I agree with @phantomdarkness here, once activated on the Echo, it should just “work”. There isn’t really a need to set it up for each person. It would be the same as having any other Smart Home Skill (Wink, Nest, Ecobee, etc.) set up.
That’s great to know! Last step is to get it integrated into my Node-Red automation. Then I can completely replace having to create accounts in another skill to use Alexa.
As I responded in the GitHub issue, I’ve never used Node-RED myself so I’m not sure how these things would talk together. Haaska is pretty much only written to understand what Home Assistant gives it.
I can’t seem to understand the make file option. I downloaded the zip file from the hub. Unzip and rename config.json.sample to config.json. Make the necessary changes to config.json and now I’m stuck with the make file. How do I do this in windows ? Even the tutorial assumes you have a phyton installed which I did install in windows but there is no make command. The tutorial just mention make file without explaining what it is and how to do it in windows.
No one seems to elaborate more on this for windows users. Went through some bruh youtube channel on getting the zip file but the tutorial seems outdated and only work on the older home assistant setup where you can log in to pi.
Can anyone explain how to do this for hassio?
Make is just a generic python thing, Google it without Home Assistant and you should find plenty of help. I don’t have a clue with this sort of thing and had no problems finding the answer to create the file on my Mac.
Hi @twctg81 - though I haven’t finished the updated instructions yet, you can use our new pre-built version. That way, you avoid having to set up Python and Make (sometimes called a compiler/build system).
Download this:
(Use the one that says haaska.zip.)
Here’s what you can do:
- download the file
- unzip it
- edit the config.json
- zip it again
Then it will be ready to upload to Lambda.
You can follow a bunch of the steps from the Wanderer’s blog, which talks about he set it up with Hass.io. Just skip the parts with make.
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Thanks for that Zip, was getting a weird make issue where it would corrupt the zip file. This bypassed all those issues!
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Nice, that’s going to help a lot of people with limited python skills.
As an aside, I set mine up not long after v3 first came out, and it’s still working perfectly thank you, but are there any advantages to updating to the current version?
@Bobby_Nobble - The latest release supports using long lived tokens, so you can remove the legacy auth API password.
Not any other big changes to make, because all the interesting stuff happens on the Home Assistant side.
There are some minor tweaks still planned, like handling the URL better if someone puts it in slightly wrong, etc. Here’s an example:
https://github.com/mike-grant/haaska/issues/75
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Thanks, if I wanted tp update I’d just go back in and reupload the zip or is there more to it?
I’ve been putting this off for a while, but thanks to the precompiled make/zip file, and the simple instructions, I was able to get this up and running in about an hour. Would have been faster, but I made a few small mistakes along the way. Biggest pain was that I was using the HA cloud service for alexa, and adding this and discovering devices added so 200+ devices. Which makes sense. Ended up deleting everything from my alexa account, then filtering what I wanted to add, and then setting back up alexa groups/rooms how I had it set up before. That took another hour or so, but… it works great.
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@Bobby_Nobble - Yeah, that’s pretty much it. Make sure you edit the config file, and just upload the zip again. It’s that easy 
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@anthonylavado first of all many thanks for building/improving this package and sharing it.
could you perhaps explain or point me in the direction where I can read about the difference/benefit of Haaska over emulated_hue?
thank you
Emulated hue is easier to set up but exposes everything as a light. So things like locks you’d need to say “Alexa, turn on Front Door” or something like that to unlock. Which doesn’t make any sense. It’s also limited to ~50 devices IIRC.
HAASKA/Home Assistant Cloud is far superior (though a tad more complicated to set up). Things get exposed correctly (lights as lights, locks as locks, etc). And you can expose scripts as well. It’s much better imo.
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I agree that Haaska is much better than emulated_hue. I used it for a long time until I updated to using the HA cloud.
One of the reasons I went to the HA cloud (aside from supporting HA development) is that my understanding was that I needed to open a port on my router to get haaska to work. Is my understanding on that correct?
I had the port open but decided the less open ports the better so i went to the HA cloud.
That’s correct, you’d need to open a port. But maybe I’m wrong but you’d need to open a port anyway to have your instance accessible to the outside world anyway? IDK, I’ve never messed with the HA Cloud but I’d think your HASS instance needs to be accessible for either option to work.
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Yeah, you’d have to have a port open. I don’t worry about that as I already have that port open for outside access to HA, but I have everything set up properly so it shouldn’t be an issue.
One thing I like about Haaska is my thermostat is accessible and setable via Alexa. My tstat doesn’t have an Alexa app, but works with HA. Hur obviously wouldn’t do this and when using the cloud, while I could set stuff with Alexa, she’d throw an error everytime despite it working. She also couldn’t tell me what the temp was set at so that’s a nice improvement.
It is true that using HA Cloud, you don’t have to have a port open for Alexa. With HA Cloud, Home Assistant reaches out to a server (run by Nabu Casa), and keeps a connection open that way for requests.
On the other side, if you want to access your Home Assistant install while away from home (either web or mobile app), you need to have a port open, so you’re back at the same spot anyway. If you already have it open, you can set up Haaska with just a few changes.
Cool, finally succumbing to the auth bullying so might as well do it now.
Many thanks as always.
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At the same time I transitioned to HA cloud is the same time, and for the same reason, I went to accessing my HA thru a VPN administered by my router.
I understand that I still need a port open but it’s a random high numbered port (not easy to guess what it is) that is completely (as possible…) protected by an encrypted key and username/password. And now that HA itself uses a username/password combination I feel my set up is about as safe as anyone could hope for outside of a corporate level environment.
If someone wants to get thru all of that just to turn on & off some lights then they seriously need to re-think their path in life. 
Don’t get me wrong, while I was using it I was (and still am) thankful for the work put into it and it worked really, really good. And maybe at some point I may go back if I think it’s necessary.
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