Google Assistant actions on google

Question

All my hardware is already developed. I use MQTT for communication between my devices, I have lights, fans, heaters and many more ioT appliances. I can controll all of these from my Android application which i have built. I would like to use Google Assistant to control my devices as well. The status of my lights (on/off) are stored in a sql database and when ever a change occurs to the database(detected by the hardware) my hardware can control that specific light. In My Android app i do the same thing which is updating the databases value(on/off) of the light and the change is detected by my hardware platform. Can i use Google Assistant to update a sql database value? I can create a webserver( ASP.NET C#) and pass the command to the sql database of my relevant customer if google assistant can invoke the username or email, lightID, command to my webserver. Can google assistant do this? If not how would achieve this.

Answer 1

It sounds like you want to take a look at the Actions on Google Smart Home API which will let the Assistants Smart Home controls work with your control server directly.

Without knowing exactly how your database or existing web server are configured or hosted, I can speak only broadly at best. Your web server will need to implement two primary things:

1. You'll need an OAuth2 server that can issue tokens that represent your users. This is how Google will associate the user's account on the Assistant with your account, and how Google will identify (to you) which user is issuing the command.

2. You will need to implement a webhook at a URL on your web server. This webhook will be sent a POST message containing a header with a valid auth token (that you issued) and a JSON body. The JSON will contain information about the command that has been issued by the user. Your HTTP reply body will also be JSON. For details of the JSON formats and all the fields that it can send and that you must reply with, consult Google's documentation.

There are a number of different commands (which Google calls "intents") that Google can send you on behalf of the user. You should be able to handle all of them by either querying or modifying your database:

• SYNC - A request for what devices this user has, some of their configuration information, and what commands they respect.
• QUERY - What is the current state of the devices for this user.
• EXECUTE - Change the state on some of the user's devices.
• RESYNC - (Future update) A re-request of the user's device info.