Official Google Assistant Integration for openHAB

This will come hopefully very soon. I am working on a dev version that performs this. Also it will let you “generically dim/brighten” - for instance: “dim living room lights” will dim by (I believe 5 or 10% is Google’s default) and vice versa for brighten. The Pull Request is in, just waiting for review/approval.

Please help - my google home app doesn’t have “Home Devices” in menu. It tries to discover devices in my wifi network but of course with no luck. Can’t add openhab.
Don’t know why - maybe it’s available in languages which are supportet in google asssistant?

The ‘Home Control’ menu is located in the Assistant app (can be opened from Google app, Settings, Google Assistant Settings)
But this is only available when your device it setup in the correct languages which Assistant supports (English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), and Spanish)

Got it set up on my install as well. Although I’ve run into an issue with orphaned IFTTT recipes. Even after removing all Google <-> IFTTT services, connections, and permissions, the Home Speaker or Assistant App responds to any "turn on/off " command with ‘Sorry I am unable to process your request’.

I’ve got a support ticket open with Google at the moment since it appears to be an IFTTT integration bug that has cropped up before. As a workaround you should be able to use the 'switch on/off ’ keyword instead provided you didn’t have a recipe on IFTTT using that keyword as well.

Otherwise if you set up a completely ‘new’ google account with no previous IFTTT pairing or orphaned recipes, and then pair that with OpenHab it’ll also work fine.

After getting the setup working on the myopenhab cloud- I was quite happy for a few days. Then suddenly I could not update my items anymore (rename or put them in rooms) but the control would still work. So I decided to unlink and relink again. result is: I can link the account - but on items are shown. Also the linking does not seem to go through properly.
In myopenhab I can see google as authorized application, but in the assistant app OH is not activated.

Is this a myopenhab hickup? A google bug?

Did you try the voice command “sync my devices” ? It should re-sync the changed devices with home control.

I did… but when I do it says. The application “my application” does not work. I dunno this application. I don’ t have any application like this in my account. Neither in development nor activated through an app store.

Weird issue… Google Assistant tries to switch on/off 2 items…
For example I have:

Switch Kitchen_Light "Kitchen Light" ... ["Switchable"] 
.....
Dimmer Kitchen_TV_Volume "Kitchen TV Volume" ... ["Lighting"] 

Asking GH Hey Google, turn on Kitchen Light it responds with OK, switching 2 lights on.
And, indeed, both items receive the command ON.

Google recognizes [“Lighting”] items as light. So you have one item with light in the name and one item with light in the TAG. This might be it.

I thought of that…
But it’s not right!
Alexa triggers only one item…
Now… were would the problem be? On Google Home or on openHAB action?

Alexa != Google

1 Like

@bernd_boehm

Very helpful…

What did you expect? Two different systems may very well behave differently. There is no reason why google should behave exactly like alexa.
If you want to be sure - rename Kitchen Light to something not containing “light”.

About my issue with the Google Assistant. I just got a confirmation from Google that other google Home users have the same issue. It may well be a software problem on the google cloud side.

Well, this is just my experience and deductions, but…

I’ve found that Google ‘generalizes’ any terms found in the names of your items.
For example, your two items both have the word kitchen in them. And both are tagged as ‘lights’ via the “Lighting” tag and the word light.
So if you tell GH to turn on the kitchen light, it will search through the ‘lights’ (which most probably includes the one called ‘kitchen light’) for any with the word kitchen in them.
I think that perhaps Google has a list of ‘lights’, which includes any switches with the word light in them, or any items tagged as “Lighting”. So both your items are included in this list, and the kitchen keyword is seen in both items’ names so it will turn them both on and off.

In future we’ll probably get more types of tags to assign to items to allow for discerning between a Light switch, a volume or other types of devices, that will prevent this type of issue.

You can assign ‘nicknames’ to synced items in Google Home. You can perhaps try to change the nickname of the volume control to something that doesn’t include the word kitchen and see if prevents google from turning it on when kitchen is mentioned. I’m not sure if Google checks both the nickname and its label, I’m not at home right now or I’d test it out for you.

I am having similar experiences, check out my posting and response at: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/websearch/NHI1q_8joUo

Here’s what they suggested:

Thanks for writing back to me. In this case, I’d suggest you report this directly to our Google Assistant team from the app. To send feedback, open Google Assistant on your phone, at the top right corner tap on explore > then, tap on more (3 vertical dots) option > Send Feedback.

Maybe if more people send feedback, they might fix it.

How many lights/switches are people using with Google home/mini? I have 29 lights and it does not “sync my devices” like it used to when I only had a smaller number of things to sync.

If I remove and re-add openhab it works perfectly and finds and adds all the devices, then continues to also work fine. No syntax issues otherwise it surely would not do this.

What I think is happening is to sync the number of devices I have it timesout and complains it does not know how to help with that, but if watching in the GA app, you see the action is still working after it makes this statement. The dots keep scrolling like a progress bar.

Anyone using more than 30 devices and how does it work for you? Maybe the long round trip ping is causing it to take longer than expected.

Until they’ll add more items type and/or tags, I solved my problem by moving Kitchen_TV_Volume to another “room” in GH app…
I had Kitchen_Light and Kitchen_TV_Volume - and similar items in other rooms - added to the same “room”, Kitchen.
So I moved all TV volume items to a “room” called None.
Problem solved!

I have 39 OH devices and have no problem syncing my devices.

Hi,

First of all, thanks for it, Its awesome!!!
I successfully setup it and works as expected, but I have a question.
Is it possible to install a private myopenhab server, than this connect to Google assistant, or I have to use the myopenhab.org?!

Br,
O.