I’m trying to find the “simplest possible” tutorial for setting up HA so that “something” can be controlled or some information returned using a Google smart speaker?
Something that includes the maximum amount of hand holding and requires the least background knowledge of either system. Or of technology in general.
What it actually does is less important than how easy it is to follow. It could be anything, like triggering a simply automation by Asking Google to do something, or asking Google to provide some information that’s supplied by HA, such as my current version number.
If it doesn’t include third party tools like IFTTT, all the better.
I’m ideally looking for something that’s an order of magnitude simpler to follow than the existing HA documentation. Which I’m not getting on with very well.
I don’t have a cloud account, and I’m for some setup documents that are a lot simpler than the official ones.
For example, it talks about “exposed domains” and “available domains”, but it doesn’t explain what they are, or why you might\might not want them. Or what the implications of doing anything in the document are.
Unfortunately what you want is only available by those methods I linked to. If you follow it step by step its easy enough, it will take time though and it will involve a lot of setup. I could point you to youtube videos which help but chances are they will be out of date and just cause more issues. If you follow it step by step the domains stuff will be explained. Read through it and understand it before committing to set it up.
If you could be more specific with where the sticking points are or what your background is, you might get more help.
Concepts like domains aren’t even an HA concept. It really is a basic concept of the Internet. Thus, I’m not sure any help can go back far enough for your purposes.
What is your incentive for choosing HA? I don’t want to imply here that HA cannot be improved. This is an honest question. And without any stated goals on your side, it’s really hard to help, since HA is such a powerful piece of software.
If you are severaly challenged technologically speaking, your best course of action would be to buy a platform or use a simplified (and thus less powerful and limited) platform such as Apple Home or Google Home.
To be honest, my background is that I brought a couple of Google smart speakers and some Phillips hue bulbs in a Black Friday event, and after some problems wit the cloud side, such as Google removing features that I’d paid for, I decided that I wanted something locally based that a big company wouldn’t remotely brick because they wanted me to buy a new model.
I don’t have a background in programming or Linux, or computers in general, but I’ve been getting on pretty well with the out of the box experience on Home assistant.Things that I can just use the mouse to set up. I’ve got my lights and cameras all linked in and cloud free, and am in the process of setting up lots of Zigbee devices.
I’ve got everything running really well from the dashboard GUI, but I’d like to be able to receive information through voice. So, basically, asking it if a particular door is open or how hot it is in a room. I’ve got it all running through lovelace, I’d just like to get it connected into my speakers so I can get a text to speech message rather than a pure text one.
I Since I last posted I’ve found MatterBridge, based on the recommendation above, which I think will do everything that I need.