity? Typing this Im thinking maybe we actually just do that in the alexa app now?
@Darbos The cloud service will cost you $5 a month as of March 1st. I’d probably keep emulated_hue if it didn’t stop working for me. Basically the same thing for free.
I use ha heavily. I have 5 dashboards n my house that I’d be lost without at this point. I am more than happy to pay 5 dollars a month.
I guess if someone else knows how we can customize please let me know. I’m getting ready to upgrade n a hour or so
so I kinda prefer google over alexa for europe but I dont actually have any devices.
does this mean I should buy alexa over google home?
Amazon are taking home automation much more seriously than Google for some reason I don’t understand so regardless of whether your using it with HA or not the Echos have the lead.
If you want to use it more for integration with Google services the opposite is true. Personally, I just use my phone and other android devices without voice control along with the HA front end and shout at Echos for turning stuff on and off etc. Also don’t feel a dick saying Alexa…
Agree completly. Alexa is killing it in that space. My buddy has a LOT of smart home devices and had google homes all over his house. He just recently replaced them all with alexas / sonos ones. Seems a lot more development is alexa focused around the smart home world too…but to each there own, whatever makes you happy 
Is haaska still supported in the update?
Can I use haaska along with the cloud?
I’d like to use both (possibly…) to see how the cloud works before deciding to get rid of haaska in favor of a subscription service.
Right now I know that haaska works exceedingly well.
They’re just getting started with Cloud and started with Alexa. Google is planned (along with other integrations) later. But as others have said, at a cost of $5/month. So you may or may not want to use this method.
well if I decide I like it I dont mind donating 30 ish bucks. but I think thats where I draw the line.
I am not going to subscribe to a alpha program that could go in a direction I dont like.