I’ve had HA installed for a quite a while on a Raspberry Pi. I’ve configured and enabled a number of sensors and switches along with automation to control them. They all work well. Using the emulated_hue component, I’ve configured all my lights and switches to be controlled by Alexa.
What would the Home Assistant Cloud service provide me beyond what I already have?
Michael Wheatley
I asked the same question a couple of days ago. To the best I can tell, it shields your install from Amazon by putting a forwarder in between so Amazon isn’t talking directly to your HA environment. It also provides a platform where other types of integrations can be offered. Although I admit for a platform that defines itself by keeping things local and out of the hands of big data, having a cloud interface is kind of an oxymoron. For me once they setup paypal access, it will be a way I can give back to the community and give them a steady income stream to pay for various costs. Donations are great, but they aren’t steady so you are always begging people for money. Subscriptions are more stable.
Here’s my response to another thread on exactly the same topi that was just posted two days ago:
"And more importantly for me was that you don’t have to have any additional ports open on your router to allow Alexa access to your HA instance. All of the ports are securely controlled by HA.
Before, to use Emulated Hue, I had to have port 8300 open and, because emulated hue was kind of limited on some functionality, I used Haaska (along with the standard external access to HA itself) I also had to open port 443. Now using the cloud component I have no common ports open and I still have external access through the only open high numbered port i use for my VPN. As far as I can tell, the cloud component acts exactly like haaska so I didn’t lose the improved functionality and I’m aguably more secure."
HA still allows you to keep everything local if you don’t want any interaction externally. But it’s nice to (more securely) offer the option to integrate voice controls via echo or google home if desired. And let’s face it, many people probably want that ability even tho they like the idea of local operation.
I personally think it’s a good compromise between local operation and opening up the minimum possible to the 'net for convenience of voice commands without the pain of having to host a local voice controller/tts engine yourself.
Yea, I’m the one you replied to two days ago. The ports aren’t an issue to me, I understand they are to you. I only have two ports open and they drive to my nginx system which handles driving things where it needs to go from there.
I am on the fence with the best way to do this as well. I have been slowly migrating from smartthings and have nearly everything working exactly the same way in HA as I had in ST all while using the mqtt bridge. I am just about ready to do a hard cutover but I am right at the 49 device limit with the emulated hue and the multiple emulated hue did not work for me.
The whole reason for me to move off smartthings is for local control and because I don’t believe Samsung has great security practices. I don’t like the fact that every light on/off is stored in their cloud. I was about to start investigating haaska but is the functionality equivalent? I don’t know why opening a port for Alexa would be more worrisome than using HA cloud as a man in the middle. Correct me if I am wrong but wouldn’t adding the HA cloud add latency? Alexa to HA cloud to your local HA vs Alexa to your local HA through an open port? I run my HA instance in a Docker container so even if it got compromised it is better isolated from the rest of what I run on my system than running bare metal.
Really though I want to ditch Alexa all together because who knows what she is recording surreptitiously but am not sure mycroft has come far enough. I have plenty of NUC’s around my house so a DIY solution wouldn’t set me back an arm and leg. I think mycroft still sends the voice processing to Google’s cloud so maybe you don’t really save a whole lot by going that route.
So for me I have to determine if mycroft has come far enough to do the basic things in Alexa I do now which is asking time, asking weather, turning on/off lights, and converting measurements. I might just stick with emulated hue and remove some virtual switches just until mycroft gets further developed and spend my time learning more about automations and other cool HA add ons.
haaska and HASS Cloud does exactly the same stuff. The only issue with Haaska is the documentation is poor on getting it setup.
I think you might be able to do haaska w/o opening a port by using lambda but I forget. I could be wrong. It’s definitely easier to setup w/o lambda. Or maybe Lambda will allow you to do it without HTTPS? I forget. Its one or the other or both 
Anyway. Happy trails…
Someone just posted some hasska docs that are probably helpful.
For me the cloud component was the easiest and cleanest way to get voice control of my non-cloud devices. With barely any effort you gain a bridge between Google and HA.
For example my Yamaha surround receiver, my Xbox, and my LG OLED. They can’t normally be controlled by Google Assistant as they aren’t “smart” devices, but they can be controlled by Home Assistant on my local network. Home Assistant Cloud bridges that gap so now I can control my not-so-smart devices using Google Assistant despite them not actually being “smart” devices.
I also have ~20 lights which connect to an in-house MQTT server instead of a mix of random unreliable cloud services. Home Assistant acts as the controller for those and Home Assistant Cloud extends that control to Google Assistant.
Now that’s not to say there aren’t other ways to do the same thing without paying $5/mo for Home Assistant Cloud. You can even setup the exact same thing yourself for free (https://www.home-assistant.io/components/google_assistant/) or you can use Webhooks etc.
Ah crap I revived an old thread by mistake. It came up in my Google feed and looked new.