2024.11.3

Blog

Community Highlights: 10th edition

Klaas Schoute Klaas Schoute

Oh yeah! This is already the 10th edition of the Home Assistant Community Highlights! Some interesting things popped up around our community, we thought was worth sharing.

Do you want to share something for the next edition? Information on how to share.

./Klaas

Apexcharts Card

Would you like to map data in graphs? Then you should definitely try the new ApexCharts card from RomRider, the graphs in this card are based on the ApexChartsJS and that looks pretty cool.


What you can make with ApexCharts card

If you would like to stay informed of the developments, you could also follow this topic on our forum.

Home Assistant switch panel

Last week, amauryverschooren shared his own version of a HA Switch Plate, so that you can operate your Home Assistant via a physically small touch panel, which you can place in a specific room, for example.


The fysical switch panel

Lovelace dashboard inspiration

Still looking for some new inspiration for your Lovelace dashboards? Last week we came across some beautiful Lovelace dashboards on our Home Assistant subreddit page of swake88. Who knows, there might be something fun for you to make.

You can find here the related Reddit topic.

Home Assistant - Feb 2021

Which card in Lovelace are you most proud of? Share it with us!

Hidden garage

Do you have a vacuum cleaning robot but you don’t know where to place the charging station? Maybe you can hide these behind a plinth, like what ialex87 did.

My vacuum hidden garage under the kitchen from r/homeassistant

Got a tip for the next edition?

Have you seen (or made) something awesome, interesting, unique, amazing, inspirational, unusual or funny, using Home Assistant?

Click here to send us your Community Highlight suggestion.

Also, don’t forget to share your creations with us via Social Media:

See you next edition!

Community Highlights: 9th edition

Klaas Schoute Klaas Schoute

The 9th edition of the Home Assistant Community Highlights! Some interesting things popped up around our community, we thought was worth sharing.

But before we move on to the highlights of this week, let’s start with a little hooray because yesterday both Pascal Vizeli and I had their birthday!

Hip hip hooray! 🎂🥳

./Klaas

O and would you like to keep track of your birthdays in Home Assistant? Then try this custom integration of Miicroo.

Help each other with any question

Last week, we found a burning question on the Home Assistant subreddit forum from Horror_Fondant_7165. Some paint had gotten on his curtain and he just can’t get the paint stain out of his curtain.

Maybe we can give him some community love and help with his question? 😄

I accidentally got some paint on a curtain in my house, it’s oil paint, how do I get it out without taking my curtain down? from r/homeassistant

DSMR Reader add-on

Good news for those who would like to get started with DSMR Reader! sanderdw has made an add-on so that you can easily use it with Home Assistant. Please note, the add-on is still in an Alpha state.

Screenshot from the DSMR Reader add-on

Laundry card

Would you like to display the state of your smart washing machine (such as an LG ThinQ) in a fun way in Lovelace? Perhaps the example below could inspire you. You can find the Lovelace YAML code here.

Took some trickery but my laundry card is done from r/homeassistant

Got a tip for the next edition?

Have you seen (or made) something awesome, interesting, unique, amazing, inspirational, unusual or funny, using Home Assistant?

Click here to send us your Community Highlight suggestion.

Also, don’t forget to share your creations with us via Social Media:

See you next edition!

Community Highlights: 8th edition

Klaas Schoute Klaas Schoute

The 8th edition of the Home Assistant Community Highlights! Some interesting things popped up around our community, we thought was worth sharing. But first of all, I would like to introduce myself and say Hello! Because it’s no longer Frenck who writes the community highlights, but a new person.

My name is Klaas Schoute, 25 years old (almost 26 🥳) and living in the Netherlands. Currently, I’m studying interaction technology at the university of applied sciences in Leiden and from this week until the summer I’m doing an internship at Nabu Casa.

In the coming period, I will be working on energy measurements: what ways there are to measure energy, which insights you can gain from it and how you could optimize consumption.

./Klaas

Control your home from a StreamDeck

Especially the streamers “among us” will really enjoy this! There is now a way to operate your Home Assistant using the buttons on a StreamDeck but also display certain sensor values.

How cool is this!

Screenshot from the StreamDeck software

ESPHome update

Quite recently ESPHome has received a new update (1.16.0), with a lot of new hardware support. From now on, you will also be able to expect more frequent updates, as they have adopted a monthly release cycle.

A new release update of ESPHome Click on the picture to see the entire changelog.

Mechanical sculptures

jessecakeindustries shared a nice vintage project on the Home Assistant subreddit and wonders whether there might be a market for these kinds of products. Quite a funny device to remind yourself in certain situations 🙂

Who else would want one in the house?

Is there a market for bespoke home automation components? You may recall I built this interface to our home that speaks, rings, and lights regular alerts. It has tasmota at its heart so is hardware based and easily interfaced with Home Assistant. Is there a market for me to make this kind of thing? from r/homeassistant

Got a tip for the next edition?

Have you seen (or made) something awesome, interesting, unique, amazing, inspirational, unusual or funny, using Home Assistant?

Click here to send us your Community Highlight suggestion.

Also, don’t forget to share your creations with us via Social Media:

See you next edition!

2021.2: Z-Wave... JS!

Franck Nijhof Franck Nijhof

Dear reader,

Usually, I try to write a small introduction that recaps the release, while putting a bit of my view in it as well. This release, however, I’m struggling to find the right words…

So there is DHCP discovery added, which is super nice! And some really helpful new Blueprint selectors, tons of UI tweaks! But honestly…

Have you heard about Z-Wave JS?!

Well, out of nowhere, a huge bunch of developers came together this month and spat out a completely new, full-blown, fast, slick, sexy, complete, Z-Wave integration! 🤯

So, thanks guys! An achievement beyond words, really; You all rock ❤️

Enjoy the release!

../Frenck

Erik Montnemery joins Nabu Casa

Today, we are proud to announce that Erik Montnemery has joined Nabu Casa to work full-time on the Home Assistant project.

Some of you might know Erik better by his GitHub handle: @emontnemery, or by one of the integrations he works on: Cast, Tasmota and MQTT!

We are excited to have you aboard Erik! Welcome!

Python 3.7 dropped, Python 3.9 supported

Support for Python 3.7 has been removed, raising the minimum Python version you need to run Home Assistant Core to Python 3.8. Python 3.7 was already deprecated since Home Assistant Core 0.116.0.

This is only a concern if you are running Home Assistant Core directly on Python. If you run Home Assistant OS, Supervised or Container, you don’t have to worry about this, as the Home Assistant project takes care of this for you.

However, say hello to: Python 3.9. As of this release, Python 3.9 is fully supported and tested.

Z-Wave JS

This release brings you the Z-Wave JS integration!

A brand new integration for Z-Wave in Home Assistant, full-blown, created in just a month by a bunch of awesome people!

More and more people were concerned about the future of Z-Wave with Home Assistant; meanwhile the Z-Wave JS project was rapidly growing and gathering a large community around it. Long story short: Home Assistant and Z-Wave JS teamed up! And a lot of contributors jumped on the train!

This new integration is based on the same base principles as the OpenZWave integration: It is decoupled from Home Assistant. Instead of MQTT, the Z-Wave JS integration uses a WebSocket connection to a Z-Wave JS server.

This means, in order to use this new integration, you’ll need to run the Z-Wave JS server that sits in between your Z-Wave USB stick and Home Assistant. There are multiple options available for running the Z-Wave JS server, via Docker or manually, and there is also a Home Assistant add-on available.

If you run an installation with a Supervisor, the add-on will even be set up automatically for you.

Current state of Z-Wave JS

The new Z-Wave JS integration is amazingly complete. It supports the following platforms from the start: Binary Sensors, Climate, Covers, Fans, Lights, Locks, Sensors and Switches. Scenes are also supported!

Besides that, it is just blazing fast! ⚡️

While fast-growing, it is a new integration and there is still a lot in progress. Of course, no doubt, there will be bugs. Bugs that will be squashed and handled. Please, be sure to report issues in our issue tracker.

What is left? See our Z-Wave JS integration roadmap for those details.

Thanks to all

Thanks to all of the following people, the Z-Wave JS integration was able to see the light in just a month!

Yes, that is an awful lot of people! Amazing how this all came together and incredible work!

What about the old Z-Wave integration?

The old zwave integration has been based on OpenZWave 1.4, which is really old and does not get any upstream updates anymore. This also means that it is hard for us to keep it in a working state for the upcoming future.

Therefore, as of today, the old Z-Wave is marked as being deprecated.

If one is starting with Home Assistant and Z-Wave, the zwave integration is no longer recommended. For existing users, we recommend migrating to the Z-Wave JS integration. However, don’t panic, zwave is deprecated but not removed yet. We currently have no plans for removing it, unless it can no longer be made to be build for the latest Python

What about the OpenZWave beta integration?

Over a year ago, Home Assistant started working on the OpenZWave integration. Based on OpenZWave 1.6 and the OZW daemon, using MQTT as a transport. This project was promising and something we put a lot of time and effort in.

Unfortunately, the OpenZWave project itself became a bit stale as most of the upstream development is done by a single person: Justin Hammond (Fishwaldo).

Quite a few people were worried about the lesser activity on OpenZWave. Justin has responded on our forum on what is happening in his life and it is sad to read how many people have personally impacted him negatively.

Is OZW Dead - No. I’ll tinker with it, I’ll make changes as time allows, but it will be at my own pace, to scratch my own itches now.

Let us be straight here: OpenZWave is an 11 year-old project, which is used by an incredible amount of systems (besides Home Assistant) in this world, with an even greater track record. So:

Thank you Justin for all you have done in all those years!

The team that was working on the OZW integration have shifted their focus to the new Z-Wave JS integration. We don’t think the OpenZWave integration will make it out of beta. We recommend Home Assistant users migrate to the Z-Wave JS integration.

No more badges in auto generated dashboards

If you are using an auto generated Lovelace dashboard, you probably always had a ton of badges on the top of your dashboard. If there are just a few it works, but as more start to appear, it soon becomes cluttered.

Screenshot of the old badges clutter Screenshot of the old badges clutter that is now gone!

We decided to no longer use badges in the auto generated Lovelace dashboards. Instead, every entity is neatly grouped by area or domain in an entities card.

If you liked the badges, you can always take control of your dashboard and add them.

DHCP Discovery

Home Assistant now listens on your network for devices that request a IP address. Based on those intercepted messages, Home Assistant can now discover integrations for you to use with the discovered devices.

This really powerful addition has been made by @bdraco, and many integrations have quickly enriched their integrations to use this new discovery method.

So as of this release, your Home Assistant might actually find some new devices it can use! Thanks @bdraco!

New Blueprint selectors

For our Blueprint fanatics, some new goodies to the Blueprint has been added this release. Thanks to @thomasloven, we now have two new selectors:

Screenshot of the new text selector Screenshot of the text selectors.

  • An object selector: Shows an YAML editor in the UI.
  • An text selector: Show a single line text input or text area for longer messages in the UI.
  • Blueprint descriptions now support Markdown.

Screenshot of new object selector Screenshot of the object selector, giving a YAML input field.

Cloud text-to-speech settings

Nabu Casa has been offering an amazing text-to-speech service for a while now, yet it was hard to find, and even harder to setup and use.

To fix this, a new settings UI has been added where you can select the default language and gender to use for the text-to-speech service, so you no longer have to attach that to every service call. You can find it in the Home Assistant Cloud panel.

Screenshot of Cloud TTS options Screenshot of Cloud TTS options.

We also added the ability to try the chosen settings right in your browser. Click the try button, enter some text and click play to hear the text being spoken.

Other noteworthy changes

This release has no big new features, but we do have quite a bit of tweaks that are definitely noteworthy to mention.

  • We now give you a clearer reason why your Lovelace card configuration is not supported in the UI editor thanks to @spacegaier.
  • Shelly RGB devices are now fully supported!! Nice @chemelli74!
  • @dmulcahey Added filtering and zoom to node to the ZHA network visualization. Very useful to find you Zigbee network issues.
  • The deCONZ integration added support for logging basic event in the logbook. Nicely done @Kane610.
  • The Tasmota integration is out of beta! Awesome @emontnemery!
  • @spacegaier Added support for themes on the media card.
  • The items in the shopping list card can be ordered using drag & drop! Thanks @ShaneQi!
  • Newly ignored discovered integrations now show a name of the item ignored. This makes it easier to undo that later.
  • @balloob made a new framework that can detect significant changes in entities, allowing to reduce the amount of update we need to send to both Google Assistant and Alexa!
  • Setting up Lutron Caseta was quite a pain, but not anymore! @bdraco added one-touch pairing to the integration set up!
  • If you use light profiles, @Adminiuga is your man. All parameters of a light profile can now be optional and default profiles are always applied.
  • Dropdown helpers (input_select) got some new service capabilities added by @l-mb. They can now cycle through the options, and service calls to jump to the first or last item have been added as well.
  • If you have a Foscam camera, @joe248 added a service to move to PTZ presets.

New Integrations

We welcome the following new integrations this release:

New Platforms

The following integration got support for a new platform:

Integrations now available to set up from the UI

The following integrations are now available via the Home Assistant UI:

Release 2021.2.1 - February 5

Release 2021.2.2 - February 9

Release 2021.2.3 - February 11

If you need help…

…don’t hesitate to use our very active forums or join us for a little chat.

Experiencing issues introduced by this release? Please report them in our issue tracker. Make sure to fill in all fields of the issue template.

Read on →

Security Disclosure 2: vulnerabilities in custom integrations HACS, Font Awesome and others

Paulus Schoutsen Paulus Schoutsen

Attention please read

This blog looks pretty much the same as the security disclosure of yesterday. However, it is a new disclosure, affecting a similar issue. We want to make sure the information is complete.

This is a disclosure about security vulnerabilities found in 3rd party custom integrations. Custom integrations are not created and/or maintained by Home Assistant. Users install them at their own risk. We want to inform you about these because the found vulnerabilities impact the security of your Home Assistant instance.

If you do not use custom integrations, your Home Assistant is not vulnerable. If you do use custom integrations, your instance might be vulnerable if you use one of the impacted integrations.

TL;DR:

  • Multiple custom integrations were found that allowed an attacker to steal any file without logging in. Previously implemented fixes were not sufficient.
  • Upgrade Home Assistant as soon as possible. Home Assistant Core 2021.1.5 added mitigation to prevent the issue from happening.
  • Upgrade the custom integrations to a fixed version or remove them from your installation.
  • If you have used any of the custom integrations with a known vulnerability, we recommend that you update your credentials.

On the morning of Saturday, January 23 2021, the Home Assistant project was informed by security researcher Nathan Brady about a security vulnerability. It provided more insight on the implementation of the fixes done for the previous security vulnerability. We learned that not all custom integrations that implement security patches are sufficient to deflect the problem.

We verified all fixes made to custom integrations that were found to be vulnerable in the previous security disclosure. The conclusion is that some custom integrations are still vulnerable to a directory traversal attack while not being authenticated with Home Assistant. It allows an attacker to access any file without having to log in. This access includes any credentials that you might have stored to allow Home Assistant to access other services.

We have responsibly disclosed these issues to the authors of those custom integrations and worked with them on fixing their integrations.

The following have been found:

Please make sure to also read the previous security disclosure. While this specific security vulnerability might not impact them, you might be impacted by the previously found vulnerability.

Besides working with the custom integration authors, the following actions have been taken to help protect users:

  • Home Assistant released Home Assistant Core 2021.1.5 with extra protection to stop directory traversal attacks before reaching the vulnerable code. This prevents the abuse of all found vulnerabilities.
  • This security disclosure is shared widely and linked from banners on the Home Assistant website and forums.
  • The Home Assistant Supervisor will notify the user when a possible insecure installation is found that uses custom integrations.
  • The Android & iOS Apps are updated to notify the user if their Home Assistant instance is potentially insecure.
  • Nabu Casa updated their feature to limit remote access via Home Assistant Cloud and block instances that run an insecure Home Assistant Core version.
  • An alert has been placed at alerts.home-assistant.io.

Alright, so here we are, a day after our first major security disclosure, disclosing a second one. Surely it is not fun, but we are thankful it got reported responsibly to us. This time we were able to move quickly and got everything updated pretty fast. Therefore, we decided to disclose all information immediately.

I want to emphasize that it’s not allowed to personally harass/attack/insult the developers of these custom integrations. That would be a violation of our Code of Conduct and we will enforce this.

Paulus

FAQ

Has this vulnerability been abused?

We don’t know.

Disclosure: security vulnerabilities in custom integrations HACS, Dwains Dashboard, Font Awesome and others

Paulus Schoutsen Paulus Schoutsen

Attention please read

This is a disclosure about security vulnerabilities found in 3rd party custom integrations. Custom integrations are not created and/or maintained by Home Assistant. Users install them at their own risk. We want to inform you about these because the found vulnerabilities impact the security of your Home Assistant instance.

If you do not use custom integrations, your Home Assistant is not vulnerable. If you do use custom integrations, your instance might be vulnerable if you use one of the impacted integrations.

TL;DR:

  • Multiple custom integrations were found that allowed an attacker to steal any file without logging in.
  • Upgrade Home Assistant as soon as possible. Home Assistant Core 2021.1.3 added extra protections that stops attackers from reaching the vulnerable code in custom integrations.
  • Upgrade the custom integrations to a fixed version or remove them from your installation.
  • If you have used any of the custom integrations with a known vulnerability, we recommend that you update your credentials.

On the morning of Thursday, January 14 2021, the custom integration Home Assistant Community Store (HACS) project was informed by security researcher Oriel Goel about a security vulnerability. It was vulnerable to a directory traversal attack via an unauthenticated webview, allowing an attacker to access any file that is accessible by the Home Assistant process. This access includes any credential that you might have stored to allow Home Assistant to access other services.

We started to research what other custom integrations could be impacted and found several more. We have responsibly disclosed these issues to the authors of those custom integrations and worked with them on fixing their integrations.

The following have been found:

We haven’t been able to get in touch with the authors of the following integration. You should remove this custom integration as soon as possible:

The following integration was discovered to be vulnerable to a variant of the above security vulnerability. It allows for a directory traversal attack but requires the attacker to be authenticated. We have been unable to reach the author:

If you have used any of these custom integrations, we recommend that you update your credentials.

Besides working with the custom integration authors, the following actions have been taken to help protect users:

  • Home Assistant released Home Assistant Core 2021.1.3 with extra protection to stop directory traversal attacks before reaching the vulnerable code. This prevents the abuse of all found vulnerabilities.
  • Home Assistant published a security bulletin strongly urging people to upgrade their Home Assistant instance. This bulletin has been shared widely and linked from banners on the Home Assistant website and forums.
  • The Home Assistant Supervisor will notify the user when a possible insecure installation is found that uses custom integrations.
  • The Home Assistant Companion apps for Android and iOS have been updated to notify the user if their Home Assistant instance is potentially insecure.
  • Nabu Casa emailed the security bulletin to all Home Assistant Cloud subscribers and users on trial.
  • Nabu Casa activated their feature to limit remote access via Home Assistant Cloud and block instances that run an insecure version of Home Assistant.

Look. It sucks that this happened. The custom integrations we have listed are all open source, maintained by volunteers in their spare time. They often work alone on this and that’s why it’s more likely for a bug to go undetected. But more eyes doesn’t guarantee bug-free software either. From time to time, such things will happen to every piece of software.

I want to emphasize that it’s not allowed to personally harass/attack/insult the developers of these custom integrations. That would be a violation of our Code of Conduct and we will enforce this.

As Home Assistant, we could have done more to prepare for this scenario. We are currently exploring adding new opt-in features for users to be notified and allow Home Assistant to take action preemptively to patch vulnerabilities.

Paulus

Edit: 23 January 2021: Additional security vulnerabilities disclosed in this second disclosure post.

FAQ

Why didn’t you release the names of the custom integrations in the first security bulletin?

When we discovered the issues, we disclosed them to the authors of the affected custom integrations and gave them time to fix the problem and release a new version. This is a good and common practice when disclosing security vulnerabilities.

Since some of these custom integrations are quite popular, we also decided to publish a security bulletin to urge Home Assistant users to upgrade their instances. We made sure to include enough information for users to resolve the vulnerability.

Has this vulnerability been abused?

We don’t know.

Security Bulletin

Paulus Schoutsen Paulus Schoutsen

Attention please read

It has come to our attention that certain custom integrations have security issues and could potentially leak sensitive information. Home Assistant is not responsible for custom integrations and you use custom integrations at your own risk.

The latest version of Home Assistant Core has extra protection to help secure your instance.

Update your Home Assistant instance as soon as possible.

To update Home Assistant, click on the Supervisor menu item to see if an update to 2021.1.3 (or newer) is available. If you don’t have the Supervisor menu item, follow the update instructions. Home Assistant 2021.1.3 is still compatible with Python 3.7 and an upgrade is possible.

If you cannot update Home Assistant at this time, we strongly advise you to disable all custom integrations. You can disable your custom integrations by renaming the custom_components folder inside your Home Assistant configuration folder to something else. Please be sure to restart Home Assistant after you’ve renamed it.

If you need additional help with upgrading, we are happy to help you out on our Discord chat server.

We will provide more details about impacted custom integrations in the future.

Paulus

Edit: 15 January 2021: Blog post updated to state 2021.1.3, which added some additional checks.

Edit: 16 January 2021: Blog post updated to remove supervisor reload instructions, as latest version is now generally available. Added note that Python 3.7 is still supported.

Edit: 22 January 2021: More details are now available in the disclosure post.

Edit: 23 January 2021: Additional security vulnerabilities disclosed in this second disclosure post.

2021.1: Happy New Year!

Franck Nijhof Franck Nijhof

We said goodbye to 2020, which was a weird and wild year. 2020 will be remembered because of the awful pandemic, that hopefully will get under control in 2021.

We wish you, your family, friends and everyone around you, safety, health, happiness and countless blessings for 2021!

Happy New Year!

Kicking off the year with Home Assistant Core 2021.1!

Now don’t get too excited. The 2020.12 release was jam-packed, and most of us enjoyed the holidays with our loved ones. Furthermore, we didn’t have a full release cycle, this one was shorter than usual. This is due to the delaying of the previous release cycle (for the conference) and the introduction of the new release cycle (monthly now).

As a result of that, this release starts 2021 slowly, with a light release. No big new features, no new integrations. Just fixes, tweaking and tuning.

Besides, I’m curious, what is your smart home new years resolution? Let me know in the comments!

Enjoy the release!

../Frenck

In memoriam of Villhellm

It is with sadness that we announce that one of the Jedis in our Discord Server, @Villhellm (William), who had been actively involved with the Home Assistant community for a number of years, had passed away right before Christmas of 2020 at the age of 27.

He had been an active member in forums, and other discord servers related to Home Automation (Dr. Zzs, DigiblurDIY, and many more.)

We want to take a moment to recognize his efforts and the support he had provided to the HA community, and may he rest in peace.

Some of his friends have set up a GoFundMe account to help his surviving wife and family members. We now have an opportunity to help his family get through these difficult times.

We thank you for your support!

Home Assistant Conference Videos

A couple of weeks ago, the Home Assistant Conference of 2020 took place. We had quite a few messages and requests for making all talks held at the conference available for viewing.

We have started the process of making those available on our YouTube Channel. So, if you haven’t done it already, go to our channel and subscribe and you’ll be notified when we make another talk available.

All videos of the conference will be added to the Home Assistant Conference 2020 playlist on YouTube as well.

Other noteworthy changes

This release has no big new features, but we do have quite a bit of tweaks that are definitely noteworthy to mention.

  • @spacegaier removed the “No Area” from the device tables, reducing the clutter in those lists.
  • Since 2020.12, entities can be assigned to areas. Thanks to @elupus, these areas are now sent to Google Assistant as room hints.
  • Rachio now has pause and resume services, thanks to @brg468.
  • A bunch of new sensors are added to Météo-France. Additional weather conditions, UV, and wind gust, done by @mbo18!
  • @alengwenus has been refactoring the LCN integration. While it does not bring new things to the surface, it does improve in quality and prepares for future improvements. Keep up the good work!
  • Homeatic IP Cloud now supports HmIP-HDM1 and HmIPW-DRD3, thanks to contributions by @SukramJ.
  • Accuweather now has Wind information, thanks @abmantis!
  • ReCollect Waste now has integration options, starting by giving the option to display pickup types by their human-friendly names. Thanks, @bachya!
  • @postlund rewrote the Apple TV integration for 2020.12, but he is not stopping! Besides some fixes, he extended the device information and added some attributes.
  • The SQL Sensor now supports MSSQL, thanks to @dgomes!
  • Support for climate devices with a temperature range, has been added to the HomeKit controller integration. Thanks, @thevoltagesource!
  • The MQTT integration discovery feature, now has support for device trackers, which has been added by @PeteBa.
  • Sending animations using the Telegram Bot is now possible with the new animation service added by @tofuSCHNITZEL.
  • If you have a Xiaomi Miio vacuum cleaner with a mop function, this release added status for the water box and the mop itself. Thanks, @JJdeVries!
  • WeMo now supports the outdoor plug, thanks @mattbilodeau!
  • The Music Player Daemon integration now shows album art in the media player. Looks good @mweinelt!
  • Amazon Polly has a new voice: Olivia. A female, Australian and neural voice. Thanks @aque0us!
  • Google Cloud TTS now has support for SSML (Speech Synthesis Markup Language). Thanks, @lufton!

New Integrations

This release has not introduced new integrations.

New Platforms

The following integration got support for a new platform:

Integrations now available to set up from the UI

The following integrations are now available via the Home Assistant UI:

Release 2021.1.1 - January 9

Release 2021.1.2 - January 14

Release 2021.1.3 - January 15

Release 2021.1.4 - January 16

Release 2021.1.5 - January 23

If you need help…

…don’t hesitate to use our very active forums or join us for a little chat.

Experiencing issues introduced by this release? Please report them in our issue tracker. Make sure to fill in all fields of the issue template.

Read on →

2020.12: Automate with Blueprints!

Franck Nijhof Franck Nijhof

Welcome to Home Assistant Core 2020.12!

You are looking at our new versioning schema. From now on, the Home Assistant Core will be using calendar versioning, consisting of the year, month and a patch number to indicate a bug-fix release. This also means our release schedule is changing. Home Assistant Core will now be released every first Wednesday of the month!

As most things are announced at the Home Assistant Conference; more things will be added/tweaked in these release notes the next couple of days.

For me, this has been an exciting year! And thanks everybody for contributing to this amazing project, no matter what and how you contributed. You are all amazing! ❤️

With the Holiday season coming, it is time to slow down a bit, enjoy time with our family. And in a couple of weeks, a new year will start; Let’s make it a good one!

Happy holidays, stay safe and for the last time this year: Enjoy the release!

../Frenck

Blueprints

Say hello; to the major new feature of Home Assistant 2020.12: Blueprints!

Screenshot of the blueprints configuration panel Screenshot of the blueprints configuration panel.

An automation blueprint is a pre-created automation with user-settable options. This allows for a separation of the logic and inputs of an automation. It sounds a bit complicated, but as a matter of fact, it will make things re-usable and easier.

Imagine a blueprint that controls a light based on motion, that allows you to configure the motion sensor to trigger on, and the light to control.

It is now possible to create two automations that each have their own configuration for this blueprint and act completely independently, yet are based on the same automation configuration.

Sharing blueprints

Blueprints are great for sharing your automations and ideas with the community.

We created a Blueprint Exchange forum category where you can post your created blueprints. For others to use!

We believe that the power of blueprint relies in sharing. You can now share complex automations that others can use, even if they are using the UI editors.

For example, a blueprint can be shared for a specific Zigbee remote control that maps all buttons to a light. A blueprint that sends a notification when it found empty batteries. A blueprint for muting music when you pick up your Android phone.

The sky is the limit in the ideas and automations blueprints we can share!

Using blueprints

Let’s cut a long story short, it sounds exciting, but what does it mean?

You can import blueprints by copying the URL of the forum topic or from GitHub into the UI. Then you can create automations from these blueprints by filling out the required inputs.

Screenshot of a blueprint Screenshot of a blueprint.

It is really easy to deploy a blueprint, even multiple times! Blueprints are fully functional in both the UI and for YAML.

Creating blueprints

We created a really nice tutorial on how to make blueprints.

Essentially, a blueprint is just like an automation, with some added blueprint metadata. You can convert any existing automation into a blueprint!

As the last step, be sure to share your freshly created blueprint on the community on the Blueprint Exchange, helping and and inspiring others.

New neural voices for Nabu Casa Cloud TTS

If you have a Nabu Casa Home Assistant Cloud subscription, this release brings in some really nice goodness for you. The text-to-speech service offered by Nabu Casa has been extended and now supports a lot of new voices in many different languages.

This is a great alternative to, for example, the Google TTS integration. The resulting audio is absolutely stunning and the neural voices sound supernatural.

This service is automatically enabled when you are signed in to your Nabu Casa cloud account and can be called using the tts.cloud_say service in your automations.

For example:

action:
  service: tts.cloud_say
  target:
    entity_id: media_player.family_room_speaker
  data:
    message: These new voices sound absolutely stunning!
    options:
      gender: female
    language: en-US

Assign areas to entities and readable area IDs

Areas have been around for a bit already. But, not everything supports areas yet. And using it in for example YAML-based automations, is not really an easy task to do.

Today that changes, as this release works towards making areas more useful by making them more accessible and more universal.

The first change: individual entities can now be assigned to areas.

Previously this was limited to devices only. This also works for entities without a device (for example, entities provided by Helpers). Devices provide entities, and thus it is now possible to override the area with a single entity for a device as well. For example, your in-wall mounted switch controls a light in another room.

Screenshot of assigning a entity to an area Screenshot of assigning a entity to an area.

Second improvement: The ID of a newly created area will now be based on the name of the area instead of a random string.

This makes it easier to use areas in service calls, as you can now use area identifiers that actually make sense for a human! In a YAML automation or script it will look like this:

action:
  - service: light.turn_on
    target:
      area_id: living_room

To find the area ID for the area you want to target, go to the Configuration Panel, and edit the area you want to target. In area edit dialog, the ID is shown.

Temporarily disable devices

Do you have your Christmas tree set up in Home Assistant? After the Holidays are over, you store all those decorations for the next season. But what about those devices in Home Assistant?

Thanks to @emontnemery, you can now disable devices in Home Assistant. So, next year, when you unpack all decorations, enable them again and you’re ready to go for another Holiday season!

Screenshot of disabling a device Screenshot of disabling a device.

Of course, besides seasonal things, it can also be helpful if you have a broken device or temporarily taking down any other device.

Other noteworthy changes

  • The Apple TV integration now supports tvOS version 13 and above and can be setup from the UI, thanks @postlund!
  • @thecode has been busy with the Shelly integration and added support for inputs, so you can now use the Shelly i3 and Shelly’s in detached state.
  • Thanks to @adrum, the HomeKit controller integration now has support for (de)humidifiers.
  • deCONZ now supports tilt on covers, and preset and fan for climate devices, thanks @Kane610!
  • @frenck added support for setting the repeat mode to the Spotify integration.
  • The Nest integration now supports camera and doorbell events, thanks @allenporter!
  • Changes made to your KNX integration’s YAML configuration, can now be reloaded without restarting Home Assistant. Thanks @spacegaier!
  • The number formatting in the frontend is more consistent, thanks to @joshmcrty!
  • @dmulcahey has been improving the user experience of ZHA. The feedback when pairing a new Zigbee device in the frontend is improved, discovered devices are shown earlier with their progress, and the ZHA configuration panel now has a Zigbee network visualization tab! This allows you to see your network and find connection issues.
  • The rest integration can now handle request parameters, nicely done @boxcee!
  • Learn new RF commands using a Broadlink remote! Thanks, @felipediel!
  • @mLupine extended templated binary sensors and these now support templating the delay_on and delay_off!

New Integrations

We welcome the following new integrations this release:

New Platforms

The following integration got support for a new platform:

Integrations now available to set up from the UI

The following integrations are now available via the Home Assistant UI:

Release 2020.12.1 - December 16

Release 2020.12.2 - December 30

If you need help…

…don’t hesitate to use our very active forums or join us for a little chat.

Experiencing issues introduced by this release? Please report them in our issue tracker. Make sure to fill in all fields of the issue template.

Read on →

Home Assistant OS Release 5

Stefan Agner Stefan Agner

Today we also release Home Assistant OS 5.8, the first stable version of the 5.x release series.

Highlights:

  • Improved Multicast Name Resolution on OS level

  • External Data Disk Feature

  • Improved Reliability against Container corruption

  • New support: Raspberry Pi 4 – 8GB

  • New support: ASUS Tinker Board S

  • New support: ODROID-C4

  • Improved: OVA Virtual image includes more drivers

Table of contents

Operating System Changes

Multicast Name Resolution

Release 5 uses systemd-resolved to provide DNS services on the operating system level and acts as a multicast name resolution responder. Besides, mDNS systemd-resolved also supports the LLMNR hostname resolution protocol. In practice, this makes discovering a new installation of Home Assistant OS working in most situations, either using http://homeassistant.local:8123 or http://homeassistant:8123.

External Data Disk

In release 4 we introduced external data disk support. The command datactl allows moving the main data partition to any disk connected to the system. The boot partition and main operating system partitions stay on the boot medium (typically the SD card). Using this approach is more reliable than booting the system from USB. Booting from USB requires several parts of the software stack to rediscover the external storage. In release 5 we made the external data disk feature more robust and the initial moving process much faster. We plan to improve that feature even more and are happy to get your feedback!

Improved Reliability

The main system service to start Home Assistant Supervisor is now more reliable. Home Assistant OS is now able to detect a corrupted supervisor container in most situations and automatically downloads a new version of it. File system checks have also been expanded to the boot partition, which makes sure that all file systems are being checked now.

Under the Hood

Under the hood, we updated to Buildroot 2020.11, which brings tons of new software versions along with bug and security fixes. Some key components which received an update were systemd 246 and AppArmor version 3.0.

Board Support

Raspberry Pi

All Raspberry Pi versions now use Linux Kernel 5.4, just like Raspberry Pi OS. With the move to U-Boot 2020.10, we are now also supporting Raspberry Pi with 8GB of memory. With the new kernel and U-Boot Home Assistant OS can now also run on the Compute Module 4 as well as the Pi 400 (the keyboard). A keyboard is probably not the ideal form factor for a headless system such as Home Assistant OS, but it comes with good cooling, which makes it not the worst choice :-). We recently tested the 64-bit variant of Home Assistant OS much more and feel comfortable to recommend the 64-bit version for Raspberry Pi 4.

ODROID

The ODROID platforms now use Linux 5.9, which brings improved support for all ODROID platforms such as the ODROID N2(+). For the N2(+) the Real-Time Clock is now supported as well.

Open Virtualization Appliance/Intel NUC

The x86 platforms (Intel NUC, OVA - Open Virtualization Appliance) now use Linux 5.9. The kernel for OVA images has new drivers enabled for Intel Network devices with Virtual Function, PCIe passthrough for Hyper-V, or support for Audio (HDA audio devices).

New Board Support

Besides the ASUS Tinker Board, we now also support the Tinker Board S, a variant with fast on-board eMMC storage. Thanks to [@ubergeek801] we now also have support for ODROID-C4, a cost-effective alternative to Raspberry Pi in a similar form factor.

Other Changes

The build pipeline is now using GitHub Actions and we compress the images using the xz compression algorithm instead of gz. The flashing process will stay the same: Etcher supports flashing from gz as well as xz.

This is all I can think of for now. The release 5.8 will be on the stable channel today, so watch out for the update notification in the Supervisor section. Images are available in the release section over on GitHub.