Sorry for the upcoming wall of text, and thanks in advance for any help you can provide.
Just received and set up my Hubitat Elevation yesterday. At this point, all I have is a Samsung Button, Motion Sensor, and a Securifi Peanut outlet. So, I've just been playing around with those to familiarize myself with RM and all of that. I've been reading all that I can for a few weeks now, and I think it's time to ask for help.
I'm looking for some direction on how to continue setting up my home, and what to expect. I know it's not ideal, but my wife (and therefore me) is heavily invested into the Google/Nest ecosystem, and I've been told that this is not negotiable. She will use the Nest app and speak to Google, and ignore everything else.
So, things I want to control:
3 Nest Thermostats
2 or 3 Nest Cameras
Nest Hello doorbell
Smart Lock(s) (possibly Nest x Yale? I have no idea)
Many lights in groups
Motion detectors
Garage door opener
Some unique things/issues with the house that I think could cause problems:
House has a "great room" which includes kitchen, 2 living rooms, entryway, and hallway. Can I create "sub-rooms?" Or is it just a group that includes 5 rooms?
At least some, if not all of the light switches have no neutral wire.
There are probably 50 light switches in the great room, ganged in groups of 4 or 5, which control the lights in the 5 rooms, plus some outside lights and downstairs lights. Some are 3-way, some unique. They are not organized in nearly any coherent way. Can I simplify this setup, or is it just a matter of replacing every switch with a smart switch (Lutron Caseta, I assume) and programming them in groups? (Hit one of the kitchen switches, and all the kitchen lights go on.) Should I just try and see if I can get an electrician to wire them all up with neutrals, or is that even more cost prohibitive?
Google/Hubitat integration questions:
Can I pass commands back and forth from Google Assistant to Hubitat? Is this where virtual switches come into play? I don't think I have the stomach/knowledge to set up a RPi for Assistant Relay, that's a bridge too far. I'm still unclear on what exactly it does, anyway.
How do I reconcile Nest's Home/Away status with Hubitat's Away/Night/Day Modes?
Will I be adding every device possible to both Google Home and Hubitat? This would help me control both with voice and with automations/rules, right? For example, use Hubitat to turn on kitchen lights when I arrive home with a rule, and use Google for "Hey Google, turn on kitchen lights." Or, would it be better/possible to just pass the command to Hubitat via IFFFT or something? But this is going away August 31, right?
What about things that require both Nest devices and Hubitat devices or RM? For example, if Nest thermostat is set to >70 and there is no motion in the living room (from Samsung motion detector), turn on Nest camera, turn off living room lights, and set Nest thermostat to 65.
I'm generally unclear on what is and isn't possible with Google Assistant and Hubitat, and how that integration will be affected by the changes Google is making.
Example Automations:
"Hey Google, turn off the kitchen lights."
"Hey Google, turn on all of the outside lights."
I arrive home, turn on entryway lights and play Spotify on living room Google speaker, unless wife is home already.
We both leave home, set to Away mode, turn off all lights, and lock door.
We go to bed (activated via lack of motion or voice?), turn off all lights except bedroom, set thermostats, set master bathroom lights to 20% when motion detected.
Bonus question: If anyone knows why my wife's presence only updates when she opens the Hubitat app (which she only does when I tell her to), that would be helpful.
Both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant are primarily one way devices. You use Voice Control, or Routines, on these two platforms to control the devices that are paired with your Hubitat Elevation Hub. You can choose which devices to share with Alexa for Google Assistant as you see fit.
Currently, neither of the Hubitat integrations for these 2 voice assistants allows Hubitat to directly issue commands to the Alexa or Google ecosystems. These voice assistants expect users to issue voice commands, or to set up Alexa Routines/Google Assistant Routines, in order for anything to happen.
To get around this limitation, users will sometimes choose to set up the Google Assistant-Relay on a Raspberry Pi. It is not as hard as it seems, and you can follow my step by step guide that I wrote for myself (in the event I ever had to install it again! )
So, why would you go through all this effort? Well, the one very cool thing about running an Assistant-Relay instance is that you can have Hubitat issue "spoken commands" (inaudible) to your Google Home platform.
For example, today you might say to Google Home something like "OK Google, set the Nest Thermostat to 73 degrees" (or whatever the right phrase is .) Since Google seems intent on not allowing other systems to control the Nest Thermostats directly, someday voice commands like this may be the only way to control a Nest T-Stat. What if your Hubitat hub could issue a text-based command like this to your Google Assistant? Well...enter Assistant-Relay with my Hubitat Driver. You can use something like Rule Machine to easily issue a custom command from Hubitat to Google by simply creating a RM Action to Speak the following phrase - "[CC]turn set the Nest Thermostat to 73 degrees". This will be completely silent, but Google will basically believe that you issued a voice command to control the thermostat.
Note: Not all commands will work correctly doing this, and none of us know if Google will eventually shut down this backdoor for controlling their system. We may end up having to have an Amazon Echo next to a Google Home so we can actually issue spoken voice commands from one system to another! Crazy as that sounds, some people have done it!
Hope this helps explain why you might want to tackle the Google Assistant Relay at some point in the future. It's not a trivial task to get up and running, but my MS-Word document has every steps detailed with screen captures. It is in the GitHub repo along with the groovy device driver.
Using nest manager you can do quite a bit with Google nest but we don't know how long this will work for. But I use it to turn on and off my hello and control the home /Away modes. It also holds off the heating when doors or windows are open.
Welcome to the Hubitat Community. THIS (Google Assistant Relay) definitely should be on your short list if integrations to add
It's one thing to be able to control Hubitat Elevation with your voice, but being able to seamlessly control the entire Google Assistant universe from Hubitat Elevation is magic. Since it runs on a Raspberry Pi (or a spare computer) and the cloud, there's only a simple driver in HE, so there's no impact on the hub performance.
I've had a Sonos parked next to my GH for exactly that purpose ha ha ha. I will try to set up the relay on an rPi in the next few weeks and hope Big G keep that backdoor open for us!
The Rpi Relay is for HE to GH faked voice commands. What about the other way around, GH to HE? What else needs to be done here besides linking the Hubitat account in Google, which will auto-install the Google Home app in HE?
How do you actually bind GH received voice commands to HE actions?
As mentioned in my post you replied to, you can easily use the built-in Hubitat Google Home integration to expose Hubitat devices to Google. This then allows one to use Voice commands, or Google Routines, to control those Hubitat devices (switches, dimmers, etc...)
If you want to issue a voice command via Google Home, that then causes a series of automations to occur on your Hubitat hub, you have two options:
Create a voice activated Google Home Routine, which then issues commands to multiple Hubitat devices
Create a Hubitat Virtual Switch (with auto-off feature enabled), and use this as a Trigger in Rule Machine to run a series of RM 'Actions' as you see fit. Make sure you expose the virtual switch device to Google Home. Then simply use a voice command on Google Home to turn on the virtual switch.
)
ha ha ha. I will try to set up the relay on an rPi in the next few weeks and hope Big G keep that backdoor open for us!
