It's Alive!

[MWareman]

Universal Devices in the Gogle Home home control selections. Woot!!

[MWareman]

Uses the same spokens as Alexa. Initial tests look good, except that I assigned all devices near my family room to the 'Family Room' room. I had a device with a spoken of 'Family Room'.

 

When I asked Home to turn on 'Family Room' she replied 'ok, turning on 14 devices in family Room'.

 

Ouch.. a self inflicted regional-on... Renaming the device with the same name as the room solved this...

 

 

Congratulations to all at UDI!

Edited May 9, 2017 by MWareman

[bleepblorp]

I'm buying a Home right now!

[Jimbo.Automates]

This is awesome, since Google decided to force a Hue account which makes the hue emulator a pain to support.

 

But, I notice that adding my Z-Wave thermostat doesn't work.

 

Also, how do you force it to update devices?  I removed one and added a bunch but they are not showing up after a few minutes.

[Michel Kohanim]

Thank you all!

 

First of all, it's not alive yet and there are still some issues they are trying to solve.

 

We'll check into thermostat.

 

With kind regards,

Michel

[Michel Kohanim]

Hello all,

 

Verbatim from Benoit:

*****

Hi Michel,

 

No, Google Home does not yet support thermostats, nor locks.

 

All that they support is regular lighting & switches. ISY Portal extends this to scenes, programs and variables.

 

Also, about the re-synch question, there is no way to resynch, unless we unlink and relink. This is a pain, because in the app, we can assign rooms to devices. When you unlink and relink, this has to be reassigned. But as discussed with Wes, resynch support is coming.

 

Benoit

*****

 

With kind regards,

Michel

[InsteonNut]

Hi Folks,

 

Echoing Michel, the skills are technically live, but there are still issues on Google's end. Namely getting your items back to Google Home/Assistant when you change anything. Google has a solution in-progress, but hasn't released it yet. Hang tight, both UDI and myself will announce when this is actually ready. For now, if you want to try Google Home, you'll need to unlink and relink your skill every time you make changes to your devices, scenes, programs.

 

Wes

[timekiller]

I have to say, I'm happy you worked on making the ISY work with the Google Home, but I'm very, VERY disappointed you tied it to the ISY portal. I don't understand why I should have to pay a subscription fee for this to work. Additionally, I am extremely uncomfortable allowing any kind of access to my home automation from the outside world. ESPECIALLY when it can disable my alarm system (Elk M1Gold). I understand the portal does not require an open port on my firewall, but your site, https://my.isy.io becomes a single target for hackers to potentially access hundreds (thousands?) of home devices.

 

I would much rather have seen you make this work the way the Hue Bridge works, where the Home finds the device on the local network and talks to it locally. In fact, there is a github project that emulates the Phillips Hue Bridge and allows you to control a number of different device types (Including the ISY): https://github.com/bwssytems/ha-bridge

 

With that project I am able to import my devices from the ISY, then add a "Phillips Hue" device in the Home app. The app takes me to the Phillips Hue portal site where it instantly finds my local device (a raspberry pi running the hue emulator) - no login required. The Google Home then queries the device and adds the devices it finds (which are the devices from my ISY).

 

No subscription, no portal or proxy, no port forwarding. No cost, and no security concerns.

 

This is what I wanted you to make work.

 

I really really wish I could still be excited about Universal Devices being supported by the Home, but the way you have implemented it means I am going to have to continue using my Hue emulator hack.

[Michel Kohanim]

Hi timekiller,

 

I am sorry you feel this way alas what you are requesting is not technically feasible: except for their hand-picked solutions (such as Hue), both Google and Echo are CLOUD based solutions and require a) valid X509 Certificate from a certificate authority tied to a domain and OAUTH. ISY does not support OAUTH and, even if it did, you would still have to go buy a certificate TIED to your domain and pay for that instead. And, in any case, ISY would be talking to their cloud (instead of ISY Portal).

 

So, perhaps you could vent your frustrations at Amazon and Google as they hold the key to what you want (local access). On the other hand, Apple Homekit does have local interfaces but they require a hardware accelerator that makes ISY so very unaffordable (unless you put a bridge in between). In all cases, though - and with all due respect - you're unhappy with the wrong party in this equation.

 

With kind regards,

Michel

[timekiller]

Michel,

Thank you for the explanation. If I'm understanding you correctly, the only reason I am able to use the Hue bridge with no SSL and no authentication is because Google made a special exception for them? If that is the case, that's pretty disappointing (but not surprising).

 

Sorry for the rant, I was just really looking forward to having native support for the ISY and got really bummed when I saw that it requires the portal. I guess I'm stuck with my hack then :\

 

(For the record, the hack works great, it just requires that the pi be available at all times)

[Michel Kohanim]

Hi timekiller,

 

Yes, they have special things for special companies in which case the interaction is local (except for voice recognition). We are not that special [yet]!

 

 

With kind regards,

Michel

[apostolakisl]

Unless the voice recognition part runs locally, I don't see how the cloud can be avoided no matter what.  Even if ISY is controlled locally, if your voice gets sent to Google, decoded, and sent back to google home, which then controls ISY, there is still a cloud hack there.

 

I do see the point about the portal.

 

Hack my house, easier, reward is 1 ISY

Hack portal, harder, but reward is lots and lots of ISY's.

 

We all know even the biggest of the big guys can get hacked.  

 

EDIT:  Well now I'm wishing I hadn't jumped on echo.  Oh well, maybe I'll get both.

Edited May 10, 2017 by apostolakisl

[Jimbo.Automates]

Thanks Michel, Wes, and Benoit for the responses about syncing.  That will be great when it's solved.

 

But when Benoit says Thermostat's are not supported, do you mean with the interface you were given?  Because other thermostats like Honeywell and Nest are supported?

 

BTW, I am in no way complaining, I really appreciate all the effort and will gladly give up my hacked hue emulator.

[timekiller]

Hack my house, easier, reward is 1 ISY

Hack portal, harder, but reward is lots and lots of ISY's.

 

Speak for yourself With only 1 inbound port listening (my VPN), my house has very little to attack. I know how secure my home network is. And while I'm sure Universal Devices cares about security, I can't know how secure their portal is. And I keep the systems I can't control to a minimum when it comes to accessing my network.

 

Yes, the Google Home relies on the cloud, but that is for speech recognition, and it's unavoidable. I just don't want to open up a possible attack vector by making it in *any* way possible to reach my security system from a device I have no control over.

[apostolakisl]

Speak for yourself With only 1 inbound port listening (my VPN), my house has very little to attack. I know how secure my home network is. And while I'm sure Universal Devices cares about security, I can't know how secure their portal is. And I keep the systems I can't control to a minimum when it comes to accessing my network.

 

Yes, the Google Home relies on the cloud, but that is for speech recognition, and it's unavoidable. I just don't want to open up a possible attack vector by making it in *any* way possible to reach my security system from a device I have no control over.

 

The google cloud having access to your voice theoretically means they have access to whatever your voice can control and thus so does an intruder.  So, just not allowing your alarm to be controlled by voice should handle it.

 

How do you handle keeping a vpn connection going between your phone and home?  I have not tried this but it seems like it would be a PITA.  I have only done router to router vpn.

Edited May 10, 2017 by apostolakisl

[bmercier]

Thanks Michel, Wes, and Benoit for the responses about syncing.  That will be great when it's solved.

 

But when Benoit says Thermostat's are not supported, do you mean with the interface you were given?  Because other thermostats like Honeywell and Nest are supported?

 

BTW, I am in no way complaining, I really appreciate all the effort and will gladly give up my hacked hue emulator.

 

I asked Google for clarifications, and I'm told that thermostat support has been released TODAY.

 

It's possible that Google worked directly with others with an early release of the API, but as of yesterday, that was not available to us.

 

So thermostat support is coming. At this point, it's a matter of priorities.

 

Thanks,

 

Benoit.

[Jimbo.Automates]

I asked Google for clarifications, and I'm told that thermostat support has been released TODAY.

 

It's possible that Google worked directly with others with an early release of the API, but as of yesterday, that was not available to us.

 

So thermostat support is coming. At this point, it's a matter of priorities.

 

Thanks,

 

Benoit.

 

Awesome, thanks Benoit!  Really appreciate the effort and response.

 

Also, the response time is amazing when asking Home to control the lights, I can't tell any difference between this and my local solution.

[timekiller]

How do you handle keeping a vpn connection going between your phone and home?  I have not tried this but it seems like it would be a PITA.  I have only done router to router vpn.

 

I use OpenVPN Connect (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.openvpn.openvpn) to connect to my openvpn server (running on my router). I'm a software engineer with a strong unix systems administration background, so I had no problem setting this up. But YMMV.

[rccoleman]

That's what I do too. OpenVPN is pretty easy to set up if your router helps (pfSense has a nice GUI), but it's not terribly difficult to get it to run on a RPi or even a Synology NAS. The real trick is getting it to automatically connect to the VPN when an app tries to access devices on your home network, and that took quite a bit more effort. It's much more convenient, so I think it was worth it in the end.

Edited May 11, 2017 by rccoleman

[apostolakisl]

That's what I do too. OpenVPN is pretty easy to set up if your router helps (pfSense has a nice GUI), but it's not terribly difficult to get it to run on a RPi or even a Synology NAS. The real trick is getting it to automatically connect to the VPN when an app tries to access devices on your home network, and that took quite a bit more effort. It's much more convenient, so I think it was worth it in the end.

This is what concerns me.  I don't want an always on vpn connection through my home when I'm out.  Turning it on and off before running apps i want it on for seems like a time consuming hassle.  I can just see a friend saying "show me that HA stuff" and I go through 5 minutes of poking around before I can even start.

[rccoleman]

Once you have it set up, it's really easy to connect and disconnect.  iOS has a "VPN" section of the settings menu that's right next to the Wifi/Bluetooth/Cellular sections, and it's as simple as going in there and hitting the "connect" slide switch.  Tap the switch again to disconnect.  You'd probably want to use a dynamic DNS provider (like dyn.com) to keep track of your public IP, but it probably doesn't change very often.

 

The nice thing about OpenVPN is that it runs over a single port that can be 443.  That means that I can connect to my VPN from work where they block nearly every other port.

 

Rob

[davebwi]

Has any one had success activating a "Program" on My ISY with Google home...doesnt seem to work..devices do..

Thanks, Dave

 

Sent from my SM-G930U using Tapatalk

[bmercier]

Has any one had success activating a "Program" on My ISY with Google home...doesnt seem to work..devices do..

Thanks, Dave

 

Sent from my SM-G930U using Tapatalk

 

Hello Dave,

 

This should be working.

 

We can investigate the logs in order to see what's happening.

 

Could you open a ticket with the following information:

UUID

Program ID (You can see it in the programs lisy, in the far right column)

ISY Portal User profile

Date and time of your test, and please specify time zone.

 

Thanks,

 

Benoit.

[davebwi]

Hello Dave,

 

This should be working.

 

We can investigate the logs in order to see what's happening.

 

Could you open a ticket with the following information:

UUID

Program ID (You can see it in the programs lisy, in the far right column)

ISY Portal User profile

Date and time of your test, and please specify time zone.

 

Thanks,

 

Benoit.

Hi, thank you for your reply, I got it working, I checked the Logs and saw that Google wasnt attempting to contact ISY..I changed the wording to Google home, and my ISY words and it goes thru now...I would be very helpfull if Google had an acceptable "Word list/command list" for use on Home control group...

Thanks Dave

 

Sent from my SM-G930U using Tapatalk

[Chuckkay]

Apple Homekit does have local interfaces but they require a hardware accelerator that makes ISY so very unaffordable (unless you put a bridge in between).

Apple just announced today it is lowering its hardware requirments for siri HomeKit compatibility... see this article..... perhaps it could now work with isy without a bridge or without upgraded hardware...

 

https://www.imore.com/how-create-your-own-homekit-enabled-accessories