Control Nearly Anything with Google Assistant and Kappelt gBridge

The IoT is instrumental in being able to communicate with connected devices, allowing us to control everything from automated homes to smart meters. The ability to interact verbally with devices is also a boon. Take Google Assistant, for example — you can use your voice to communicate with anything that can take advantage of the AI application, but only those with that particular standard if you have a device that uses a different standard than Google, good luck trying to interface with it.

The good news is you can get around that communication breakdown with Kappelt gBridge, which acts as a communication bridge between Google devices and almost any other smart device. gBridge is an open source messaging protocol (under the MIT license) available as Docker images and can be hosted on any low-power device or system.

Broken down, gBridge transforms actions received by Google Assistant through voice commands and converts them into MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport) messages — a protocol that many smart devices use. What’s more, you can bridge IoT projects that use the Raspberry Pi, and other development boards and integrate them with Google platforms, opening up brand new worlds of voice interaction. More information about gBridge, along with the downloadable Docker images can be found on the project’s GitHub page.