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Direct Action

Michel Kohanim

By Michel Kohanim
in Google Home

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asbril Advanced

asbril

Posted
Posted

Hello everyone,

 

Just wanted to let everyone know that Google approved us for the usage of Direct Actions. We are quite excited and will shortly start working on the integration.

 

With kind regards,

Michel

Great job Michel. I look forward to it.

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jtara92101 Advanced

jtara92101

Posted
Posted

Pardon my ignorance but what are "direct actions"?

 

Google Assistant has two kinds of actions. Both require a server that the developer supplies that Google can talk to. There are a variety of high-level and low-level APIs that developers can use.

 

Conversational Actions:  The developer must supply an invocation trigger, dialog, and fulfillment action. It is up to the developer to specify the words that will be used by the user, and the flow of dialog. (Because it can go beyond simple commands, and include a back-and-forth "conversation". An example of a service that would be well-suited to conversational actions would be a baseball trivia "bot".

 

Direct Actions: The developer only deals with fulfillment. Google handles the entire conversational interaction. Google has defined a number of problem domains, which they refer to as "verticals". Examples are food ordering, home automation, reservations, etc. Google has defined the possible actions. So, for home automation, they've defined commands to turn things on and off, dim and brighten, etc. 

 

Direct actions are limited to what Google has defined. So, I can imagine that conversational actions would still be needed if a home automation product is capable of doing things that Google didn't think of. So, for example, if you wanted to use ISY to arm an Elk alarm,  or tune a channel on an AV system, it could be awkward. There isn't (as of yet) a vertical for home security or AV control, and the terminology will be a bit off if you were to piggy-back it on Home Automation.

 

Conversational actions give the developer more control, as the developer is in charge of the conversation. Direct actions are easier to implement, and have the advantage of using a common vocabulary. The user could control e.g. Hue or Insteon using the same vocabulary and syntax. This can be a good thing or a bad thing!

 

It seems desirable for services that fit into the available verticals to support direct actions, because users will have expectations how services in a given vertical work.

 

One might easily get the impression that direct actions are more difficult to implement, but I think it is the opposite. Direct actions have a sign-up and approval process I think mainly because they are new an still a bit experimental. Google is still learning (both Google PEOPLE and Google AI...) and I think developing specs as they go along, so there is a need to limit access at this point - I suppose mainly to industry leaders - like UDI!

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jtara92101 Advanced

jtara92101

Posted
Posted

Oh, and congrats! Looking forward to it! 

 

I've set up a few simple on/off actions with IFTTT for now.

 

When you are done with this, no doubt there will in the future be Cortana and Siri appliances to deal with... ;)

 

As I am an Apple household, neither Google HA or Alexa are optimum. But I've decided that each "home assistant" has an agenda, and I guess the Google one is less evil:

 

Alexa - get you to buy stuff from Amazon

Google Assistant - get you to use as many Google services as possible

Cortana - assimilate into the Borg

Siri - make her less lonely, because nobody uses Siri after the initial excitement (I think poor accuracy, and too many irrelevant, sometimes totally bizarre results). Oh, and get you to use as few Google services as possible

 

I have to say I am still impressed by the accuracy and relevance, especially for local results. 

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Scottmichaelj Advanced

Scottmichaelj

Posted
Posted

Oh, and congrats! Looking forward to it!

 

I've set up a few simple on/off actions with IFTTT for now.

 

When you are done with this, no doubt there will in the future be Cortana and Siri appliances to deal with... ;)

 

As I am an Apple household, neither Google HA or Alexa are optimum. But I've decided that each "home assistant" has an agenda, and I guess the Google one is less evil:

 

Alexa - get you to buy stuff from Amazon

Google Assistant - get you to use as many Google services as possible

Cortana - assimilate into the Borg

Siri - make her less lonely, because nobody uses Siri after the initial excitement (I think poor accuracy, and too many irrelevant, sometimes totally bizarre results). Oh, and get you to use as few Google services as possible

 

I have to say I am still impressed by the accuracy and relevance, especially for local results.

Price per Amazon DOT makes it the winner for my home, I have four now.

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kurelgyer Experienced

kurelgyer

Posted
Posted

Woo Hoo!!! Awesome!

 

Semi related question. Is it / will it ever be possible to have the ISY play an audio file (maybe from Google Play Music) on a Chromecast Audio?

 

Before ISY, I use to run HAL2000. Something I miss is audio notifications /actions. My favorite was when there was motion in the yard, and I was away, an .Mp3 of a vicious dog barking would play on my home theater system. It was crazy effective. I created it, yet if I came home from a weekend away, it would scare the hell out of me as I was putting my key in the door

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jtara92101 Advanced

jtara92101

Posted
Posted

Before ISY, I use to run HAL2000. Something I miss is audio notifications /actions. My favorite was when there was motion in the yard, and I was away, an .Mp3 of a vicious dog barking would play on my home theater system. It was crazy effective. I created it, yet if I came home from a weekend away, it would scare the hell out of me as I was putting my key in the door

 

See the separate thread "Speak, Google!" My goal is text to speech, though, rather than playing an MP3. But the solution I found does play an MP3 - it makes an MP3 using Google TTS first.

 

I just did some tests using the NPM module google-home-notify. I used the little server included and then set up some Network resources on ISY to speak some notifications.

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asbril Advanced

asbril

Posted
Posted

Woo Hoo!!! Awesome!

 

Semi related question. Is it / will it ever be possible to have the ISY play an audio file (maybe from Google Play Music) on a Chromecast Audio?

 

Before ISY, I use to run HAL2000. Something I miss is audio notifications /actions. My favorite was when there was motion in the yard, and I was away, an .Mp3 of a vicious dog barking would play on my home theater system. It was crazy effective. I created it, yet if I came home from a weekend away, it would scare the hell out of me as I was putting my key in the door

That is a great idea.  I have two Google Home  and two Chromecast Audio devices. I would love to send an instruction from ISY to either/or/and GH /CA, with let's say I want to be woken up at 7 am with radio station X and at the same time lights in bedroom go ON.....

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  • 2 weeks later...
stusviews Advanced

stusviews

Posted
Posted

The only problem with the dot (for me) is it keeps loosing connectivity even though its 10 feet from a wireless router.

 

By losing connectivity do you mean that the ring turns orange and you get a message about the connection when you issue a voice command or something else?

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  • 2 weeks later...
larryllix Advanced

larryllix

Posted
Posted

The only problem with the dot (for me) is it keeps loosing connectivity even though its 10 feet from a wireless router.

I have the same thing with,  especially one Dot, about 10 feet from my router.

 

Perhaps the WiFi is too sensitive and loses connection due to over driving the receiver, being so close?

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  • 4 weeks later...

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