1

I'm creating a setup of a Google Assistant/Home that should IDEALLY respond to the phrase "Okay Google, show pictures of [PARAMETER PHRASE]" by giving me the parameter phrase. It also HAS to be able to function like a regular home ("Hey Google, how far away is the moon", "... tell me a joke", etc.), without having me reimplement all of that functionality (unmatched phrases should fallback to the Google Home).

If I use the Home, I'm afraid I won't be able to avoid "... tell [MY APP NAME] to ...", but it has a great mic and speaker built in.

I am alternatively looking into a raspberry pi solution for the added layer of control, but the Home has a fantastic mic and speaker already. And importantly, I absolutely don't want to recreate the core Google Home features (possibly able to pass off uncaught phrases to the Google Home backend?)

I can mask some non-parameterized commands with the Assistant Shortcuts ("Okay Google, cat time!", "Hey Google, show me cats") in order to simplify the call phrase, but that does not work because it's not parametrizable.

TLDR: I have a setup that needs to 1. work like a normal Google Home, but must 2. have additional functionality that I implement. I would like to 3. avoid having to state "... tell MY TARGET APP to [...]", but I need 4. parameters to be passed to my code., even if completely unparsed.

What are my options?

user2467701
  • 53
  • 5

2 Answers2

3

There are a bunch of possible approaches here, depending on the exact angle you want to tackle this. None really are perfect at this time, however, but since everything is evolving, we'll see what might develop.

  1. It sounds like you're making an IoT picture frame or something like that? And you want to be able to talk to it? If so, you may want to look into the Assistant SDK, which lets you embed the Assistant into your IoT device. This would let you implement some voice commands yourself, but pass other things off to the Assistant to handle.

    But this isn't a perfect solution, since it splits where the voice recognition works, where it is applied, and may not get you the hotword triggering.

    It is also still in an early Developer Preview, so things might change, and it may evolve to be something closer to what you want... but it is difficult to tell right now.

  2. Depending on the IoT appliance you're working on, you may be able to leverage the built-in commands by building a Smart Home Action. However, at the moment, these have a fairly limited set of appliance types they can work with. It also sounds like you're trying to deal with media control - which isn't something that Smart Home directly works with, and is (hopefully) a future Action API (there were some hints about this at I/O, with Cast compatibility promised... but no details).

  3. If you really want to build for the Home and Assistant, you'll need to use the limitations around Actions on Google. And that does include some issues with the triggering name.

    However... one good strategy is to pick a name that works well with the prefix phrases that are used. Since "Ask" is a legitimate prefix that Home handles, you could plan for a triggering name such as "awesome photo frame", and make the command "Ask awesome photo frame to show pictures of something".

  4. More risky, since it isn't clearly documented, but it seems that some triggering names work without a prefix at all. So if your application is named "fly to the moon", it seems like you can say "Hey Google, fly to the moon" and the action will be triggered. If you can get a name like this registered, it will feel very natural for the user.

  5. Finally, you can pick a reasonable name, but have your users set an alias or shortcut that makes sense to them. I'm not sure how this would fit in with solution (1), but being able for you to predefine shortcuts would make it pretty powerful.

Prisoner
  • 49,922
  • 7
  • 53
  • 105
  • I am able to use my Home to "Play Despacito" and it'll play music on the Home; "Play Stranger Things" and it'll play Netflix on my chromecast. Is there no way to subscribe at that level with an IoT approach? – user2467701 Aug 02 '17 at 12:23
  • 1
    I've updated my answer (inserted a new answer 2, pushing the others down) that addresses the built in Smart Home and media control type commands. – Prisoner Aug 02 '17 at 13:32
0

You can't invoke your app without first connecting to your app using Ok Googe, talk to my app* because if it happens so, it will be like talking to the Core Assistant, not your app.

Google doesn't allow to talk an app without app invoke

J Shubham
  • 609
  • 7
  • 21
  • You can use shortcuts to override that, "Okay Google, Elvis has left the building" will invoke my app if setup as a shortcut by "the user". I have full control over the configuration of the local device. I wanted to know if there was any way to make it feel less external, and more like a default display. – user2467701 Aug 02 '17 at 12:25