Is Google Assistant support in consideration?

WebThings
#1

First of all congrats and thanks for this project it looks great.

I’m currently using SmartThings as a bridge to my ZWave/Zigbee/Wifi things, I also considered using HomeAssistant but the Google Assistant support skewed my decision.

It seemed it would be pretty hard (read impossible) to get a small hobbyist smart home app reviewed and accepted by Google (it would also require me to configure remote access to my bridge and maintain some DNS records).

What Samsung does with SmartThings is acting as a bridge to the Google smart home services. You can enable the SmartThings access inside the Google Home app and then your devices become visible from google home/assistant.

SmartThings also comes with severe limitations when it comes to extensibility and I would love to jump ship to your solution. Would you consider providing a solution to bridge “Project Things” to Google Assistant in a easy way? It would certainly be a bit more involved then the remote access you provide, but I think the “cloud” server could remain relatively simple, it would just redirect traffic to the hub and a plugin would be responsible to handle the heavy work.

2 Likes
#2

Hi there,

We don’t yet have support for Google Assistant as a controller, but it should be possible. We have already created an early demonstration of how to control the gateway from an Alexa Skill which can talk to the gateway using its REST & WebSockets API.

The first time setup on the gateway offers you a free subdomain and automatically configures DNS & SSL for you. We also support OAuth so it should be possible for an assistant like Google Assistant to request access to the gateway as a third party application, you’d just need to tell it the domain of your gateway.

This is all quite theoretical at this point because as far as I know nobody has tried it, but the benefit of using established web technologies like HTTP, WebSockets, JSON, TLS and OAuth is that the tools should already exist to make it possible.

2 Likes
Any news about a collaboration with Mycroft?
#3

Thanks for your reply, happy to hear you’ve already tried Alexa (unfortunately not available in my country but it’s coming I guess).

My main concern was not really tech related (I know you can handle it :smile:), it’s more that google controls which “apps” they accept in their “Home” app, and you have to be pass a review process to be accepted there.

I don’t think I see any open source app currently in the list, and IIRC, each app is tied to a single domain so you would need to maintain a server dedicated to tunnel Google Smart Home requests to the user gateways.

#4

Guillaume86 - So you are using Smartthings to integrate your zwave devices into the Things Gateway?

I have a Smartthings hub, too, but would like to somehow get that talking to Things Gateway like you can with Smartthings and Home Assistant via MQTT. Any advice is appreciated! Just don’t want to have to buy a zwave usb to use this project.

#5

Hi @mgkasper6

Sorry I can’t help you on this one, my plan is to wait for Google Assistant support in Project Things (only thing I need that I can’t contribute myself), then port the device handlers I use in SmartThings to the Things Gateway, switch entirely and remove the ST bridge. I want to keep my setup as simple as possible.

1 Like
#6

I developed google assistant app for Gateway. This app is under review for publishing. I would like some people to test the application before publishing. Is there anyone who can help?

Must be able to do the following things.

  • Modify the Gateway in order to Oauth. See here.
  • Tell me the gmail address to use the application before publishing.
1 Like
#7

Thanks for looking into this and for sharing your source code.

I believe @andrenatal was also looking into this, perhaps you could collaborate somehow?

#8

Yes, I am happy to collaborate.

If you have a prototype, i can port the difference between what I made and the prototype.
If still not, i could hand over what I made. In that case, i will make some document(eg. how to deploy.) and answer questions about my source code.

If you want try this assistant app, tell me your gmail and i will share project.

soga.ani@gmail.com

#9

Hi,

I could help you with testing. If you still need help, please share project to me :slight_smile:

My g account: honza@skovran.net

#10

Thank you!
I still need help and have shared project. Probably, You can see “[test]mozassist” on you google home app.
If you will find any issue, please file a issue on here.

#11

Is there anyone who lives in USA and can verify the response performance of the my google assistant app?

My google assistant app is passed first review and will be tested by third-party certification vendor called Allion USA.
The set of QA test cases that will be run are described here.
I’m worry about “Latency tests”, because of accessing the gateway go through the ssltunnell server.
I have not passed “Latency test” as long as I try it from Japan.

It is necessary to send some devices to get tests by third-party certification vendor.
I would like to confirm in advance whether there is a possibility of passing tests.

#12

I have released Google Assistant Service “MozAssist”.
Everyone can use “MozAssist” on your Google Home Apps.
If you want to use “MozAssist”, you need add an authentication to your Gateway.

Have fun!

#13

Is the Amazon Skill completed yet for Things Gateway or available for test ?

#14

@sogaani, is this still actively supported by you? Any plans to add support for the local home SDK (https://developers.google.com/actions/smarthome/local-home-sdk) when it’s released? It looks like a perfect fit and moves closer to Mozilla’s overall goals for WebThings (fully functional offline).

#15

Thank you for your notification.
Currently I’m not active though, when the SDK is going to be released, I will look into it and make sure implementing local home solution is easy or not for me.

1 Like
#16

I’d like to jump in and say I’d like to see support for Mycroft, seeing as it’s open source like this project. I know Mozilla has done work with them in the past, but seeing them work together again to either bring Mycroft onto the device or integration with an existing device would be swell.

#17

We have a mycroft skill in the works! It’s not in the skill list yet because we want to do a more complete OAuth-based integration but you can sideload https://github.com/hobinjk/mozilla-iot-gateway-skill for a preview today.

#18

@sogaani, I noticed your login page (mozassist.sogaani.com) went down shortly after our previous discussion and hasn’t come back up. Did you turn it off on purpose? Really was excited to use it!