Hello all,
Believe it or not, but I bought the HE like a year and now I am finally getting around to opening up the box! Just been busy and now that I am working from home I am getting some time freed up.
I am going to start with two things:
- DIY Smaret Garage Opener Kit (Zooz MultiRelay) with sensors for my garage door.
- Dimmer switch from Zooz
Both of these are z-wave.
Unless someone talks me out of it, I am going to try and keep everything Zwave if possible. Of course, I am sure there will be exceptions as needed.
Now to my question: Should I plan on using Google Home (I actually have three of these in boxes still!) or Alexa for voice control. I read some older posts but nothing too recent. I am assuming things have changed now that we are in 2020.
One thought I had was that since my plan is to have as much as possible going through HE for my home automation, does it really matter that Alexa has more out of the box compatibility with devices?
Thanks for any thoughts you may have!
Nothing wrong with that as long as it is zwave PLUS, not non-plus.
Either can work. I use Google Home, others use Alexa... 
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I find each assistant is better in certain areas. So I'm in the both camp.
Imo
Google = better for asking for information.
Alexa = better for device control.
Just my two cents. Other will disagree I'm sure.
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Alexa is much more useful, IMHO. The fact that you can trigger Alexa Routines via Hubitat contact and motion sensors, opens up quite a few options. You can even use Hubitat virtual motion and contact sensors to trigger things like TTS phrases. Hubitat recently updated its Alexa skill to include thermostats and temperature sensors as well.
Google Home does not allow any triggers for its routines other than your actual spoken phrases, or a time based trigger.
Right now, if home automation is the priority, go with Amazon. Google has some catching up to do.
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I use GH and while the extra Alexa integration is nice, I set my automations to be as smart as possible so I don't need to use voice and things like lights just come on when needed. So I find I really don't even use GH that much. Mostly use it for TTS notifications.
Most of my automations are tied to something either motion, time, presence, energy, etc.
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I've never used google home but have quite a few Alexa devices (One in each room, also used for whole house audio etc with spotify). I haven't hit anything I can't do with Alexa and HE at the moment and use it for all sorts of things (including asking Alexa if the garage door is closed 
). So many skills on Alexa as well. For home automation you can't go wrong with Alexa, if you want to ask questions then google is probably better for it's internet searches etc but I don't really do that.
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If you already have some Google's then I would stick with them, and use the saved funds for additional devices. I would recommend the community integration, which does support far more devices: [Alpha] Community-maintained Google Home integration
As mentioned earlier stick to Z-Wave Plus and you should be golden. Inovelli and Zooz are both solid brands on this front.
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I think the most honest answer is going to be ... they both have pros and cons and choose which ever one you like better. There is no clear winner. Probably more of it is an opinion of which one provides “better answers” or “better speech recognition”. The truth is they are both good at it and getting better every day but some people have better luck with one over the other.
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Not true.... you can very easily trigger google routines from HE contact and motion sensors... just takes a bit more set up.
Google for the win if for no other reason than because you can get them for free 9 times out of 10...
@DementedDragon - Please share the process. I would genuinely like to know how to do this.
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google assistant relay. could also do it via IFTTT. I think there is a third way using some apps, but not sure if they still exist/function.
I moved away from routines a couple months back and scrapped that set up.
If i can find any notes from the setup process I'll come back and share them
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So, what I said was actually true... Google provides no method to run routines, except via voice command and scheduled times.
IFTTT cannot run a Google Routine from what I have read. And I do not believe Google Assistant Relay can trigger a Google Home Routine either. If you can find any documentation to the contrary, I would be very interested in reading it. Executing a Google Routine via any method other than the two official methods has been a long requested feature of Google Home.
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Hello all.
Thank you for the excellent responses! Great to have such a good community here.
Here are some takeaways I am getting:
General Notes:
If using Zwave, make sure things are Zwave Plus (Inovelli and Zooz are great brands).
Try to make automations as smart as possible, i.e., based on motions, time, presence, energy, etc…
Community integrations is a great resource for things not out of the box.
Allows HE to trigger Alexa Routines (Google may, but not easily done)
There are benefits to both GH and Alexa, so some people use both.
Google: is better for information, Alexa better for device control
I am leaning towards Alexa, but I'll probably keep my Google stuff to test things out as well.
Thanks again and please continue to provide the great support here!
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Assistant relays allows you to pass text commands like they were spoken n to a physical device. So you can get Google do to almost everything you could from speaking directly to it. There are some limitations but it works really well.
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