In this edition
Project
Open Home Foundation
Its choice paper asks for local control, documented interfaces and limits on removing features after purchase.
Reviewed by mrdarrengriffin
The Open Home Foundation calls for smart-home products to keep working locally when cut off from the internet, and for manufacturers to document the interfaces needed to connect them to other systems. Its new choice position paper treats interoperability as a way for households to choose devices, materials and controls that suit their own needs.
Home Assistant
Exceptions stay in place as rooms, floors and labels gain new devices.
Jan-Philipp Benecke@jpbede
Erik Montnemery@emontnemery
Niels@nielsrowinbik
Marcin Bauer@marcinbauer-ohf6 linked sourcesReviewed by emontnemery, jpbede, MindFreeze, bramkragten
Home Assistant lets an automation target a whole room, floor or label while leaving selected entities, devices or areas out. The exclusions are resolved each time the automation runs, so adding a light to an excluded room does not accidentally bring it into the action.
ESPHome
A remote computer renders the page, while the panel receives its picture without running a browser.
Reviewed by bdraco
ESPHome adds a way to show a browser dashboard on an e-paper or LCD panel. A computer runs the browser and shares its screen through VNC, a remote-screen protocol; the ESPHome device displays that picture. The component was tested on an M5Paper using the Home Assistant VNC web browser add-on.
Home Assistant
A Labs preview starts with supported Reolink cameras and requires a microphone-capable connection.
Reviewed by abmantis, edenhaus, MartinHjelmare, bgoncal, jpelgrom, silamon, TimoPtr, wendevlin
Home Assistant adds two-way audio to its camera viewer, letting someone watching a compatible camera speak through its speaker. The Talk control starts a new WebRTC stream with a return audio channel; Reolink supplies the first integration support for cameras using RTSP.
Music Assistant
A failed cleanup no longer erases the music library, and unfinished audio-analysis moves retry on later starts.
Music Assistant fixes an upgrade failure that could delete the entire music library when storage ran out. Moving audio-analysis data already stopped safely on a full disk, but a later cache cleanup failed too and triggered a recovery path that discarded the library database.
Open Home Foundation
A replacement Home Mini board raises more than sixteen times its crowdfunding goal, while Echo owners gain several ways to reuse their hardware.
An open replacement board for the first-generation Google Home Mini has raised $132,614 against an $8,000 crowdfunding goal, according to the Open Home Foundation’s October newsletter. Imre Laszlo’s MiciMike replaces the board inside an existing speaker, giving owners a route to Home Assistant voice control while keeping the enclosure.
Home Assistant
Rows, sorting controls and integration pages gain usable navigation and clearer names.
Reviewed by maartenla, MindFreeze
Home Assistant makes the shared settings tables usable without a mouse. The name in a clickable row becomes a keyboard-accessible button, and sortable column headings receive buttons that keep focus after changing the order.
Home Assistant
Drag-to-zoom and a shared history slider replace awkward chart-by-chart navigation.
Reviewed by maartenla, MindFreeze
Home Assistant charts with a time axis gain drag-to-zoom and a slider for moving or resizing the visible time range. The History page uses one floating zoom bar for all its charts, so a period of interest can be explored together.
Home Assistant
Filtered views keep their search and log source in a bookmarkable link.
Reviewed by wendevlin, MindFreeze
Home Assistant’s system logs gain an integration filter, letting someone troubleshooting a device read only the relevant integration’s messages. The condensed error list and live raw log follow the same selection, with existing messages and new arrivals kept in time order.
ESPHome
Syslog messages stop carrying secrets that a terminal would merely hide.
Reviewed by bdraco
ESPHome prevents its syslog connection from transmitting concealed secrets in plain text. When configured to forward the relevant logs, it previously sent values including Wi-Fi and MQTT passwords and WireGuard private keys to the log collector; terminal formatting only hid them visually.
Home Assistant
A precise location stops inheriting a kilometre-wide accuracy radius from a mistaken arrival event.
Home Assistant’s iPhone app stops placing a person in several nearby zones after an unreliable region-arrival event. With Wi-Fi off, cellular positioning could report arrival for regions roughly a kilometre away; the app then widened an otherwise precise location reading to match.
ESPHome
Ventilation modes, comfort temperature and household air readings join the new component.
Reviewed by bdraco, Tiellemans
ESPHome adds a wired connection to Duco heat-recovery ventilation systems. It changes the ventilation mode and comfort temperature, and reads the ventilation level, remaining filter time and the time left in the selected mode.
Home Assistant
A read-only connection supplies 45 sensors without relying on the manufacturer’s cloud.
Reviewed by joostlek
Read full articleOpen Home Foundation
Shelly and Zooz face ownership changes; Works with Home Assistant still depends on meeting the programme’s requirements.
Read full articleZ-Wave JS
A device can no longer use an embedded address to impersonate a more securely connected node.
Read full articleESPHome
A chosen startup state can coexist with keeping the current state through firmware updates.
Reviewed by bdraco
Read full articleHome Assistant
An unmounted internal disk no longer appears as an SD card ready to erase.
Reviewed by justanotherariel
Read full articleHome Assistant
The integration is retired after the company’s liquidation.
Reviewed by joostlek, tr4nt0r
Read full articleOpen Home Foundation
The next What the heck month will invite feedback from users and the people they live with.
Read full article
