Just got my Amazon Alexa and have been looking at the posts regarding the Echo. However not mich very recent and some discuss simulated Hue, some HA Bridge, some Haaska… What is currently the best way and most future proof?
i am also interested in this. i tried to go the route of a simulated Hue but my echo never discovers it.
I’ve been looking into this a bit more and it seems there are several alternatives. Some of them I have tried and I have to say I’m overall a bit disappointed. Hoping some power users can bring us back on track.
Emulated Hue component: Biggest issue is that HASS does not always start if the component is enabled (about 50% of the time). When it works, it works quite well, especially for lights/switches. I have not found a way to do anything else but switches & lights
HA-Bridge: Very stable and also gives you the ability to link with Vera and Harmony hub (which I have both). You need to install it on your system. Instructions that worked for me are here: Emulated Hue problems. @jbardi was mentioning he also had the dimming working and even was using this to fake his thermostat. However i have not been able to do this and hoping someone can explain me how to do this in HA-Bridge
Haaska: Detail are here: https://github.com/auchter/haaska and Bruh made a video about it. However I cannot see the benefit over HA-bridge as -at first sight- it does not seem to bring any benefit over HA-Bridge. If anyone can explain , please do so.
Build in Alexa component: All info I can find about this one is here . This seems to offer the most elaborate possibilities at first sight. I especially like the fact that Alexa can actually give you meaningful info back instead of just executing a command. However I’m a bit overwhelmed by the stuff that needs to be done to get it working.
It also seems that most of these methods can actually live together (increasing functionality but also complexity…)
The above write up is nice, an addition to it can be that the emulated_hue is not working with AlexaPi.
So if you plan to use that, emulated hue is not an option.
I don´t know about Haaska and Ha-Bridge.
For the built in component AlexaPi is working fine.
I was trying to build Alexa to use with HA.
Tried emulated_hue, failed.
Haaska didn’t succeeded even after spending lot of time with it to setting it up.
Now decided to try HA Bridge.
Anybody got it working using HA Bridge?
BTW, I’m not using Echo. Building using Alexa AVS.
Found a new repository using latest AVS with wake word support using sensory/kitt.ai.
Small update on HA Bridge; I now have also dimming lights and setting a thermostat working (Alexa set thermostat to 21). So quite happy.
I had problems with emulated_hue at first, but once I set expose_by_default to false it started working. Turns out if you have more than 49 devices being exposed by emulated_hue it can cause problems. Once I sorted that out, it works great and is crazy easy to do.
HA-Bridge I found confusing and just never spent enough time with it to really understand how to make it work. Looks powerful but, like I said, a bit confusing.
I noticed your post on this earlier so I tested this also but for me it unfortunately does not make a change. Still not sure what is causing this instability.
Those anybody knows which one (HA bridge or Haaska) has a better performance ?
My best performing method is Emulated hue and is the one I use 99% of the time. I really only set it up once and never had a problem since with Alexa. The best reason for Emulated Hue is that you just say “Turn off Kitchen light”, “Turn off garage door” or “Turn on security alarm”. I find that easier than, “ask Home Assistant to turn off kitchen light” or “ask Home assistant to turn off garage door” Also, it is very easy to setup, just add couple lines to configuration.yaml and then ask Alexa to discover devices.
I am waiting for push to come out for Alexa so it can be part of notify in HA. (door bell is my use case) I don’t think Emulated hue will ever do this, so that might influence your choice.
added: I saw that people are having problems with Emulated hue and HA. The only line in my configuration is this which exposes HA switches/scenes to Alexa as a light bulb.
emulated_hue:
If you have SSL set up on your HA and can access it from outside your network, it’s pretty easy to set up the Alexa component. Like @RobDYI said, commands are a bit wordier, but it’s pretty flexible, too. I call our’s DeeDee, so I can say:
Alexa, ask DeeDee to play random music
Alexa, ask DeeDee to wake up Nathan
Alexa, ask DeeDee to close the garage door
The biggest problem I have found with Alexa is that her discovery doesn’t pickup groups. The way I have my environment configured, I use a Wink hub as my central hub. Almost everything connects to it. I use HA for automation tasks. Things that are time based or based on some user activity (turning on a light switch, motion, or proximity), I use my alexa for adhoc requests for lack of a better term. Again the only problem is that I have to setup any groups multiple places which can be a bit confusing.
do you have also the real Hue Bridge?
I do have it, and the emulated hue is not discovering anything …
The emulated Hue does not discover anything. It acts like a Hue to allow you to control things in HA from an Alexa.
I noticed I receive this error …??
INFO:netdisco.service:Scanning
rs\admin\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python35\lib\site-packages\homeassistant\components\emulated_hue.py", line 517, in run
ssdp_socket.bind((“239.255.255.250”, 1900))
OSError: [WinError 10049] The requested address is not valid in
Sorry, I mean that after changing the configurator adding emulated_hue … then restarting HA, and then going into Alexa app and do the discovery, it doesn’t discover anything (only the hardware Hue hub lights and scenes)
What happens if you look directly at the Hue’s API? Is it generating anything?
http://192.168.1.104:8300/api/username/lights
(get the IP and the port from your emulated_hue settings)
When I do that, I see JSON defining my emulated entities.
Just a guess as I don’t have a real Hue bridge, but the real Hue bridge might be interfering with the Emulated Hue bridge. Try turning off the real Hue Bridge, restarting HA and doing the discovery again in Alexa. That it my setup.
now {}
I take out expose_by_default: false
and I get all my list
{“group.all_devices”: {“modelid”: “HASS123”, “name”: “all devices”, “state”: {“bri”: 0, “on”: false, “reachable”: true}, “swversion”: “123”, “type”: “Dimmable light”, “uniqueid”: “group.all_devices”}, “group.all_lights”: {“modelid”: “HASS123”, “name”: “all lights”, “state”: {“bri”: 255, “on”: true, “reachable”: true}, “swversion”: “123”, “type”: “Dimmable light”, “uniqueid”: “group.all_lights”}
much much longer list
but still nothing
will try this (but I need both hubs!!).
EDIT: nope, disconnected the Hub hardware, restart the HA, re discover in Alexa app … nada (all the Hue groups stayed in the Alexa app, but no additional device)