Thanks to readers in here I’m having a play with HA-Bridge to act as a device gateway between my home control (generally ESP8266) devices and Amazon Echo.
I’m only scratching the surface and haven’t gotten past “Alexa, turn X on”, “Alexa turn X off” and “Alexa set X to 30%” but it’s a start and hopefully someone in here will fill in the blanks.
So, assuming you have an Amazon DOT or Echo (at £49 the DOT is the best toy I’ve bought for ages – just bought another one for the house – as this one is hiding in my office)…
The BEST way to control gadgets by voice up to now IMHO is using our own Node-Red software and an HTTPS certificate – but then – it’s not trivial as has been discussed elsewhere (unless you’ve done it before) to get the HTTPS and Amazon talking to each other.
So I played with simpler solutions (I like to try everything) but just recently decided to have a go at HA-Bridge – now – this IS EASY if you don’t go to the wrong repository etc…
First things first – Aidan was playing with this and he could not get anywhere as he had an old version of JAVA on his Raspberry Pi – he solved THAT problem as such. I found that I had to use root access for ALL of the code below.
[pcsh lang="bash" tab_size="4" message="" hl_lines="" provider="manual"]
echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/webupd8team/java/ubuntu xenial main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/webupd8team-java.list
echo "deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/webupd8team/java/ubuntu xenial main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/webupd8team-java.list
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys EEA14886
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-installer
[/pcsh]
So that's Java up to version 8. On a NEO AIR I got an error message when running “java –version” until I rebooted.
Now to install HA-Bridge - easy - go to your PI directory on the Pi or similar - make a directory - called, say, "habridge" - and enter that directory. I grabbed the JAVA file directly in Windows and copied it across- giving it execute permissions - not sure if that was necessary but I'm just repeating what I did.
All I did was grab the JAVA file from here.
So the general idea is that this Java file will run - and give you a web page in which you can create and run "devices" that the Dot or the Echo will recognise. But it will want to use Port 80 by default (normal web page port) and I of course have a web server there... I tried running it - failed due to lack of permissions - so I ran it as ROOT - that failed due to the port being in use.
sudo java -jar -Dserver.port=82 ha-bridge-3.2.2.jar
I ran this - note the reference to port 82 - and lo - it works - ok - another matter getting it to run from power up but we’ll come to that.
Ok so THEN I discovered that my MQTT installation – Mosquitto did not include the client tools… so…
sudo apt-get install mosquitto mosquitto-clients -y
Off I went to a browser : 192.168.0.20:82
Ok, here's the bit that floored me - this might save you a little work. I used MANUAL ADD to add these devices - here's one of them... these will respond to on, off and a value - and send MQTT messages accordingly. That's it - all you then have to do is tell Alexa to search for new devices - and use them.
So what we have here is only marginally better than the simple node-red node - i.e. we now have % lighting control - who is going to show us how to develop this to do temperature and other stuff!
If you don't need user and password for your MQTT (-P and –u) - don't use them.
The only thing that appears fairly useless is the middle item - intensity control - which could be used for lighting or heating. So "turn office television to 25" works - you get the value 25. "turn office television up" or "down" shifts the value by around 25% - and that's GREAT for lighting but no use for heating - I would want an actual value to set the heating to that value - but up and down to shift the temperature by - maybe 1 degree.
You can in fact say “turn X up by one”.
SO - easy voice control - create lots of devices... this whole operation other than blogging it took merely a few minutes and thanks to readers who pointed me in this direction.
This software does not seem able to control responses – you get “OK” - how then would you ASK the thermometer to return it’s current value!?!?! Well, you can’t so there is still life in our HTTPS solution – but this is VERY easy to set up.
Having now followed the instructions here and here (see “writing a unit file in the latter link) made a “unit” startup file – I now have the whole thing running from power-up on the same Pi that runs Node-Red and Mosquitto.
Essentially here’s what I ran having created a UNIT file as per the first of those two links above.
sudo systemctl enable habridge.service
sudo systemctl start habridge.service
That’s it – program runs – survives power cycle.
Here’s another explanation of how to do this! http://xbmcnut.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/installing-ha-bridge-on-your-raspberry.html
So much to learn, so little time.
I’ve recently updated my setup at home, finally doing away with HA-Bridge and I thought you might like to see this simple setup.
