Top story for Saturday, October 3, 2026

Home Assistant corrects a backup omission affecting people who keep locally developed apps on their system. Full backups had silently skipped the local app source folder after its on-disk location changed from addons to apps.

ESPHome compresses wireless firmware updates on ESP32, RP2040 and LibreTiny devices, extending an option previously used on ESP8266. In J. Nick Koston’s board tests, the ESP32 transfer shrank from 762 KB to 534 KB and the Pico W transfer from 515 KB to 353 KB.

Home Assistant keeps recording failed sign-ins when the connecting address has an unreadable reverse-DNS hostname. That lookup is only needed to add a name to the log, but an invalid response could interrupt processing before the failure was counted.

ESPHome gives makers a network path to serial equipment. One component carries a device’s physical serial port over a TCP network connection; another presents that network stream as a serial port that existing ESPHome components can use. Both copy the data unchanged in each direction.

Music Assistant fills gaps in Bandcamp libraries by including individually purchased tracks and albums bought with vinyl, cassette or CD packages. Alexey ALERT Rubashёff also keeps hidden and preorder tracks visible as unavailable instead of losing them from the album.

Check for built-in BLU TRV support when choosing a Shelly gateway for its radiator valves. Home Assistant’s corrected guidance names the Shelly BLU Gateway Gen3 or other Shelly devices with that explicit support; generation 2 or newer hardware and firmware 2.1.0 alone are not enough.