haaska: Home Assistant Alexa Skill Adapter

haaska implements a bridge between a Home Assistant instance and the Smart Home Skill API for Amazon's Alexa. It provides voice control for a connected home managed by Home Assistant, through any Alexa-enabled device. Currently, haaska supports the following entity types:

Type	On/Off Supported?	Dim Supported?
Alerts	Yes	No
Automations	Yes	No
Climate	Yes	Temperature
Cover	Yes	No
Fans	Yes	Yes (speed)
Groups	Yes	No
Input Booleans	Yes	No
Input Sliders	No	Yes (value)
Lights	Yes	Yes
Locks	Lock/Unlock	No
Media Players	Yes	Yes (volume)
Scenes	Yes	No
Scripts	Yes	No
Switches	Yes	No

@brusc put together a good video which demonstrates haaska in action, and provides a walkthrough of the setup process.

Note that Home Assistant includes a component (emulated_hue) to communicate with Amazon Echo and Google Home devices. emulated_hue exposes the entities in Home Assistant as Philips Hue lights. This allows basic voice control without the effort of setting up haaska, but its capabilities are limited compared to an Alexa skill and it does not work with every Alexa-enabled device.

Setup

1. In the config/ directory, copy config.json.sample to config.json and update it. Below is a listing of properties that config.json will accept.

2. Run make to build a deployable package of haaska. This will generate a haaska.zip file that you'll upload to AWS Lambda (if you're used to docker you can try running make with docker build -t haaska . && docker run -v "$PWD":/usr/src/app haaska

3. Register with an OAuth provider, such as Login with Amazon.

   • To use the current version of Login with Amazon, you must go to the Developer Console
     • Under "Apps & Services", select "Login with Amazon" (not "Security Profiles")
     • Click "Create a New Security Profile"
     • You can enter anything for the name (which is shown on the login page) and the privacy URL
   • Note the "Client ID" and "Client Secret", as you'll need those later

4. Create an Alexa skill and Lambda Function by following these instructions (with the modifications noted below).

   • The name of the Alexa skill doesn't matter, but I'd suggest "haaska"
   • The name of the Lambda function does matter; use "haaska", otherwise you'll need to modify the FUNCTION_NAME variable in the Makefile.
   • For "Runtime", select "Python 3.6" as in the example
   • Select "Upload a .ZIP file" for "Code entry type", and upload haaska.zip that you created in step 1.
   • For "Handler", enter haaska.event_handler
   • For "Role":
     • Select "Choose an existing role", and underneath, select lambda_basic_execution if it exists
     • If lambda_basic_execution doesn't exist, select "Create a custom role" instead, and enter lambda_basic_execution as the "Role Name"
   • Leave the rest of the defaults alone, and click "Next"
   • Check "Enable event source"
   • Under the "Account Linking" section:
     • Set Authorization URL to: https://www.amazon.com/ap/oa
     • Set the Client ID to the previously noted value from Login with Amazon
     • Set Scope to: profile
     • Set Access Token URI to: https://api.amazon.com/auth/o2/token
     • Set Client Secret to the previously noted value from Login with Amazon
     • Note the one or more "Redirect URL(s)"
   • There are two properly sized Home Assistant logos in the images/ folder which you can upload to Amazon for use with your skill. Upload both on the "Publishing Information" step of the process.

5. Go back to Login with Amazon, select "Web Settings" under "Manage" for your security profile, and add each "Redirect URL" from the Lambda function as an "Allowed Return URL".

6. Send a test event by running make test, which will validate that haaska can communicate with your Home Assistant instance. Note that you must have the AWS CLI and jq installed.

Config Values

Key	Example Value	Required?	Notes
url	https://home-assistant.io/demo/	Yes	The API endpoint of your Home Assistant instance.
password	securepassword	Yes	The API password of your Home Assistant instance.
ssl_verify	mycert.crt	No	This will be passed as the verify parameter for all requests; see here for options.
expose_by_default	true	No	Whether or not entities should be exposed to Alexa by default. If not specified, this defaults to true.
exposed_domains	["alert", "automation", "climate", "cover", "fan", "garage_door", "group", "input_boolean", "input_slider", "light", "lock", "media_player", "scene", "script", "switch"]	No	A JSON array of entity types to expose to Alexa. If not provided, the example value is used.
entity_suffixes	{"group": "Group", "scene": "Scene"}	No	A JSON object of entity suffixes to expose to Alexa. If not provided, the example value is used.
debug	false	No	When enabled, the haaska log level will be set to debug. If not provided, this defaults to false.

Usage

After completing setup of haaska, associate the Skill with Alexa by browsing to 'Skills' in the Alexa App (Mobile or Web) and clicking 'Your Skills". Find your skill, click on it, and click enable. Go though the Amazon authentication flow and when finished, click on Discover Devices or tell Alexa: "Alexa, discover my devices." If there is an issue you can go to Menu / Smart Home in the web or mobile app and have Alexa forget all devices, and then do the discovery again. To prevent duplicate devices from appearing, ensure that the emulated_hue component of Home Assistant is not enabled.

Then you can say "Alexa, turn on the office light" or whatever name you have given your configured devices.

Here is the table of possible commands to use to tell Alexa what you want to do:

To do this...	Say this...
ON Commands
Alexa, turn on <Device Name>
Alexa, start <Device Name>
Alexa, unlock <Device Name>
Alexa, open <Device Name>
Alexa, boot up <Device Name>
Alexa, run <Device Name>
Alexa, arm <Device Name>
OFF Commands
Alexa, turn off <Device Name>
Alexa, stop <Device Name> (this one is tricky to get right)
Alexa, stop running <Device Name> (also very tricky)
Alexa, lock <Device Name>
Alexa, close <Device Name>
Alexa, shutdown <Device Name>
Alexa, shut <Device Name>
Alexa, disarm <Device Name>
DIM Commands	<Position> is a percentage or a number 1-10
Alexa, brighten <Device Name> to <Position>
Alexa, dim <Device Name> to <Position>
Alexa, raise <Device Name> to <Position>
Alexa, lower <Device Name> to <Position>
Alexa, set <Device Name> to <Position>
Alexa, turn up <Device Name> to <Position>
Alexa, turn down <Device Name> to <Position>

To see what Alexa thinks you said, you can see the command history under Menu / Settings / History in the web or mobile app.

To view or remove devices that Alexa knows about, you can go to Menu / Smart Home in the web or mobile app.

(Thanks to @dale3h for originally discovering these!)

Upgrading

To upgrade to a new version, run make deploy

Customization

Sometimes the "friendly name" of an entity in Home Assistant differs from what you'd actually like to call that entity when talking to Alexa. haaska provides a mechanism to define a custom name for an entity that will be used via Alexa. This is achieved by adding your entity to a customize block in your configuration.yaml, and setting the haaska_name key to the desired name.

customize:
  light.some_long_light_name:
    haaska_name: Overhead

If there's an entity you'd like to hide from haaska, you can do that by adding a haaska_hidden tag and setting it to true; e.g.:

customize:
  switch.a_switch:
    haaska_hidden: true