Using Home Assistant, I can now say “Alexa, show me Doorbell camera!” and see UniFi video streaming on my Amazon Echo device. In fact, I can do so much more. In this article, we will learn how to setup UniFi Protect as fully Alexa compatible device.
Prerequisite
What do you need?
- UniFi Protect device/controller
- Home Assistant Hub with
- UniFi Protect Integration
- Alexa Integration using Nabu Casa cloud subscription
In this article, you will learn:
- How to setup Alexa integration via Nabu Casa account
- Install Home Assistant Alexa skill
- Configure Alexa exposing entities
- Performance of Home Assistant Alexa integration
Alexa Integration
This is an official, legacy type integration, which allows Home Assistant registered devices to be exposed on Alexa so they can be controlled by Voice. Home Assistant provides step by step instruction to set this up, and that’s all free. However, for the full setup, this process will require network configuration i.e. well outside of Home Assistant setup itself and it may feel a bit tedious those who are no familiar with network. If you want to do a manual setup, here is a official site guide.
Nabu Casa
My recommended and preferred method is to use subscription service, Home Assistant cloud ($5/mo).
The Nabu Casa subscription takes care of all the background setup to make Home Assistant work with Alexa and Google Assistant. Additionally, it provides secure remote access and natural text to speech. Since Home Assistant itself is free, this is one way perhaps the best way to financially support Home Assistant. I have decided to pay this service at least for now. Here is the official Nabucasa website.
Configuration > Home Assistant Cloud
You can first start free 1 month trial.
Once you create Nabu Casa account and log in, you will see extended screen.
Configuration > Home Assistant Cloud > Alexa "Turn On"
Install Home Assistant Alexa skill on your Alexa account
After turning the Alexa “on”, you need to associated Home assistant account with Alexa account. Because at this point Home Assistant has no idea which is your Alexa account.
This will be done by means of installing Home Assistant Alexa skill to your Alexa. What I really like here is this method allowed me to integrate Home Assistant to other region Alexa so long as Home Assistant Alexa skill is available in your region.
Here I suggest you to use your Alexa app and search skill from there so you in your region.
Configure Exposing Entities
Configuration > Home Assistant Cloud > Alexa > Manage Entities > Manage Domains
As you can see we can first decide what entity to expose based on the domain. In my case, I wanted to expose just Light. Once you set this up, you can turn on/off individual entities i.e. fine tune. This has made the process far easier than in the past.
*At the time of this writing, page won’t refresh automatically. So if you want to see new change reflection, you need to go back a page and come back.
Sync to Amazon
The last step is synch to Amazon.
Configuration > Home Assistant Cloud > Alexa > SYNC ENTITIES TO AMAZON
Perfomance
For some strange reason, I could not get some of the Lutron switch to work via voice command while others working perfectly fine. So I deleted the particular switch instance from Alexa and hit resynch on Home Assistant. Now they work. I am not sure if it was related to Home Assistant or Alexa’s issue.
The latency quick latency measure test is comparing Home Assistant OS to Arlo Pro 2 Camera. Arlo here is older version, but officially Alexa compatible.
The result is quite impressive. The inevitable latency here I believe is due to the nature of Alexa itself being cloud dependent.