Thinking about it…the problem is apparently the following:
How do we get a smartspeaker to use the routines of the main account even if it recognizes a non-main account.
If somebody within my family (who is not connected to the smart speaker) gives a voice command then the the smart speaker does not recognize the person (it does not show a name or icon) and executes routines from the main account.
If somebody within my family (who is connected to the smart speaker) gives a voice command then the the smart speaker does recognize the person (it shows a name and an icon) but does not execute any routine from the main account
my google setup:
a family account is used for my google home/household setup (also making this account the only on allowed to “sync devices” with homey)
each of the family members are “people in the household” having “manager” access
google household (huishouden)-> people in this house (mensen in dit huis) shows all accounts (family and separate members)
google mini speaker settings -> linked accounts (gekoppelde accounts) family-account header “other accounts” shows the member accounts
my homey setup:
household member 1 is owner of homey
other household members & the family account are managers in homey.
flows that I make favorites with the member1/owner account in homey do become available for use by the family account in google
Executed the next experiment: Had the family member (without google account connected to my smartspeakers and not being part of my household and not linked to homey) connected to my smart speaker and part of my household in google home, but still not linked to homey.
Now it is also not working anymore for that family member. Apparently linked to homey per account or not does not make a difference
So my conclusion is that @Edwin_D has done some magic somewhere to make the smartspeakers use the routines of the main account even while google recognizes this person as not being the main account
Either we have to do the same magic OR remove all other accounts but the main account to enable all other users to use the routines of the main account
if the triggering of homey flows then still has to be done via separate routines per flow, the making of buttons (virtual switches) might be equally bothersome and will probably provide a better service as these will be accessible “as any other device”
Yes. So what you actually want is that when one of your family members talks to your smartspeaker, google chooses to use the routines of the family account
Well, that’s the thing. I just didn’t do that much (consciously) and it automagically worked as expected. Didn’t realize it could go worse. Basically I set everything up from my account, both in Google and in Homey. I created users for Homey, I added 2 of my household to the house in Google Home (the 3rd I could not add because he is blocked by Google Family Link), and I asked all family members to train their voice. That’s it.
There is the emergency exit option though. All members van turn devices on and off right? Before Homey allowed flows to be called directly as scenes, I used virtual switches to trigger flows. You add a virtual on off switch with the name of the flow. If that is turned on, you activate the required flow and immediately turn the switch off again in the flow (so you can turn it on again). Then anyone can say: “Hey google, turn <flow name> on” to trigger the flow
More info. Just deleted the person (that I lastly added) from my household and thus also from the connected accounts in home/hub.
Doesn’t make a difference!! Home/hub recognizes the person and thus does not start any of the routines that are created under the main account.
@Edwin_D are you 100% sure that your family members can start a routine while your smartspeaker recognizes them as not being the main account?
I wanted to test this, but right now Google isn’t recognising a word anyone says. A rare glitch at Google? She’ll be out soon for sports so I’ll get back to you to make sure.
OMG, I am so ashamed - I probably wasted a lot of your time experimenting.
Apparently, my wife, with whom we first tested voice match, somehow lost voice match. She uses flows the time, but never calendar stuff recently since I switched from buttons to flows.
My kids on the other hand still have proper voice match, but apparently never activate flows by voice. They use the buttons at the door.
Turns out you are right, there’s no magic here because my kids cannot use the routines. Sorry!
No worries. Now at least I know that there is not somebody else who did solve the problem that I simply am not able to solve .
I’m considering to ask Athom support for this as to my opinion this could be something they may have overlooked and might have a solution for
If I understand your challange correctly, it should be quite easely overcome with a virtual device.
Set up a virtual device and activate that from Google. Then have the virtual device activate your flows.
Not as smooth as activating flows directly, but should work for all flows and with all users.
Thanks @dude for stepping in.
Yes I know that this could solve it (partly) but I do believe that that really is a poor mans solution.
Then I would have to say things like:
Turn on welterusten
turn on music in aanbouw louder
turn on music in aanbouw less loud
turn on who is at home
Again. Definitely not my preferred solution.
Then I’d rather unmatch the voices of my family members
Yes, the “direct” voice commands with this solution is not very sexy.
I did it like that last year, when Google’s routines wasn’t available here.
However, you can use the virtual devices with assistant routines as well. Then you can have routines that is activatet with whatever sentence you like, and then have google activate multiple virtual devices in that routine.
One obstacle is that when a device is activated, it obviusly can’t be activated again before it has been deactivated. I solved this by adding “turn off virtual device after 1 sec.” to the flow that it triggers, making it a momentary switch.
The main downside with this imo. is that you have to split up your logic between Homey and Google assitant.
Problem is, routines are personal as well as far as I can tell. Basically this is I think a Google problem, why link devices to a shared home and not the scenes?
Yep. I googled a bit for sharing routines and found a forum where people (US based I believe) were already asking for sharing of routines between family members back in 2018. So likely it will not become available soon.
My strategy is to unmatch the voices for the rest of my family, such that a smart speaker will always choose my account to run the routines.
Haven’t implemented my strategy yet…,
I have a little experiment with IFTTT & homey, see screenshots.
This seems to work for me, for which this is the ifttt account, i’m google house member & homey owner. Don’t know yet if it works for other house members / non IFTTT accounts & non-homey owners. pff what a hassle, I just want the good old days with “tell homey”
And it kinda all depends on the “emulate speech” action in Homey, if that is also being phased out I’m back to square one.
Thanks for sharing. for now I will stick to disabling the voice match for all family members except myself. Then Google Home/Hub will automatically choose to run my routines and thus activates the flows that I have set as favorite.
Note that I also created a support ticket at Athom, and got an initial positive response.
I like the thought of the IFTTT route. I do not like that IFTTT is not available in Dutch for Google Assistant. It’s too bad there’s no way to execute a flow by a name text field. I do thing that this is something that Athom could add quite easily as an alternative to Emulate speach.
