It's also possible to control playback with voice commands on Google Home devices

[Jonathan746 (Jonathan)]

I just got the Roon Master newsletter which says

It’s also possible to control playback with voice commands on Google Home devices

but I had previously read this wasn’t possible, maybe in older content.

Can anyone point me to how it’s possible to set this up?

[Dennis_Mutsaers]

I would greatly welcome that feature.

[ged_hickman1]

People do so apparently

"OK Google" voice control of Roon playback to Google Home

It does work. It just doesn’t do everything. Start a queue playing on a Google Home Mini. You can then use voice commands to raise or lower the volume, to pause and resume the play, to skip to the next track, or back to the previous track. Very useful with Radio, or with Internet Radio.

[Bill_Janssen (Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)]

Works with the Nest Audio, too. You just can’t start streaming with a voice command, unless you have a previously-paused stream “queued up” on the device.

[Jonathan746 (Jonathan)]

Ah - but is that roon doing anything? I can play from any source on the Google device and control the volume, just as you can with physical buttons. That’s just local device capability. Those devices have poor audio so it’s not much use.

What I want to do is control a roon zone through google assistant, as you can with say Sonos. So my high quality Bluesound zones can be controlled via voice commands to Google.

[ged_hickman1]

I think the sentence implies that the playback is on the Google device. It doesn’t say control zones from a Google device.

[Dennis_Mutsaers]

I can turn the light on with a Google device. What has that to do with Roon? i.e. why even mention in a Roon newsletter you can start Spotify on a Google device?
What most people probably want is being able to control Roon zones from a Google device.

[Bill_Janssen (Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)]

@Jonathan746

What I want to do is control a roon zone through google assistant, as you can with say Sonos. So my high quality Bluesound zones can be controlled via voice commands to Google.

Google is shutting that down. This past summer they dropped the ability to use third-party services with Google Assistant. I think Bluesound’s BluVoice, for instance, won’t work with Google Assistant any more because of that. I believe they added a specific exception for home automation – so you can still turn the lights on and off.

Still working with Sonos, though?

[Dennis_Mutsaers]

From the same article…

[Bill_Janssen (Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)]

Good catch, Dennis. That’s an encouraging sign.

Not sure this would work for Roon, but it’s worth figuring that out.

[Jonathan746 (Jonathan)]

Thanks Dennis. That’s the conclusion I came to too following your link on the retirement of conversational actions.

Personally I think the statement “It’s also possible to control playback with voice commands on Google Home devices” from the roon newsletter is somewhere between irrelevant and misleading.

Sonos certainly used to work but I changed wholesale to BlueSound last year so I’m not sure how it was effected by the changes at Google. I mainly using roon to make up for the weak BlueSound app. If BlueSound 4 is as good as it sounds I’ll probably retire roon in my house this year.

[Bill_Janssen (Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)]

You can adjust the volume and pause and resume playback on Google Home devices, that’s about it.

The big missing piece is the ability to initiate streaming of some (or any!) particular selection.

I’ve been looking at the “Media Actions” exception for Google Assistant. It’s basically tailored to a streaming service with a known catalog. It requires giving Google a test account so that they can verify everything works. Given that Roon users have widely varying libraries, you’d almost have to have a separate service per user. Given that each supported service requires manual intervention by Google personnel, I doubt they’d have the manpower to qualify and implement each individual Roon user.

One could imagine a Roon-like service that runs in the cloud and streams to local devices, but I’m still not sure how one would handle individual user catalogs. I could see the path with Conversational Actions, but not with this mechanism.