Simplest way to get Google Home work with Node-RED or MQTT

General
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Hi there

The more I get into this the more I confused.

I basically have two Smart Home systems in my house:

  • one is DIY system, based on OpenHAB, Node-RED, some Z-Wave Devices and MQTT bus, which connencts local Tablets, Shellys and Sonoff. This system controls pretty everything in my daily life - lights, heating, roller-shutter, automation scenarios etc. This is totally local system, running on my home Server. It has no remote control features
  • and another one came with Google Home and associated Smart devices - Smart Speakers, A/C, Robot Vacuum and other IoTs with support for Google Home.

The problem I have - is how to integrate these two. I basically want two things - control my lights using voice control - E.g. from Google home - this is most needed feature. And I also would like Node-Red to have access to the devices, controlled from Google Home - E.g. Air Condition for example - to set the temperature.

I tried some solutions - for example MQTT to cloud and then Cloud to Google. Or NORA nodes. But these, require some kind of 3rd party cloud and also they are neither reliable nor simple. I also don't like OpenHAB integration as they continuously upgrade the software and finally my local instance becomes incompatible with their cloud and all stops working. So I want to have some kind of standard solution. For example using MQTT.

Does anyone know a good way to integrate Google Home with Node-RED, which works reliably?

2

I have a similar setup to you but I use Alexa, all was good until my daughter got a google mini and wanted to use that in her room.

So I have used this googlehome to allow control from Google as well as Alexa and NR Dashboard.

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node-red-contrib-google-smarthome interacts directly with google without needing a 3rd party server, and is very reliable.
Setting up the config can be confusing, but follow the steps carefully, and I'm sure you would manage it :wink:
Once the config is setup, using the nodes is fairly easy.

2 Likes
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Or node-red-contrib-googlehome which is a LOT easier to set up

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node-red-contrib-googlehome uses a third party server, which the OP didn't want to do.
node-red-contrib-google-smarthome speaks directly to the Google server.

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True but also asked "Simplest way to get Google Home work" :wink:

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The problem is that while this is easy, it uses pretty same concept as node-red-contrib-nora, which I used couple of years ago. And it's server seemed to be be overloaded with users at some point, as written here: https://node-red-google-home.herokuapp.com/login and whole thing became pretty unusable.

So when will this happen to node-red-contrib-googlehome ? And it will happen for sure, the question is only when. And I don't want to redo Node-red part once again, when I have tens of devices. That's why I don't like 3rd party server here or at least if I would use one, I would like to have some availability guarantee, maybe for money. The author of NORA now proposes node-red-contrib-smartnora - but how long will last this one? At least now it costs 20$/year.

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Anyway another question: does anybody perhaps have experience with MQTT to Google Home? Such as gBridge.io for example (it looks like this one is dead by the way)? Maybe using native Google Cloud MQTT IoT Service?
It's quite easy to sign up Node-red to some cloud broker and then publish/subscribe to messages. The question is how complex and reliable is this one.

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I understand your point I only have it for 1 google mini and two smart bulbs so not the end of the world for me.

Nothing stays the same and sooner or later Google Amazon etc will make breaking changes anyway.
I tend to work on the basis that if one solution stops working another will come along :wink:

You better get stuck into @Paul-Reed solution then.

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