I have a Google Hub and 2 Minis , would I be able to repurpose them for HA or do I have to start from scratch...? If they can't be reused, I might as well stick to Google until they get bricked (which I'm sure will happen at some point).
Currently, no, but HA will integrate with them and expose any devices to Google’s ecosystem (even if they don’t natively support that). You can also use devices with a screen as dashboards for HA.
I use Google devices with my HA setup just fine (although I want to move away). HA just added integrated assistant support, so I'm keen to try that out when I get back from vacation.
Does the HA voice assistant support require HA Cloud or whatever they're calling it? The price for that $6/m felt a bit steep for what it provided, though supporting HA development is appealing.
When I started to read through the non-cloud option, I saw some analog telephone and POTS modem requirements and my eyes glazed over.
> Does the HA voice assistant support require HA Cloud or whatever they're calling it?
I've set it up with a Google API key. The process of getting an API key isn't very smooth (Google's backend is terrible and guides from just a week ago may already be outdated if you're unlucky) but after pasting three magical strings it works very well. It supports most sensors and devices I've tried it with.
I've only had it fail because some Google can't do natural language parsing for some of the software sensors I've set up on HA ("how many days until my website's certificate expires") but for your standard smart lights/blinds/presence detection/etc. it'll work just fine.
Everything but step 4.9.2 and step 5 are messing around in Google dashboard but they seem to have updated the dashboard these days. All of this messing around with APIs is probably why they recommend people to just use their cloud offering.
> When I started to read through the non-cloud option, I saw some analog telephone and POTS modem requirements and my eyes glazed over.
Confused on that one.
You can expose Home Assistant to the internet (preferably using a reverse proxy like Traefik or Nginx, which is basically what your $6 gets you anyway) to make Google Assistant work properly with it.
Yep, HA has a lot of integrations to connect to different ecosystems. Fair warning though, setting it up and making it work requires good amount of work. I spent way too much time for on it for my basic needs and eventually gave up.
