HowTo: Listen & Talk to your Home

H102 · November 19, 2018, 8:05pm

Excellent tutorial @Dim, keep up the fine work and Thank You!

rlkoshak · November 19, 2018, 8:05pm

Fantastic tutorial! I know I’ve always found TTS to be a bit of a mystery. Thanks for posting!

Dim · November 19, 2018, 8:10pm

It’s funny: I was also worried about this, but it was easy to setup. You need to be careful with Google’s Cloud Platform and to perform the steps in the docs to get the JSON. After that, it’s very smooth.

This will be improved according to my understanding, since @wborn is planning to change the API (Ref: Google TTS addon for OH2 & https://github.com/openhab/openhab2-addons/pull/4221). I didn’t use the testing jar for the tutorial since I would have pushed everyone to Snapshots to use it

Kim_Andersen · November 19, 2018, 10:01pm

Damn fine tutorial @Dim
But, I seem to recall something about Google text to speech doesn´t work on Rpi. If thats correct, perhaps it´s worth mentioning in your guide,

Kim_Andersen · November 19, 2018, 10:10pm

@Dim About your FAQ Q3:
Google Assistant (and openhab) also support [ “Outlet” ] and [ “CurrentHumidity” ].

Dim · November 19, 2018, 10:18pm

It’s correct. I added a note on top (intro). There is a Snapshot release of the addon that will work on rPis, but you need to run 2.4.0 Snapshot core to run it. Ref: Google TTS addon for OH2

Check (updated). The docs need update also in this case

Thanx!

Kim_Andersen · November 19, 2018, 10:25pm

Great… I really look forward to skip the Voice_RSS. I want Google both ways

This is unfortunate yes… This page is more updated that the original is

github.com

openhab/openhab-google-assistant/blob/master/USAGE.md

---
layout: documentation
title: Google Assistant
source: https://github.com/openhab/openhab-google-assistant/blob/master/USAGE.md
description: "Google Assistant is Google's virtual personal assistant and uses Actions on Google as the platform for \"Actions\" (software applications) to extend the functionality of the Google Assistant."
---

# Google Assistant Action

Google Assistant is Google’s virtual personal assistant and uses Actions on Google as the platform for "Actions" (software applications) to extend the functionality of the Google Assistant. Users engage Google Assistant in conversation to get things done, like controlling their devices and things at home. You can use the officially certified openHAB Action for Google Assistant to easily manage and control your smart home by conversational experiences between you and your openHAB smart home powered by voiced commands.

This guide describes step by step how to use the [openHAB Google Assistant Smart Home Action](https://assistant.google.com/services/a/uid/000000f5c61c627e?hl=en-US&source=web). The openHAB Action links your openHAB setup through the [myopenHAB.org](https://www.myopenhab.org) cloud service to the Google Assistant platform (for technical insights, please refer to this [guide](https://github.com/openhab/openhab-google-assistant/blob/master/README.md) to read more about setup options and development information).

With the Action you can voice control your openHAB items and it supports lights, plugs, switches and thermostats. The openHAB Action comes with multiple language support like English, German or French language.

# General Configuration Instructions

## Requirements

* [openHAB Cloud Connector](http://docs.openhab.org/addons/ios/openhabcloud/readme.html) configured using myopenHAB.org.

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Dim · November 19, 2018, 10:27pm

added 2 more FAQs. I think that they are useful in tutorials

Dim · November 19, 2018, 10:30pm

aha! the openhab documentation bot is slow again
It should have pulled that version and published it on https://www.openhab.org/docs/ by now (last update to your link is 26 days ago

Thanx for the link ! I will further update the supported tags

Kim_Andersen · November 19, 2018, 10:56pm

Regarding the [“CurrentHumidty”] there is a small note to catch. It doesn´t show anywhere. It´s part of the thermostat. It confused me some days ago, when I added it to my setup. One simply have to ask for the humidity to know if it works.
Since this guide is is about listen and talk to. I´ll let you decide if it´s worth mentioning

H102 · November 19, 2018, 11:02pm

Here’s one you might want to include on the Q&A, or at the top of the topic.

Q: How can I get this to work with Alexa?

A: This tutorial is for Google, not Alexa.

Surprised no ones asked this yet.

Dim · November 19, 2018, 11:18pm

Added

H102 · November 26, 2018, 9:36pm

Please read this, also located at the end of the tutorial.

Thanks

Kim_Andersen · November 28, 2018, 2:20pm

Hi Dim…
I have a question. (well, partly an request ).
My plans is to use several devices for “listen and talk to” spred around all over our house. That include several Google home devices, as well as one android tablet, (main communication device). I have however yet to discover how to use a tablet for both talk to as well as listen…
As far as I understand you´r tutorial, you´re dealing with one device only, which is the default sink? I wonder if you could spred some light about this issue of using more than one device, if that is possible at all?

Dim · November 28, 2018, 2:46pm

The default sink in my tutorial is Web Audio. This means: Any Web Browser pointing to either PaperUI or HABpanel URLs.

I used 2 devices: my PC and my mobile to test things out and I had PaperUI always open on the PC, so I was able to listen to the TTS audio.
If you have 2 browsers (or tabs) open to both PaperUI and HABpanel, you will listen to the same audio output twice

I don’t know if you use a tablet and have the browser in the background, working with the Google Home App in the foreground, if you will be able to receive the Web Audio (most likely no ).

The audio feedback is “channeled” only to the browser (not to the GH app)

Since you will have Google Home devices available, you can send the TTS Audio to them (either configure the default to Sink to be the GH device or specify the audio sink in your say command)

Kim_Andersen · November 28, 2018, 3:22pm

Thats smart Except, in my plans…

… is a bit tricky, cause I will not be using web audio. I will be using chromecast´s devices as “speak to”, as well as “listen to” TTS audio. And even more, I plan on making somekind of presence detection, and only send TTS audio to that/these rooms where presence is detected. I know, this will require rather advance rules. But at least thats an idea.

I know how to cast TTS audio to chromecast devices. I already do that with the one Google Home Mini I´ve got. My concern is, how to cast TTS audio to an Android tablet. I dont even know if thats possible, unless I´ll be using the web audio. I guess this is a question to be searched for…

wborn · November 29, 2018, 9:40pm

It should now work out of the box on Raspberry Pis with 2.4.0-SNAPSHOT Build #1446 or newer.

Dim · November 29, 2018, 9:42pm

Thanx! I am updating the first post now

Quick clarification question: Everything with regards to the installation instructions posted on: https://www.openhab.org/addons/voice/googletts/ remains the same… Correct? (get JSON, plug it in PaperUI)

wborn · November 29, 2018, 9:45pm

That’s right! It works exactly the same on any architecture while the addon got a lot smaller.

Dim · November 30, 2018, 7:32am

this thread has started to show up on https://www.openhab.org/about/showcase.html

It also has 6k views on twitter https://twitter.com/Angelos_F/status/1064609328156631043

We need to improve the content on the first post… what about making it a Wiki?