Amazon Echo (Alexa) and Google Home control of MySensors

[Stuart Middleton]

Hey, all,

I don't know if this has been posted before... I stumbled across a great Arduino library which makes an ESP8266 emulate a Belkin WeMo home automation device. (up to 14 devices per chip!). Any of these devices on your network will show up as a compatible, controllable device in the Alexa or GH app so you can add them as home automation devices and control them via voice commands.

I was thinking, it would be trivial to embed this into a node or gateway to receive commands from Alexa or GH and send the messages to any of the nodes on your MySensors network!

https://github.com/witnessmenow/esp8266-alexa-wemo-emulator

You need to hard-code your wifi access and the device names into the setup code. Device discovery by Alexa is fully automatic and as soon as your ESP8266 is on wifi the Alexa app sees it and the device names. Google Home requires you to manually type in the device's MAC address (maybe for security?). I've tried this with Alexa but I couldn't be bothered to find the MAC address of my ESP8266 last night so didn't fully test the GH integration, but there's no reason it shouldn't work.

[mfalkvidd]

There is no need to embed this type of functionality into a MySensors gateway. It is already supported by most controllers. Example: https://www.domoticz.com/wiki/Alexa

But if you build something you are very welcome to share it.

[Stuart Middleton]

Of course, most people use some kind of controller with their setup. My implementation of a MySensors network for my home lighting system doesn't need a controller so this is very useful for me.

[LastSamurai]

As far as I know Mysensors is build to be used with a controller. I am using Mysensors with Domotiz and HA-bridge. That works very well with alexa to control my lights.

[Stuart Middleton]

It is indeed. But I've designed a home lighting control system that is completely stand alone so needs no controller. You can still add a controller if you want, but the actual messages and switching are all contained either in the nodes or on the gateway. I wanted a robust system that didn't rely on a separate PC to function when there was no real need for one.

So for me, being able to add Alexa into the lighting system without relying on a controller is useful.

[gohan]

Nothing is preventing to make the mysensors network to have some basic functionality built in and have a controller that can handle higher level stuff.

[Pigsy]

Hey Stuart. Do you have any details as to how to get this wemo emulator to talk to Google Home? You mentioned about hard coding the MAC address. Do you have any further details about this?

cheers,
Rob.

[Stuart Middleton]

@Pigsy I've gone back to this in an attempt to get it working with Google Home. However, it isn't as simple as it first seemed. I can't get it working with the ESP MAC address so don't know what it's doing. I suspect the WeMo app would need to register it first which isn't possible since it doesn't emulate that part of the setup.

If I had an actual real device I could probably sniff the network and emulate this part too, then (assuming the WeMo servers don't require a WeMo reserved MAC) it may work. Unfortunately I don't have a WeMo device or the time to reverse engineer the app setup so for now it's just Alexa compatible

[Alakey Fray]

TY, for link and this article, I have some interesting ideas now)