Timer from HA that will beep on Google Speaker, and stop when told

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Hi all. I have several Google Nest Mini’s all over the house. My wife and I use them for various things, obviously, but one specific function we use regularly is to run a countdown timer. “Hey Google, start a four minute timer”.

Now, I tried to setup an automation in HA, that will start a 4 minute timer the moment the kettle is done boiling. This is so it will automatically start a brewing timer for my wife when she makes tea. At present, she has to tell Google every time she makes tea.

I used the Google SDK (it works for almost all the commands that we would usually give Google), BUT, I discovered here in the community, and from trying to do it, that there is no way to use the SDK to start a timer on the Google Nest Mini. When I input “Start a four minute timer” into the SDK in the HA automation, Google responds that it cannot. I then posted on the community, and I believe the developer of the SDK responded (kudos for that!) that there is no way presently to address timers from the SDK to Google.

So, the obvious next step is to simply start a timer in HA.

But, here’s the thing: when the Google timers run, they start beeping once completed, and then only stop if you say “stop”, or press on the speaker.

If I run an HA timer, how will I make the speaker beep, AND, more importantly, how will my wife be able to simply tell it to stop?

Am I expecting too much? Should I simply lower expectations? Or, does someone know of a path from where I am, to where I want to be? :slight_smile:

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I am sure we will get there.
I do not have a smart speaker of any kind but have been learning a bit about some of the voice commands with my new atom M5 echo device.
I am working on a timer skill that I will release once I am happy with it but basically it is like this.

  1. Created a timer helper
  2. Created an intent to recognize my timer request command.
  3. Created a response that this command was received.
  4. Set and start the timer with the commanded interval.
  5. Created an automation that triggers when the timer is done that lets me know it is done.

Again I am sure the current system will get there with year of the voice well underway and good people working on this.

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Answered in the other thread, but linking in this one for posterity: How to target a timer running on a Google nest speaker? (As a new timer ID is generated each time)

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