Newbie - advice for a Google Assistant convert

Hello,

I have yet to install/configure Home Assistant partly because I have a few years of muscle memory developed living exclusively in the Google Assistant ecosystem and before I dive in I want to know what I’m getting myself into (and what I’ll have to re-learn).

What I have today in my Google Assistant ecosystem

  • A Google Home device in nearly every room (combination of minis, Lenovo Smart Display, Lenovo Smart clocks, etc)
  • Lots of Kasa smart switches for interior and exterior lights
  • A Sonos zone in nearly every room (ceiling speakers with an Amp per room) - I couple my Google Home devices with Sonos Zones so that when I say in any room “Play tom petty” it will come out of my Sonos speakers, not the Google Home devices
  • Motorized Graber blinds
  • MyQ garage door openers
  • Nest doorbells
  • Yale and August door locks
  • 7 Nest thermostats
  • Thermador kitchen appliances (coffee machine, oven, hood, etc.)

What I like about Google Assistant

  • Aside from the powerful voice controls, what I really like is that I have a “one stop shop” mobile app experience from which I can control nearly everything (will get back to this in a moment). Of all the devices I listed above, each respective company has a wildly different app experience - Kasa’s is pretty nice, whereas the Graber blinds is atrocious. But I never need to use these disparate apps other than the initial configuration of the device - from that point forward, I can live entirely in a single app.
  • Rudimentary “routine” configurations - I do things like lower all of my blinds to 50% at a certain time of day (based on sunset) - that kind of stuff.

What I don’t like and why I want to explore Home Assistant

  • I wanted to do something that I thought was relatively simple that I couldn’t even do with IFTTT: while one of my garage doors is OPEN do not run the garage heater. Both my garage doors and my thermostat for the garage are “smart” and configured in Google Assistant, but MyQ (the app that controls the garage door) either isn’t available in IFTTT or it doesn’t expose the correct events
  • Some of my devices (the garage doors, the motorized blinds) cannot be controlled in the Google Home app, I can only control them with my voice. This means for all of my routines, most of my interactions with Google Assistant are strings that I have to specify commands, i.e. “Set all blinds to 50%”. This feels hacky to me and I hate having to go to the specific product app to manually control things from my phone.

I’m a software developer by trade and so I think net/net I’m just getting to a point where I want to be able to wield a greater level of control over my home automation than Google Assistant provides, and I’m finally ready to jump in and really invest the time to build this connectivity myself. But here’s what I’d love some high level advice on:

  • What’s unclear to me is if by moving to Home Assistant, I will be essentially eliminating Google Assistant as my “aggregator” for devices. My investment in Google devices, then, would really just be relegated to voice control more than anything else.
  • Or will I need to continue having Google be an aggregator so long as I want to use my voice to control devices/routines/etc? Asked another way, is there an easy way to essentially route voice commands entered into a Google Home device into Home Assistant to trigger an action?
  • Are there any mobile (Android) apps that give me a UI that can serve as an aggregated control panel for the devices/routines in my home? If I’m moving away from Google Home as my aggregation platform, I wouldn’t want to lose an app that gives me that control
  • Any other advice or guidance for someone like me who has only ever lived in the Google Assistant/Home ecosystem?
  • Will I lose anything by going the Raspberry Pi route for my server (versus a full-blown PC)? Am I going to regret this down the road for any reason?

I’m looking forward to starting this project, and I really appreciate any guidance you can share with this newbie.

-Rick

Congrats!

Basically. Yes. Most use HA for connectivity and logic. Google / Amazon / Almond / pick your poison Voice assistant becomes just thevoice interface.

Yes there are simple ways to trigger actions inside most assistants.

Yes, Home Assistant Companion, for one is written by the HA team and it’s rather nice - when you need it. HA provides a HTTP dashboard interface that I use on my PCs and dashboard tablets. (You may also be able to hit the web browser from the GH devices you use)

If you go that route - no issues (I’m running a fairly complex HA install on a Pi4b8GB with an SSD) I would however strongly suggest you look into SSD v. SD. HA running on Pi on SD WILL (this is not a may, it’s a WILL) fail out the SSD within 18 months. Nothing you are doing wrong, SDs just have a lifetime and constant writes to the recorder database will simply wear out the SD. Either have a good backup / restore procedure or avoid the issue with SSDs.

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Wow - thank you for this thoughtful response!

So I’ve decided to bite the bullet and go for it - only to realize it’s essentially impossible to get the Raspberry Pi I need until >= March. So I just got a mini tower PC (with 1 spinning disk and 1 SSD) instead. Very much looking forward to tinkering.

Thanks again.

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