Voice Assistant & Hubs

Hubs

I think the question to answer is: To hub or not to hub? I prefer not to hub.

There are a lot of Smart Home Hubs. Hubs provide a means of controlling and setting up various smart devices and allow them to communicate with one another.

Example hubs are: SmartThings, OpenHAB, HassIO, hubitat, Amazon Echo and Google Home

I use my SmartPhone as my "hub". I created a folder and dragged all of my Smart Home apps into the folder. I also added Yonomi, which provides all the features of a hub.

Voice Assistants

A few years back, hubs were required and Voice Assistants were interesting but had limited capabilities. Now, a Voice Assistant is required and much of the hub functionality is included with the Voice Assistant.

I use Amazon Echo as my Voice Assistant. It's biggest competitor is Google Home. Amazon Echo is not as good at answering questions as Google Home. Google Home doesn't have the depth and breadth of control of Echo. But, I am sure that will come. Both depend on the cloud. Some people don't like that the Home Automation stops working if their internet connection is lost. I do not have this concern. My ISP is AT&T GigaPower and I have not lost my internet connection since switching from DSL to a fiber connection.

Voice Assistants are progressing in functionality like cell phones. At first they could do basic things easily: answer questions, create a shopping list, and play music. But more complex functionality required scripting. Now, the Voice Assistants can do complex tasks without any scripting skills. Here are a few examples:

• • • Turn my lights on and off at dusk

    • Set a timer

    • Control my home theater and all its devices without a remote

    • Set or read the temperature

    • Shutdown the house: turn off the lights, ensure the doors are closed and locked

    • and many others

As an example of the progressing functionality. A few years ago, I wanted a whole-home music system and an intercom. I put those on my list of potential Raspberry Pi projects. Now, I have an echo in each major room. Instead of shouting, I can "drop" into a room. I can also play music in one or more rooms.

Echo Links

There are very good on-line instructions or instructions in the Amazon Echo. Here are a few:

• • • Add skills to control other home automation devices

    • Play Music in multiple rooms

    • Create a group (e.g., goodnight, home theater)

    • Set up a routine (or scene)

    • 50 Cool Things to do with Echo

Conditional Control

A really good argument for using the SmartThings hub is the availability of webCoRE. webCoRE is an excellent web-based rule engine for Samsung's SmartThing hub. webCoRE and SmartThings enable complex user automation scenarios. webCoRE uses a scripting language that is easy to read. While webCoRE is an excellent tool, it is not enough of a reason to me to add a hub.

Echo and other open source hubs have a variety of rule engines for automating complex user scenarios.

I start with Echo Groups and Routines, because these are the simplest and easiest way to get a conditional action to occur. For example,

• • • Echo Routine: I want my front lights to turn on at dusk and go off at dawn.

    • Echo Group: Alexa, Goodnight. Shuts off all the lights, TVs, Fans, and so on in the open areas of the house

    • Echo Group: When my wife exercises, she wants the stair and upstair exercise lights to turn on, the TV to turn on, the TV to tune to CNN, and the ceilings fans to turn on

If more complicated conditions are required, then I use Node-RED (others use IFTTT).

Here are some useful links:

• • • Echo Routines

    • Using Node-RED with Echo

    • Using IFTT with Echo

Other Voice Assistants:

Here are a few voice assistants that do not rely on the cloud:

• • • • Gladys

      • mycroft

      • snips

      • JARVIS or JARVIS

Other raspberry pi voice assistants:

• • • • alexapi

      • AIY Voice Kit

      • JASPER

and others:

• • • • linto