Hello everybody! We hope you all had a great new year and happy holidays with the family! There were some pretty cool toys around this past Christmas season. For us, cool toys mean more things to do with. One of the most popular gifts this year was hands down the Oculus Quest and to be honest how can it not be right?
Of course, while working on the Android app, some of us wondered how the app would work on such a device. Well, it actually works pretty well, and you can start building automations based on your usage today!
Oculus Quest data in the Home Assistant
Home Assistant Companion for Quest gives you access to over 40 data points for your headset in Home Assistant. For example ours interactive sensor updated as soon as the screen turns on, which means you’re wearing the headset. This is a great way to make sure your lights are bright enough to play VR.
Have you ever played with your headset until it dies and then sits around waiting for it to charge? You can use the battery sensors to notify you when your headset is fully charged and ready to play the next round.
Do you let the music play in the background while you play? Automate the volume on your media player based on whether your Quest microphone is muted.
It’s not just about automation either. You can open the Home Assistant UI on your Quest (in 2D) and see who rang the doorbell. You can even speak back if your doorbell supports it!
We’re just getting started. As always, our users are really good at finding more unique use cases that we didn’t even consider. So get your device set up with sidequest, Install the app and start automating today!
Hello side quest!
Wait sidequest, what’s that? Sidequest is the alternative app store for the Oculus Quest.
In VR terminology, our app is a “2D app”. The official Oculus Quest Store has only recently started allowing 2D apps and we are still working on a version that meets your needs. While we wait, we wanted to get something out so we could get feedback on how you’re using it to automate things.
The app on Sidequest is the minimal version the Home Assistant Companion Android app. While the quest is running on Android, it does not have Google services. This means there are no widgets, shortcuts, or support for the standard notifications.
2022.1 version for Android
We can’t just post like that and ignore the new version for the phone app that came out the other day without highlighting it, can we ?! While version 2022.1 may not be as jam-packed as 2021.12, we still have some nice features to cover.
- A new sensor to see if your devices Work profile is active from zmarties. This sensor is updated as soon as a status change is detected, so you can do unique automations based on the active profile.
- dshokouhi added a new sensor that lets you see what the Last used app was. Combine this new sensor with the Quest and you can make specific automations based on the game you are currently playing!
- jpelgrom worked on our WebSocket implementation to finally bring areas into the app. Device controls are the first feature to receive area support, so you can easily add entities from areas. The area is also shown in the device control button itself. Be on the lookout for more scope support in other parts of the app as this should make finding entities a lot easier.
- JBassett has also made further advances in the WebSocket implementation by introducing better error handling to prevent the application from crashing and generating many unnecessary errors.
- For the Wear OS app SkechyWolf added support for the back button to work properly and exit the app.
Big thanks to all of our contributors and users for providing great features and great feedback / bugs. We look forward to further improving the Android app in 2022! As always, please remember to add your feature requests and bugs to GitHub.
