Hi there.
I’ve been setting up OpenHAB this month and wanted to share my findings with everyone to make things a bit easier for new users.
I spent ages trying to get Scenes working nicely with Google’s voice assistant so I could activate them using a Nest Mini (or other Google smart device). Here is what I learned…
From Settings → Other Add-ons Install the OpenHAB Cloud binding and set up your myOpenHAB account.
In Google Home, open Settings → Works with Google and link OpenHAB to your google account.
In Settings → Scenes create your scene.
In Settings → Model open the room that the scene is for and use Add Point to create a point with the Type and Semantic Class of Switch.
For the switch you just created click Add Metadata and add Google Assistant data. select scene as the class, then click Show Advanced to reveal more tags and add the following…
Custom name: the name of your scene
Room hint: the name of the room it’s in (as shown in Google Home)
Structure hint: the name of the Home it’s in (as shown in Google Home)
IMPORTANT! The extra tags are what let the scenes show up for all users in your house. If you don’t add these, they’ll only work for the account that is linked to OpenHAB.
In Settings → Rules create a Rule that links your Switch to your Scene. You can do this by adding a Trigger / Item for your Switch (leave the command as Any), and then an Action / Other Rules and select the Scene as the rule to run (a little confusing, I know!)
Say “Hey Google, Synchronise devices!” to your Home Assistant. This will grab the scenes from OpenHAB. Note: Scenes do not show up in your device list (this took me ages to work out - very frustrating!)
In Google Home create an Automation (preferably a Household one) with whichever Starter phrase you like, and for the Action tap Adjust Home Devices scroll all the way to the bottom and hit Add scenes and (assuming everything has been done correctly) you should be able to select your scenes.
That’s it! You can now use your starter phrase to trigger the scene.
You can find more information on OpenHAB’s Google Assistant Action here.
There is a sneaky way to avoid step 6. If you know what you are doing you can click on the code tab of the Scene and manually add a trigger to the Scene itself rather than creating a separate rule to run the scene. The more correct way is as you’ve written it but for those who have a problem creating a separate rule just to run a Scene, this could be a work around.
The reason you need to use Action / Other Rules is that a Scene is a Rule.
This is odd. First let me explain what’s going on and it might be clearer.
GA never sees anything but Items. How it understands what an Item or Group of Items represents is based on the GA metadata. Google has no idea whether an Item is going to trigger a rule in OH to run a scene or whether it’s linked to a Channel on a Thing. All it sees is a Switch Item and the GA metadata that tells Google what that Switch represents.
There is nothing special about the fact that the Switch Item triggers a rule that would make it not appear Google Home. The fact that it didn’t appear is odd but not related to the fact that it drives a scene.
What did you set for the Google Asistant Class? I assume you chose “Scene”? That is actually missing from the tutorial. Maybe that’s the difference. If you want it to show up you have to use Switch as the class.
Thanks - I updated the original post to include setting the class.
I had an old home lingering in my Google Home set-up which might have been confusing the issue… the scenes worked fine for me… but not for my wife. Once they were automatically assigned to a Home and Room they worked fine for everyone!
