Is Google Home worth the hassle

1

I currently have 2 Echo Dots that I’m using for home assistant.

However, I thought about switching to Google Home because:

  • It seems like a more powerful platform
  • I have tons of google services I use already
  • Amazon music free is garbage compared to google play.
  • I don’t want to have to say “Tell home assistant to…”

So there was a deal where I could get them for $15 locally. So I bought 2 to replace my echo dots.

So anyway, I didn’t realize it doesn’t support emulated hue, so I go in to look at how to configure it. WHAT. A. NIGHTMARE.

  • Forward 2 ports
  • Use DuckDNS to deal with dynamic DNS changes
  • Use LetsEncrypt. Reconfigure it every 90 days.
  • Setup gactions on the PI
  • register some project with google
    and probably more I haven’t read yet. I’ve been working on it for 2 hours and I’m just wondering if it is worth all this horrible hassle and opening security holes in my network just to do voice commands.
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2

Yes is a must have, native support , but I heard Alexa will have native support soon too

3

I’ve been using emulated hue against my Google Home, so I’m pretty sure it’s supported?

4

Having DuckDNS and LetsEncrypt will also give you external access which is something I use a lot… The HassIO addon does the certificate renewal for you so no need to reconfig every 90 days. Apart from an error on my part (and not being all that savvy with linux to use the code to generate the random strings…which should really have the instructions worded better) I didn’t find it too difficult. Now my Google Home works just like it did back with emulated hue… although I couldn’t seem to get colour changing of my lights working when I tried briefly the other day.

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5

I already had DuckDNS and LetsEncrypt setup so it was not so much an hassle.

I use a docker container, whenever I restart it, it renew the certificate (or try) using the certbot command, so I never have to refresh the certificate manually.
You’d better look at a solution to automate it too, or else it’s sure that every 90 days you will be pissed with a non-working Google Home!

Apart from that, the setup of Google Home itself with home-assistant was pain free, it’s long and there is a lot of step but they are relatively well described and straight forward.

6

Thanks for the info, guys!

I’m currently using the AIO installer on top of Raspbian. I tried HassIO, but it seemed like the problem was that it isn’t running on debian, and I use my raspberry pi for other things like PiHole, Mathematica. But I could grab another SD card and give it another try, but it’s a lot of setup to somewhat rewrite all my stuff to be HassIO compatible.

I’ll read up on docker as well.

“I’ve been using emulated hue against my Google Home, so I’m pretty sure it’s supported?”
AFAIK, emulated hue support was dropped earlier this year, but if it was already paired, the pairing remains.

7

my 2 cents:

i have a few echo dots and 1 home mini

just from a home automation standpoint, i slightly prefer echos. with the echo, you can set up emulated hue AND custom intents. so for lights/switches/scripts/etc you can say “alexa, turn on my living room lights” and you can also configure custom commands like “alexa, ask home assistant if john/jane/etc is home.”

with google assistant you have to choose which type of command you want. setting up the google assistant component lets you turn on/off switches/scripts/etc; setting up custom intents through dialogflow lets you do things like “hey google, talk to home assistant. (long pause) is john/jane/etc home?” or “hey google, talk to home assistant… turn on kitchen lights.” since the google console has a 1 test app per user limit, you have to choose which type of command you want to invoke. it’s totally sufficient if you only want to control lights/etc, but if you want custom intents, EVERYTHING has to be invoked with “hey google, talk to home assistant…”

so i’ve had them sitting side-by-side, and i find myself using the echo more since i have some uses for custom intents. and custom intents make google home cumbersome.

that said, one big plus with the google home is you can treat i as a media player and do things like tts. so it probably boils down to preference and need.

hope that helps.

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8

You don’t have to reconfigure Let’s Encrypt, you just run the renew command on a schedule every 30 days.

9

OK, I’m trying to get it all working again. Is it possible to restart the process of exposing and encrypting from the beginning? It just feels like I’m building a stack of cards ready to crumble at any point.

I’m at the point where I tried getting the certificate but it “can’t bind to port 80”. I also installed docker and tried it through there. Same problem. “Can’t bind to port 80”

I have Port 80 forwarded to port 80 on my raspberry pi, if that has anything to do with it.