Right now I have my doorbell button connected to a contact. press button Hubdino/Hubitat sends a pushover to my phone. Now I would like to take it a step further, can the google home "Tell" me that there is some one at the front door?
Yes. Make a Rule Machine Trigger so when the contact closes, it speaks your custom phrase.
You’re going to need to install the Chromecast Integration app on HE if you have not done that already.
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@SmartHomePrimer is correct. I wanted to add some insight from my experiences with the chromecast integration. Your mileage may vary. And to be clear, this isn't a complaint about HE, but just the way google home works.
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The speaker(s) respond reasonably well (if not always) to a text to speech command from rule machine. However, this will:
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Stop whatever the speaker is currently doing. So if the kitchen speaker is playing music, and you send speech to it, it will stop the music and you cannot (easily) restart the music.
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The last bullet is also true if the speaker is part of a group. For example, if the kitchen speaker is part of an all speakers group, and the all speakers group is playing music - sending a TTS to the kitchen speaker will stop all the speakers.
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On the first connection to the speaker, the speaker will make a connection sound before it talks. If the speaker is already connected, it won't make the sound. I think it loses connection after about 5 minutes of inactivity.
The best implementation I have found so far is to dedicate a speaker, or speaker group, to only Hubitat TTS. I've put those speakers on mute so they don't respond to any commands. Then I set up a rule for the speakers to say " " every few minutes to keep them connected to Hubitat (initialize doesn't seem to work to keep the connection). You won't know anything has happened when that rule runs. Well, that is unless it is trying to say something at that specific point in time - then the " " will override what it is currently saying. I'm working on a virtual switch in rule machine for this on my system...just haven't done it yet. So that everytime there is a TTS, the switch turns on. It will then automatically turn back off after a couple minutes. I'll set up a rule so that the " " reconnect message won't be sent if the switch is on. Hopefully that will keep the refreshing of the speakers from interfering with speech in progress.
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Thanks guys I am installing as we speak!
Dang that was too easy!
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Yes. These are all very accurate observations. I'm an Alexa and Google Home household, so I have Google Home playing MP3 sounds when someone rings my doorbell (but I do hate that startup sound after the 5 minutes of inactivity), and Alexa does TTS for me. We listen to all our music on the Echos and they can do TTS and then continues the music perfectly.
There's different methods for TTS with Alexa. All need some kind of external server running I think, which is fine with me. We're not talking a big computer here, just an old laptop (which is what I use) or a Raspberry Pi. The method I use utilizes Google Assistant Relay and SmartThings, not to be confused with having any reliance, or need for Google Home or a SmartThings hub. You don't have to have ever owned either of these. What I like about it is, this method works for Alexa TTS and it gives me an awesome tool to control anything from HE that Google Assistant can control.
Someone lent / possibly gave me a Raspberry Pi 2. I've been hesitant to set it up, because it's one more device that can go down. Also it is an old version. And finally, I don't know anything about it (or generally any operating system besides windows) so I'm sure it will take me week(s) to figure out how it all works.
I'm not exactly sure what my question is - so generally - is there anything you use it for that you think is worth exploring? I"m concerned I'll spend a significant amount of time setting it up and just decide there are better ways to do the same thing without another point of failure.
You could consider it a point of failure if you were reliant on the cloud for a critical device. What I use it for are all non-critical uses. If Alexa fails to tells me the washer is finished or that a door has been open, that's not a big deal. I wait until it works again, or check it out and resolve the issue when I'm able.
Raspberry Pi is quite robust. The SD cards can sometimes become corrupted, but I've not personally experienced that. Once you get it setup the SD card can be very easily imaged, so if that were to happen, you simply re-image the card. Takes about 15 minutes to image one. Not a big deal at all,
Depends on which Raspberry Pi you have as to whether or not you can easily use the full version with the GUI or not. I've tried the full version of Debian with a RPi Zero W and it was just too slow, so I use the limited version and ssh into it. It does help if you know a bit of linux, but there are literally hundreds of articles that can make the process pretty easy to learn. All depends on how much you want to venture into a different operating system. It's actually pretty fun if you don't put pressure on yourself to learn at any particular pace. I had never used one a year ago, but knew some linux. That was helpful, but not imperative to success.
A RPi 2 should be enough for Google Assistant Relay. If you have an old laptop that isn't power hungry or has loud fans, that would work too. It's possible to run node.js on Windows, and that's what is needed to run Google Assistant Relay, but I've read that it's a bit more challenging on Windows, than installing it on linux. Once you have node.js figured out, the rest is fairly straight forward. It took me about 2 hours to get Google Assistant Relay working. I run mine on an old MacBook laptop.
Yes. It handles my TTS for Alexa. It can lock my August Lock faster and more reliably than the August IFTTT channel can. It allows me to control an iDevices switch and outlet that HE wouldn't otherwise be able to control. I even used it to control two Sonoff iFan2 controllers that I ended up using for triggering Halloween props.
I really like that fact that anytime I hit that wall where, IFTTT doesn't work fast enough or isn't reliable enough for a certain device, or when neither HE or IFTTT have control for a device, I can look in the Google Assistant app, and if it's on the list, I then have a way to control it. Google's cloud is really fast and very reliable. There a many other uses for a Raspberry Pi, but this on one of my personal favorites.
Imagining Debian to an SD card is simple. I would suggest just starting there and play around with it. Learn some stuff and move onto the next stage. Take a low pressure approach to it and make it a fun learning experience, not a time limited challenge.
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Wanted to thank you for the time put into this post. I have read it several times now and it has a lot of great info. I haven't decided what to do, but I'm now considering trying out google assistant relay. 90% of my routines are Hubitat based, run by switch activated by google home. So there is no need there for google assistant relay.
However, there are a few things I have that only google home can initiate - such as I have it play the news from YouTubeTV on a certain tv. Or in the morning show my calendar, traffic status, and weather. It sounds like with assistant relay I could access those routines from within Hubitat, which would be amazing - and likely open the door to other automations I haven't thought of yet.
Not sure whether I should try it out on the pi, or the NUC that is currently sitting in sleep mode no longer having a purpose. I'll figure it out in the next couple weeks!
thank you for your help / experience
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