How to control my new shades with voice (google home)

Hey all, I just got my hubitat c8 today and have some automated shades installed... I have paired the shades with the hub and linked my hubitat to google, however when I ask google to open/close shades it tells me that device isn't paired. Do I have to set up some voice skill in the hubitat app? Is there something else I'm missing?

The shades are Z-wave motors from smartwings

I used the Google Home Community app to link everything to GH. It makes things much smoother. When I did my parent's automated shades, I ran it through the GHC and it works great.

Thanks for the reply. What is the google home community app? I tried searching for it in App Store and online but not figuring it out so far.

It's an app installed on your Hubitat. It does a better job of exposing devices to your GH than the integrated platform does.

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Just in case you hadn't noticed this part of the GH integration.... If you add a device to HE, like your shades, these will not automatically become available to Google Home, you need to open the GH Integration App on HE and add the new shades devices and then "sync devices" on Google Home. Only then will they become available to control.

That said, like @curtman3 refers to by linking to the Community App, there has been, historically, limitations with the kinds of devices Google would allow external systems like HE to integrate with the GH platform, hence the Community offering to masquerade different device types as those that Google allowed. In more recent times there have been more and more device types accepted by GH.

To add to my previous comment.... Depending on your use-case for the blinds, you can make use of Virtual Switches in HE / GH to trigger rules defined on HE that operate your shades on HE. E.g. I have a HE virtual switch shared with GH that triggers rules in HE and is turned on using a routine on GH triggered by me saying to close the west-facing blinds.

If you are likely top have something as targeted as this in your use of GH then you could do something similar, and I'm happy to help.

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Last post for now, I promise.... :slight_smile:

Are your shades directly paired to HE? Or are they connected to a vendor-specific hub? Only reason I ask is that if you do have another hub as an option, if it integrates with GH, then I would lean towards that myself.... But given they are Z-Wave I am suspecting that is not the case.

Thanks for all of this help - this is all pretty new to me.

I tried to install the google home community app but I'm getting an error when trying to add the [test] to the GH app.. trying to find a solution for it.

The shades are directly paired to the HE and functioning. I was able to create a skill there that lowers them at sunset and it worked last night just fine. I just can't get the shades to show up in the GH app even after I have linked the hubitat to GH.

When I'm in the GH app and trying to link the hubitat, each time I get a "something went wrong error" and when I try it again the second time the hub seems to link. This has happened on multiple unsinstall/reinstall tries. Sort of strange. Once it is linked I don't have any devices (shades) pop up on the app.