The Quest to Control an ESP8266 using Google Home

I’ve been looking into how to control an ESP8266 from google home in the UK.

I have several “requirements”.

•  The first is that it works without needing a “third party” app, primarily because these aren’t available in the UK, but also I’d like to be able to say “OK Boo Boo, turn on the ESP thingy”.
• The second is to reduce the number of extra boxes I have to use, more boxes == more things to fail.

It looks like this level of integration is available through “services” more specifically the “Home Control” stuff.

My first approach was to put some kind of emulation in place.. only 3 seem to be readily available:

• IFTTT integration
• Philips Hue Hub Emulation
• Wemo emulation

IFTTT

This is just built in, not part of Home Control, is definitely a possibility, but, well, I’ve had issues with it in the (long ago) past where it was silly slow, like minutes! And anyway, how can you call yourself a hacker if you don’t write any code?

Philips Hue Hub Emulation

If you don’t have a Philips Hue Hub, then this is probaby the route to go down, hub emulation is fairly mature and probably works with the Google Home.
BUT, I already have a genuine Philips Hue Hub, and I don’t see a way to add a second to Google Home. It would also require a separate *ix device to do the emulation, and then I’d still ahve to hook it up to the ESP8266.

Wemo Emulation

Again there’s a Wemo emulator, and apparently it works with Amazon Echo, but I think it doesn’t work with Google Home.

ARTIK Cloud

I continued scanning through the available Home Control Integrations, and one particularly caught my eye … ARTIK Cloud, there may well be others, but the sign-in page for the Artik Cloud had hints on it that suggested it might be what I was looking for.

This is the route I’ve been going down.

My First Steps with Artik Cloud

Well, unsurprisingly you need to create an account (its been a while, I think you have to create two accounts, a normal one, and a developer one), because I’m using a Google Home, I just used the “sign in with Google” buttons.

I created an account, and a developer account, and heaven knows, I may have created other accounts!

In the ARTIK Cloud “dashboard” I added a device “Philips Hue”, authorised it etc.. and found that I got a whole buncha lights shown in the dashboard.

Then I enabled Artik Cloud in the Google Home App  / Google Assistant, lo and behold! All of the new lights became available in the Google Home! Unsurprisingly every single one was duplicate for ones that it already knew about, though fortunately with slightly different names.

I added the new ones into a new room, I called it ARTIK just so I could keep them separate, and what do you know? I could actually control them!

“Ok Boo Boo, turn off the ARTIK lights”

Onwards and Upwards

My next trick is to find out what ARTIK can actually do, and how to get my ESP8266 to link in.

Teaser: I’m making good progress so far!