I’ve been trying to look to see if I can get velbus controlled via my Google home. It’s very frustrating, I have my entire house wired with velbus, and to lamps with Phillips hue. I can easily interface and control my hue lights (which cost a bout 40 euro) but can’t control my velbus system which cost me thousands.
I don’t see any move our official support for it, which to my mind probably means that velbus type systems won’t be able to compete without a user fridnely link to Google home and Alexa .
Thinking flof actually removing my devices and moving over to hue, would be quite easy I think.
The Velbus protocol is open. There are other implementations that can interact with Velbus.
But I preferred OpenHAB as domotica manager (I tried OpenRemote that has integrated Velbus support but it was too complicated).
My software can be used as a bridge between OpenHAB and Velbus.
But it also provides a simple REST webservice so it can be easy integrated with other solutions.
I’m not familiar with Google home. But if it provides some REST API or other way for interaction, I’m sure I can help you with the integration.
My solution is written in perl and developed on Linux.
But it can also run on Windows.
That sounds really interesting, the Google home is just the goolge smart speakers with Google Assistant built in. Is it possible or easy to get them talking ?
Been looking into things a bit more and I think a workable solution might me a mix of your served and ifttt.
What I need to be able to do is simply send URL commands from ifttt to the velbus server.
The rest then I can link to google assistant via ifttt.
Thats my thinking anyway, but my problem is that I havnt a clue how to setup your server, I’m sorry if this sounds dumb, but is there an idiot guide to how to do this, or can you give me some instructions. Id like to do it from a windows machine tontest before getting a pi.
It can installed on windows, but a PI is handier.
I have some instructions for windows, but the software is much faster on a PI.
I will clean them up and put them in the github wiki later this day.
Just to update, I actualy got google home integrated into my velbus system by using a velbus to smart things emulator, so all my velbus devices now appear in the smartthings app/hub, and because of this, then are fully controllable by alex and/or google home.
I am using Google Home with my Velbus installation as follows: Velbus <-VelbusVelServ <-Domogik <- NodeRed -> AdaFruit.io mqtt -> IFTTT with Adafruit.io applet+ Google Assistant applet -> Google Home mini
The thing I like with the flow above is don’t need to open an endpoint to the internet, nodeRed running in your internal network (e.g. on a rpi) connects to your Adafruit’s mqtt broker (free). You could replace the left part of NodeRed by Stef Coene’s server (calling his endpoints to control Velbus) and also add a dashboard to interact on Adafruit.
It’s quite a lot of setup and sorry no tutorial… another approach that might work is Home Assistant (has both Velbus as Google Home support)…
