Home Assistant
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Google Assistant

If you want to integrate your Google Home, or mobile phone running Google Assistant, with Home Assistant, then you want the Google Assistant component.

Google Assistant is an AI-powered voice assistant that runs on the Raspberry Pi and x86 platforms and interact via the DialogFlow integration with Home-Assistant. You can also use Google Actions to extend its functionality.

To enable access to the Google Assistant API, do the following:

  1. In the Cloud Platform Console, go to the Projects page. Select an existing project or create a new project
  2. Open the project. In the top of the page search for Google Assistant API or use this link and enable it.
  3. Create an OAuth Client ID, pick type “Other”, click “Create” and download the JSON file by clicking the Download JSON button on the right side.

Now install and activate the Samba add-on so you can upload your credential file. Connect to the “share” Samba share and copy your credentials over. Name the file google_assistant.json.

Now it’s time to start Google Assistant for the first time. When the Google Assistant add-on starts, it will output your audio devices in the “Logs” card. You might have to hit “refresh” to get the latest logs:

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: ALSA [bcm2835 ALSA], device 0: bcm2835 ALSA [bcm2835 ALSA]
  Subdevices: 8/8
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
  Subdevice #1: subdevice #1
  Subdevice #2: subdevice #2
  Subdevice #3: subdevice #3
  Subdevice #4: subdevice #4
  Subdevice #5: subdevice #5
  Subdevice #6: subdevice #6
  Subdevice #7: subdevice #7
card 0: ALSA [bcm2835 ALSA], device 1: bcm2835 ALSA [bcm2835 IEC958/HDMI]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: Microphone [Yeti Stereo Microphone], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

You need to use this information to point the add-on at the right speakers and microphone. The information describes different cards and devices. On a Raspberry Pi 3, card 0 - device 0 is the built-in headset port, card 0 - device 1 is the HDMI port. In the example above, the USB microphone showed up as card 1 - device 0.

Find the microphone and speakers that you want to use and note down their device and card number. We will need that to configure the add-on options mic (microphone to use) and speaker (speaker to use). The format for these options is <card #>,<device #>. Change the configuration options and click save.

The next step is to authenticate your Google account with Google Assistant. Start the add-on and click on the “OPEN WEB UI” button to start authentication.

Add-on configuration

Configuration example that uses the USB microphone and the built-in headset audio output on the Raspberry Pi. Note that card and device numbers can differ on your device.

{
  "mic": "1,0",
  "speaker": "0,0",
  "client_secrets": "google_assistant.json"
}

Configuration variables:

  • mic: This is the hardware address of your microphone. Look at the add-on output
  • speaker: This is the hardware address of your speakers. Look at the add-on output

Home Assistant configuration

Use the Home Assistant DialogFlow component to integrate the add-on into Home Assistant.