This issue began this morning (9/5/2018). It’s been working fine for months. When I tried to use a voice command on either our Google Assistant devices (Home, Mini, Insignia Clock) I received “Sorry, I could not reach openHAB”. However, when I used Google Assistant on my phone, it was able to complete the requested actions successfully.
Has anybody experienced this issue?
I’ve seen some posts from earlier this year (May 2018) mentioning “can’t reach openHAB”. Those appear to have been due to a different issue and apparently resolved.
I mistakenly thought that both of our Insignia clocks responded to me. In actuality, only one of the two responded to “openHAB” control requests. Had I noticed that, I probably would have realized that was a clue.
When first adding a new Assistant device via the Google Home app, whichever Google account it’s added to first becomes the primary account for the device. As four of the devices where added from my phone, I was the primary. The other device was added from my wife’s phone. It was that Insignia speaker (where I was secondary) that responded to my openHAB commands. I then realized that the other four, where my wife’s Google account was the secondary, responded to her openHAB control requests.
After realizing that some of our devices responded to openHAB devices for my wife and not for me and other devices responded to me and not my wife, I decided to try unlinking the all of the Assistant devices (Home, Mini, Insignia) from both accounts. I then re-linked the devices to my account (all five devices) first. I then linked my wife’s account to all five devices.
I have tried it from all five devices, and the devices that were not working, now respond to openHAB controlled devices successfully… even though I’m the primary.
Unfortunately, now none of the voice devices respond to commands from my wife to control openHAB connected devices. Other Google Assistant commands work fine (OK Google, what’s the temperature). And, because I have a different Assistant voice configured for my wife than for me, I know it’s understanding who it is.
I had first tried unlinking our openHAB account from Google Assistant but that did not address the “could not reach openHAB” problem. It was then that I unlinked our Google accounts from all five of our Assistant devices (Home, Mini, Insignia). Once I re-linked our Google accounts to our Assistant devices, I was able to control our openHAB devices. But my wife still could not.
I had to go the final mile and unlink our openHAB account from my wife’s Google Assistant and re-link it. This appears to have resolved the issue. Thus, it took a complete “wipe” on both Google accounts to restore openHAB integration.
This was a pretty laborious resolution. Re-linking the Assistant devices meant I had to step through the wizard for each of the five devices on my account and then on my wife’s account. This included checking all of the settings for each device (accessibility sounds, preview program, continued conversations, etc., etc., etc.). And then, unlinking and re-linking openHAB meant I had to authenticate openHAB to each Google account and then assign the openHAB devices (17 of them) to a room… for each Google account. Not cool!
Good to hear you solve the problem.
Thanks for sharing here.
It’s good to now that the home control binding’s in google assistant are personal. Google home can be used by more persons with their own assistant account. So every person have to setup their openhab connection in google assistant?
The openHAB side of things is quite straightforward. One needs an openHAB Cloud Connector account (i.e., myopenhab.org). Only one account for the household is required.
All openHAB Items that you want to “appear” in Assistant need to be tagged as [Switchable].
In Google Assistant, each user adds the openHAB service using the openHAB Cloud Connector account credentials. All openHAB Items that are tagged will appear in Google Assistant. The name in Google Assistant will be the Label you assigned to the Item in openHAB. You can assign each Item to a room and give it a nickname (optional).
If you add new Switchable Items in openHAB, perform a “Sync Devices” in Google Assistant and the new Items will appear and be ready to be assigned to a room, etc.
