Haaska - no need to do certification/distribution, correct?

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1

I just set up Haaska for Alexa integration… I just want to check: Once I have the skill built - I don’t need to fill in any of the Certification or Distribution stuff, correct? I just leave it in my account as an “in development” skill forever?

1 Like
2

Yes, Correct

3

nifty. thanks.

4

Do I have to open ports to access remotely to use haaska?

5

yes, you have to be able to access HA from the internet. Haaska runs on Amazon’s servers, not yours.

Keep in mind that the Echo in your house doesn’t do anything by itself. All it can do is listen for the word “Alexa” and then it sends the audio to the cloud for processing. So all of the action takes place on Amazon’s servers, so to be able to control your Home Assistant, it would have to be able to reach it. So the way it works is this:

  • You say “Alexa, turn on the office light”
  • Alexa sends that audio to Amazon’s Alexa servers
  • It parses the audio, figures out that it needs to look for a skill that controls something called ‘kitchen light’
  • finds that a skill you have installed called ‘haaska’ controls the light
  • invokes haaska and sends it the the directive to turn on the kitchen light
  • haaska connects to your version of home assistant and sends it the directive to turn on the light

Haaska is simply a ‘Smart Home’ category of Alexa Skill. Amazon requires that all Smart Home skills run on their Lamba servers. Since there is no skill called haaska in the skill store, you need to write your own. So all you are doing is signing up as a developer and then uploading the haaska code to your account as the skill you are “developing” - so it’s like your own private copy of the skill.

6

Few questions on haaska if anyone knows.

  1. Looks like you do not need to say “Alexa, ask haaska to…” just say Alexa…?
  2. Looks like it’s been years since this thing has been updated, it still work?
  3. I saw a few branches of the code that are still years old but nothing listed of what was changed if anything, any branch in particular that is better than another?

Thanks.

JR

7
  1. correct, you just say “Alexa turn on the kitchen”
  2. you want to use the Mike Grant fork (https://github.com/mike-grant/haaska/) but I think that even that has now been improved on by other forks/approaches. Check out this thread: https://github.com/mike-grant/haaska/issues/104 . The Mike Grant code still works fine.
  3. See above.