Configuring your Home Assistant to control your Shark Vacuum

With the recent (mid to late 2024) change to Shark's authentication method, the Shark Integration on Home Assistant stopped working. Leaving many of us with difficulty trying to control our Shark Vacuums with our Home Assistants. If you're like me, I've come to rely on the capabilities and automation of my Home Assistant. And while I've not yet scratched the surface, I have been able to make my life easier with scheduled tasks and fun automation.

What do I need to get started?

Shark AI Robotic Vacuum (Connected to Google Assistant)
Home Assistant installation with HACS (not required but makes it much easier, install info)
Google Assistant SDK Custom (Install using these instructions)
Some patience
Creative ideas (not required if you just want to follow along to this tutorial)

Getting Started

I'm a big fan of linking back to the original documentation for an application if it's available so that it stays current. To set up your Google Assistant SDK Custom you will want to follow the information found on the official Home Assistant integration page, except instead of using the Google Assistant SDK service you will want to use the one I linked above. Those instructions can be found here.

Once you have your Assistant SDK configured you can begin to write your scripts and automations. I have a few different scripts to manage different functionality and updates, and I'm sure there's better ways to do it, but this is how I've done it.

Helpers

input_text.tempdata
input_text.vacuum_status
input_boolean.varvacuumdock
sensor.tempvacuumrunning

Template design of sensor.tempvacuumrunning

Scripts

Shark Clean
Update Vacuum Status if Running
vacuum_status_refresh

The main script used to update the Helpers listed above is the vacuum_status_refresh. This script calls out to the Google Assistant SDK with a text command, waits for a response, sets the response data to the input_text.tempdata, calls the Update Vacuum Status if Running script, then sets the input_boolean.varvacuumdock status based on the input_text.vacuum_status variable that is set in the other script.

"vacuum_status_refresh" script

I recommend as you are building the following script to run your vacuum and call the first action of the script before you add anything else. Then you can go into the Traces, go to the "Changed Variables" tab, and review what the response was from the Assistant. As you can see here, the response from the Assistant is quite odd, but this is the text I will be looking for in my responses from the Assistant for all of my handling going forward.

"Update Vacuum Status if Running" script

This is where you will need the data from the trace we did earlier on the "vacuum_status_refresh" assistant action. Because we need set a text field, we use a conditional if then else action.

For the input text fields I just set the text statically to the text I want to display on my dashboard. In this case, if true, it shows "Botty McBotFace is running." and for every other response that might come from Assistant it shows "Botty McBotFace isn't running."

"Shark Clean" script

This one I built entirely in YAML to get the functionality right. You need to ensure your rooms / zones in the Shark app have a text name assigned to them for this piece to work. For the options, use whatever combination you want for these, but you will need to ensure you have "clean", "stop", and "return to the dock" as options.

Automations

Update Vacuum Status every 20 Min (not required, I just like to have my dashboard updated)

Clean Hallway (or any other room / combination, I have a number of these configured for scheduling, if you're going to schedule using a plugin there's no need for a trigger on these)

The action pulls from the list you created in the "Shark Clean" script

Botty McBotFace Cleaning (name this whatever you want, I just named my vacuum Botty McBotFace, this automation handles playing music around my place, sending notifications to my phone, and stops music after the vacuum is done running)

The "Repeat an action until 1 condition matches" action is just a timer delay for checking to see when the vacuum finishes. It runs the "vacuum_status_refresh" script every 5 minutes and checks to see if input_boolean.varVacuumDock is turned off. Once it is, the automation continues.

Dashboard

I spent some time making my dashboard how I like it. If you want to make button cards like mine, you can do so with some pretty basic settings.

I hope you found this helpful and if you have any questions or comments, let me know below! Would love to hear how it works for y'all.

4 comments

Nikkeh December 27, 2024 at 11:15 AM December 27, 2024 at 11:15 AM

Awesome write up!

Have you noticed your vacuums listed as offline alot in Google Home?
1. vaeron January 1, 2025 at 6:52 PM January 1, 2025 at 6:52 PM
  
  I haven't, I don't think I've ever seen it go offline in my Google Home. But also I don't use the app much. I don't have any issues when it runs my automation either. Not sure why yours is doing that.
Goofy March 29, 2025 at 3:57 PM March 29, 2025 at 3:57 PM

Excellent- Thanks for the documentation / Ideas. The suggestion I would make is 1. In you steps show what you are selecting (helpers/in scripts show what the steps are to create the scripts) and 2. Paste the yaml so it can be copy/pasted instead of just images. Thanks for your work on this, I found it very helpful overall.
1. vaeron March 29, 2025 at 4:39 PM March 29, 2025 at 4:39 PM
  
  Thanks for the suggestions, I'm working on building a code view into this blog so it properly formats this and other code. Once I've done that I'll add the yaml and a few more screenshots. I kind of threw this together really quick.

Vae Tech