google-assistant-broadcast

Run tiny web server which expose REST Api for sending broadcast text messages to your Google Assistant, by using the Google Assistant Service.

====== IMPORTANT - REPLACED by GOOGLE ASSISTANT SDK in HA! ======

Home Assistant finally provides Google Assistant SDK integration from v2023.1.0. It supports broadcasting message without interrupting music/video playback and also sending text commands. This is exactly what you will get with setting up the google-assistant-broadcast docker container. Since this covers my needs, and is easier to setup, I will not continue maintaining this repo. You are free to continue/start using it, or forking it to continue improvements.

====== IMPORTANT! ======

Get support

Bugs and questions related to the source code and Docker image can be reported at Github Issues in the ismarslomic/google-assistant-broadcast repo.

About

Ever wanted to broadcast a voice message to your Google Assistant enabled speakers in your home, without interrupting your music that is currently playing? Now you can, and I have tried to make it quit easy for you.

I have made this after a lot of research, and it all started with this thread on the Home Assistant forum.

I want to give credits to:

• endoplasmic/google-assistant by @endoplasmic
• AndBobsYourUncle/google-assistant-webserver by @AndBobsYourUncle
• greghesp/assistant-relay by @greghesp

Broadcasting to all or specific speaker

1. By default, you don't need to prefix the message with broadcast, shout and tell etc. as this is already done for you. The message will be broadcast to all speakers connected to your Google account.

2. According to Google Assistant doc you can broadcast to specific speakers as well, with the message Broadcast to <name of the speaker's room>, Hello world.

Sending commands to Google Assistant

You can also send commands to Google Assistant, such as Turn off lights in living room, by disabling default message prefix (with "broadcast").

Add environment variable APPEND_BROADCAST_TO_MESSAGE=false in your docker run command or docker-compose file and send the POST request

{
  "message": "Turn off lights in living room"
}

Setup

Prerequisites

• docker - you need to have Docker installed on your machine, read Get Docker for more information.
• Google OAuth 2.0 Client ID and Access Keys - in order to authenticate yourself and get access to your Google Assistant
  • You can find help and more information at ismarslomic/google-assistant-oauth

Alt 1: Run docker container with docker-compose

Create a sub folder, ie /home/pi/config, and add files client_secret.json and tokens.json.

docker-compose.yml

version: '3.8'
services:
  google-assistant-broadcast:
    container_name: google-assistant-broadcast
    image: ismarslomic/google-assistant-broadcast:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "8085:8085"
    volumes:
      - /home/pi/config:/usr/src/config

docker-compose up -d

Alt 2: Run docker container with docker run

Create a sub folder, ie /home/pi/config, and add files client_secret.json and tokens.json.

docker run -d --name google-assistant-broadcast \
-p 8085:8085 \
-v /home/pi/config:/usr/src/config \
--restart unless-stopped \
ismarslomic/google-assistant-broadcast:latest

Using

Integrating with Home Assistant

You can easily integrate this REST Api in Home Assistant by using the RESTful Notifications platform.

Add following to your configuration.yaml file:

# Google Assistant Broadcast - REST Api
notify:
  - platform: rest
    name: ga_broadcast
    resource: http://localhost:8085/broadcast
    method: POST_JSON

Using in Home Assistant

Broadcast the message by calling the Notification service ga_broadcast (from previous step):

service: notify.ga_broadcast
data:
  message: Hello world!!

Calling the REST Api directly

Endpoint: POST http://localhost:8085/broadcast

Request payload:

{
  "message": "Hello world!!"
}

Example with curl

curl -X POST http://localhost:8085/broadcast \
 -d '{"message":"Hello world!!"}' \
 -H "Content-Type: application/json"

Known issues

1. Broadcast request gets send, but not played/broadcast to the speakers

I was able to get the container up & running, but when I send broadcast request via Postman/CURL/Home Asisstant no message is played on my speakers and I get the following lines in the logs (more details about this issue at #5):

Sending message: Broadcast Hello world!
[OK] Conversation Response:  empty
[OK] Conversation Completed

Possible solution 1

Delete existing device registration at Google Actions Console and re-create it, more details in comment on #5

Possible solution 2

This issue is related to the language settings we set in the container, when using the Google Assistant SDK (default is en-GB). It's hard to say exactly what the issue is, but for me it helped to switch from en-US to en-GB. It might also be necessary to play with the language settings in the Google Assistant app for the same Google account.

You can try changing the language settings by setting the environment variable LANGUAGE to one of the supported languages codes.

Add -e LANGUAGE=<language_code> option if running with docker run command or environment if you use docker-compose:

version: '3.8'
services:
  google-assistant-broadcast:
    ...
    environment:
      - LANGUAGE=<language_code>