Voice control

Say "Hey Google, activate Party mode" or "Alexa, turn on Chill mode" and the room changes. Tempolight has no voice assistant of its own: it goes through Home Assistant, which already talks to Google Assistant and Alexa. If you don't use Home Assistant, see Without Home Assistant at the end. For Siri, Tempolight is an Apple Home accessory by itself: smart-home.md.

 "Hey Google, activate Party mode"
        │
 Google Assistant / Alexa ──► Home Assistant (Cloud, or your own setup) ──► MQTT broker ──► Tempolight

What Home Assistant gets

Once Tempolight is connected to Home Assistant (step 1), it appears by itself, with:

Every scene you save in Tempolight (Scenes page, or Save as scene on Home) becomes a scene in Home Assistant a moment later, under the same name; a scene you delete disappears from Home Assistant too. The scene entities are deliberately not grouped under the Tempolight device, so their name is just the scene's name ("Party mode", not "Tempolight Party mode"), which is what you say to the assistant.

Names for voice. Short, distinct names work best: "Party mode", "Chill mode", "Movie mode", "Relax". New installs start with these scenes. If you installed Tempolight before they existed, your scenes are called "Party", "Chill evening", "Movie night" and "Focus": rename them on the Scenes page (or add a voice alias in Home Assistant, see below). Avoid names that clash with other things in your home, like "Lights off" or "Movie" when you already have a Hue scene with that name.

1. Connect Tempolight to Home Assistant

1. In Home Assistant, install the Mosquitto broker add-on (Settings → Add-ons → Add-on store), start it, and add the MQTT integration when Home Assistant offers it (Settings → Devices & services).
2. Create a Home Assistant user for Tempolight (Settings → People → Users, e.g. tempolight), or use any user: the Mosquitto add-on accepts Home Assistant users.
3. In Tempolight, open Settings → Home Assistant, tick Connect to Home Assistant through MQTT, enter the broker (mqtt://homeassistant.local:1883, or the IP address of your Home Assistant) and the user name and password, then Save. The panel says Connected.
4. In Home Assistant, Settings → Devices & services → MQTT now lists a Tempolight device, and the scenes are under Settings → Entities (search "scene.").

Or with the API: PATCH /api/settings {"mqtt": {"enabled": true, "url": "mqtt://homeassistant.local:1883", "username": "tempolight", "password": "…"}}.

2a. Google Assistant

With Home Assistant Cloud (Nabu Casa): the easy way

1. Home Assistant → Settings → Home Assistant Cloud: sign in, and turn on Google Assistant.
2. Settings → Voice assistants → Expose tab: expose the Tempolight scenes (scene.party_mode, …) and light.tempolight_lights. Uncheck "expose new entities" if you don't want everything else too.
3. Optional: click an entity there to give it aliases ("Party", "Disco") or a different name for Google.
4. In the Google Home app on your phone: + → Set up device → Works with Google → search Home Assistant Cloud by Nabu Casa → sign in with your Home Assistant account.
5. Say "Hey Google, sync my devices" after adding or renaming scenes later.

Then: "Hey Google, activate Party mode", "Hey Google, turn on Chill mode", "Hey Google, dim Tempolight Lights to 30 percent".

Without Nabu Casa

Home Assistant's own google_assistant integration works without the subscription, but you have to create a project in the Google Home Developer Console, a service account, and make Home Assistant reachable over HTTPS from the internet. Follow https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/google_assistant/, then expose Tempolight in configuration.yaml:

google_assistant:
  project_id: your-project-id
  service_account: !include SERVICE_ACCOUNT.JSON
  report_state: true
  expose_by_default: false
  entity_config:
    scene.party_mode:
      expose: true
    scene.chill_mode:
      expose: true
    scene.movie_mode:
      expose: true
    scene.relax:
      expose: true
    light.tempolight_lights:
      expose: true
      name: Tempolight
      aliases: [Music lights, LED strip]

2b. Alexa

With Home Assistant Cloud (Nabu Casa)

1. Home Assistant → Settings → Home Assistant Cloud: turn on Alexa.
2. Settings → Voice assistants → Expose tab: expose the Tempolight scenes and light (same as for Google).
3. In the Alexa app: More → Skills & Games → search Home Assistant → Enable, sign in with your Home Assistant account, then Discover devices.

Alexa activates scenes with "turn on": "Alexa, turn on Party mode", "Alexa, turn on Tempolight off", "Alexa, turn off Tempolight Lights". You can also put a Tempolight scene in an Alexa Routine (Routines → + → When "Alexa, party time" → Add action → Smart Home → Scenes → Party mode).

Without Nabu Casa

Home Assistant's alexa smart home integration needs an AWS Lambda function and Home Assistant reachable over HTTPS: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/alexa.smart_home/. Then:

alexa:
  smart_home:
    filter:
      include_entities:
        - scene.party_mode
        - scene.chill_mode
        - scene.movie_mode
        - scene.relax
        - light.tempolight_lights
    entity_config:
      light.tempolight_lights:
        name: Tempolight

Scripts and automations

The scenes are ordinary Home Assistant scenes, so they work in scripts, automations, dashboards and with Assist (Home Assistant's own voice assistant: "activate Party mode" works there too once the scenes are exposed).

# scripts.yaml: one phrase, several things ("Hey Google, activate Party time" once the script is exposed)
party_time:
  alias: Party time
  sequence:
    - action: scene.turn_on
      target:
        entity_id: scene.party_mode
    - action: light.turn_on
      target:
        entity_id: light.tempolight_lights
      data:
        brightness_pct: 100
    - action: button.press        # a flash to say "go"
      target:
        entity_id: button.tempolight_flash

# automations.yaml
- alias: Tempolight follows the TV
  triggers:
    - trigger: state
      entity_id: media_player.living_room_tv
      to: "playing"
  actions:
    - action: scene.turn_on
      target:
        entity_id: scene.movie_mode

- alias: Chill mode at sunset
  triggers:
    - trigger: sun
      event: sunset
  actions:
    - action: scene.turn_on
      target:
        entity_id: scene.chill_mode

- alias: Tempolight off at midnight
  triggers:
    - trigger: time
      at: "00:00:00"
  actions:
    - action: light.turn_off
      target:
        entity_id: light.tempolight_lights

- alias: Flash the lights when the doorbell rings
  triggers:
    - trigger: state
      entity_id: binary_sensor.doorbell
      to: "on"
  actions:
    - action: mqtt.publish
      data:
        topic: tempolight/action/set
        payload: flash

Any Tempolight scene can also be applied by name over MQTT, without a scene entity:

- action: mqtt.publish
  data:
    topic: tempolight/scene/set
    payload: Party mode        # a scene name or id

(tempolight is the MQTT base topic, Settings → Home Assistant; homeassistant is the discovery prefix.)

Without Home Assistant

Everything above goes through Tempolight's HTTP API, which anything on your network can call: Siri Shortcuts, a Stream Deck, Node-RED, a script.

curl -X POST http://tempolight.local:8080/api/scenes/party/apply          # a scene, by id (GET /api/scenes lists them)
curl -X POST http://tempolight.local:8080/api/power -H 'content-type: application/json' -d '{"on": false}'
curl -X POST http://tempolight.local:8080/api/brightness -H 'content-type: application/json' -d '{"value": 0.4}'

When Tempolight is locked with a PIN, scenes, power and brightness still work if guests are allowed to use them (Settings → Lock); otherwise send the x-tempolight-token header from POST /api/unlock.

• "Hey Siri": in the Shortcuts app, make a shortcut called "Party mode" with one action, Get contents of URL: http://<tempolight address>:8080/api/scenes/party/apply, method POST. Saying the shortcut's name runs it (your phone must be on the home Wi-Fi, or use a VPN).
• Home Assistant without MQTT: the rest_command in api.md, then a script that calls it, exposed to Google or Alexa like the scenes above.

Google Assistant and Alexa can't reach a device on your home network by themselves; they always need a bridge such as Home Assistant Cloud.

Troubleshooting

• The scenes don't show up in Home Assistant. Settings → Home Assistant in Tempolight must say Connected; Home Assistant's MQTT integration must use the same broker, with discovery on (the default, prefix homeassistant).
• Google or Alexa doesn't know the new scene. Expose it (Settings → Voice assistants → Expose), then "Hey Google, sync my devices" or "Alexa, discover devices".
• The assistant picks something else. Rename the scene in Tempolight to something more distinct, or give it an alias in Home Assistant's Expose page.
• "Activate Party mode" does nothing. Look at Tempolight's Activity log on Home: every scene applied says Scene: Party mode. If it isn't there, the command didn't arrive; check Home Assistant's logbook for the scene.