I have a C7 that, among other things, I have some lights connected to. I've linked Hubitat with Google Assistant so my family and I can use the Google Assistant to control things in our house through Hubitat. It worked fine for quite a while.
Then this week (December 2023), none of my kids can control anything through Hubitat using Google Assistant. My wife and I can just fine though. Google Assistant hears them, and the Assistant history on their account shows it understood what they said. However, it always responds to them with something like "the Hubitat is unavailable" or "I cannot currently reach Hubitat".
This is incredibly frustating.
I've tried everything I know to. Unlinked/relinked Hubitat (and reassigned everything to rooms Assistant knows about), remove Assistant voice matching for my kids, etc.
Has anyone had this issue or have any good ideas of what is going on? It's really making me regret relying on this connection for controlling smart devices in my home.
Can you use the devices in the Google Home app, or are they broken there too?
After I reboot my Hubitat for whatever reason, I often find I need to re-sync my GH stuff (but I haven't found a consistent reason why only sometimes).
I just use HE's native GH integration, so I open that app up and hit "Done". Then I wait a minute or so, then tell one of my Google Home's to "Sync my devices". That usually gets everything back on the rails.
But sometimes the GH cloud is just plain wacked. Nothing you can do in that case but wait out a fix.
Hubitat doesn't know who issues the command, so if it works for you and your wife, it should work for anyone too. Are your kids using different Google Home devices than you and your wife, or try to use it at different times than you? If different Google devices I would check to make sure those Google devices are connected to your network.
It works fine for both my spouse and me. None of my kids can use it though.
No devices show up in the Google Home app for them because Google apparently thinks they shouldn't be able to use that part of the Home app. Note that Google didn't don't bother asking me if I'm okay with my kids using that part of the app, they just instead add some text that says "If someone adds a shared device on your Wi-Fi network, you'll see it here". Which is BS to begin with because I can see on each Google device, though my Home app, that they have been added to all of those devices. Those devices can also recognize them by their voice. It just won't let them do anything with Hubitat...or some other things now like set alarms or timers.
Interestingly, it does let them control lights I have through sync TP-Link Kasa account.
That's the key. If the devices aren't available in their account, when Google recognises their voices and tries to match the device they want to control with devices in their account. It can't find it and responds with the 'not found' announcement.
Everyone needs to join the same 'home' account in Google Home. You can invite them from within your Google Home app.
Yeah, we can control the devices (lights) connected to Hubitat through Google Assistant on the same Assistant devices (smart speakers) which tell my kids the Hubitat isn't available.
They are as joined to the Google Home as kids accounts can get, which is a weird place where they aren't actually house members, but they have access to all the devices and they can do voice matching. And it was all working fine for a long time, but now it's just not working out of the blue.
I appreciate the attempt for help here. Sounds like it's probably something Google updated and introduced yet more bugs too. They love to innovate, but support and maintain...eh, not so much.
Have you looked in the parental controls section of Assistant Settings (I don't have child accounts, so, not sure what is actually available there.) It is supposedly where you can control what they do. Other than that, we had issues with voice match early on a few years ago that required us to turn off voice match. My visiting grandkids can control hubitat devices by voice. I have a few automations set up with funny phrases that give feedback that is also funny for them. So, they like it. Wondering if maybe removing voice match requirements might be the work around for you. (It works for me because our house is isolated enough that no one is nearby AND none of the commands that lock/unlock/open are standard commands. I have crazy phrases for unlocking the doors and opening the garage and do not have the actual devices available through hubitat for those. Just odd named virtual switches that actually trigger the devices.
I factory reset one of the Nest Minis we have and it then let my kids do the normal things with it that used to "just work". When I added voice match for one of my kids (what a round about process it is to even get that added again for a Google kid's supervised account), it stopped working again.
So this is definitely related to it recognizing my kids voices and "restricting" what they can do. The problem is they are restricting all the things I want to work, and I have no says as a parent what they can and cannot do.
Then I factory reset the Insignia speaker in one of my kids' rooms so it can be used for alarms/timers/controlling the lights in the room. Now I cannot get it to reconnect to my home Wifi network. I've tried a couple dozen times with different phones and Google Home and Device Update apps, just won't work. I guess they broke something in the setup process for this older (though expensive) device. Now it's a useless paper weight with a battery and larger speaker than all our other "smart" speakers.
Google supervised kids accounts are such a horribly designed piece of donkey crap that don't put many decisions in the parents' control, it just "disables" certain parts of things and they don't bother to test very many of those things when they roll out updates. "It's just kids, who cares?" I guess is the attitude of the inept people implementing the bugs, er I mean features they roll out to this stuff.
And it doesn't end here. I decided I'm just sick of these problems and I don't really need the parental supervision features, certainly not at the expense of all the disabled stuff I don't get to choose. So I try to change the birthday on their Google account, and it tells me "Child must be under 13". I cannot change their birthday to something that lets me get them functionality back! I'm not going to create new accounts for them because we have things tied to these accounts already.
Sorry for the tirade here on Google Assistant and products. Had to get that out.
Not a Hubitat issue itself, just super crap Google quality here.
Might also see if you can toggle on 3rd party apps in case that is the culprit
How to restrict a child’s access to third-party apps on Google Home:
Open the Family Link app for parents on your phone. Tap Manage Settings.
Tap Google Assistant.
Toggle “Third-party apps” to on. (Article had originally said "off" - but worth a try)
I'm just here to squeak the wheel on this and ask whether
anybody got a workaround
there's a known google thread I can +1 to complain about this
? It's super, super frustrating that my family can't seem to use this integration now. In my case, both my wife and kid can't control the devices. I've looked in my Google Home app config and my wife is invited to the home, so I'll have to do some investigation into why her integration seems to not work (since, from the thread, it sounds like it should work for her). For my kid, it sounds like this just sucks right now.
Nope, still doesn't work for my kids. I had to remove their voice match from our devices which brings it's own share of other problems. That in itself is a giant problem because it took like two weeks for my settings change to actually get pushed to the smart speakers. I had to factory reset to clear sooner. Super frustrating.
My other third party services for Google Assistant (like Kasa devices) do work fine for everyone, so it seems like it must be an issue with Hubitat third party integration for Google Assistant preventing this from working.
