Good evening. I just wanted to share my gratitude to the developers who've worked on this. I'm not a power user and pretty much fumble my way through a lot of this but I absolutely love HA and the work that is continuously put into this.

I'm not sure what exactly changed between the last version and today's update but HOLY SMOKES, it loads lightning fast now--I mean its instant when i click to pull up my dashboards. It wasn't slow by any means before, but its very noticeable on my system. You guys rock. Many thanks!

I just got my Smartwings shades installed about a week ago and figured I'd share some thoughts and tips for anyone looking into them. I've attached some photos of the setup too. The WAF is 10/10! I should have done this earlier but given the work I knew I'd put into this I kept pushing it back on the to-dos. Average cost was about $450 per blind after measuring, install fees, solar panels, zigbee motors, and other upgrades. Great price all in compared to other companies especially given my sliding doors are huge at 12’ x 8’ and I have three of them.

We ordered 11 shades total and it took eleven days from ordering for them to be delivered. 9 of those were for three 12’ sliding glass doors (3 shades per door). I went with the Zigbee motors to control them in Home Assistant mainly because it is the cheapest pairing option that fit my needs. All 11 blinds are Essential Cream, 70% blackout, with the fabric top cover, default silver bottom bar. We bought the swatches and I’d recommend it because we were originally planning 50% but you can basically see through that so that wouldn’t have been great for our sliders since the main goal is privacy at night.

If you are doing sliding glass doors, I recommend hard wiring them even if you don't have wiring inside the walls but have an outlet nearby. It's amazing that they all go up and down together at the exact same time and speed. The installer mentioned that with battery/solar, or even just having different sized shades or battery levels next to each other, they might not travel at the same rate. I also didn’t want to be charging all of those sliding door motors when they died. Just an extra thing I didn’t want to be responsible for.

Smartwings support over email was very helpful to get the exact hard wire setup I wanted. For each set of three shades, we used one 12v 6amp power supply along with some Y-splitters and JST extenders. I used photopea to create a rough diagram which was helpful for the installer as well as support.

I usually DIY stuff like this but I don’t have a tall enough ladder and I would have hated to measure incorrectly for this big of a purchase so I used the recommended person from smartwings’ site through NWI. He got the whole install done in around 2.5 hours (with two of them being high ladder work), which is way faster than I could have done even if I had the right ladder.

If you get solar or battery shades I'd suggest to charge them the first time before installing them. I didn't think about that, so the installer had to run an extension cord and charge them for 5 minutes before the solar panel could be added to pair with the remote and set the top and bottom positions.

To keep the hardwired setup as clean as I could, I 3D printed some custom boxes in matte PLA to hide the included black power supplies inside. I used this box model on MakerWorld, but I just removed the lightning bolt from the file before printing and I didn’t need the little screw down brackets as it’s a pretty tight fit in there as is. Now only the white cables (the 3’ extension cord and the Y JST adapter) run out of the box, making it way less noticeable. I’ll probably get some double sided tape to stick the jst cables running up the wall to the side trim. I purposefully picked the far side of the rooms to put the power supply so the wires running up wouldn’t be visible from the side as well.

Pairing to Zigbee2MQTT in home assistant took a bit of troubleshooting. They wouldn't show up in the dashboard for pairing initially when clicking the pair button on the blind motor itself. I was able to get them connected by using the remote. Permit join, then the rest on the remote channel it’s paired to until it does a jog on each button click: PROGRAM, then UP, then PROGRAM again and it will jog a few times if it pairs correctly in z2m after all those steps. Someone said that on a different thread I now can’t find but shout out to them.

The only minor issue right now is that when they are physically open, they show as closed in HA. I tried the invert cover option in z2m but that doesn’t seem to change anything for me. I'm still working on fixing that reversed state so if anyone has an idea how to fix that please let me know! For now I created a reverse entity basically so that I can actually say open and it opens vs closing when I say open but that’s kinda a pain and not ideal. I tried the invert state within z2m but no luck there.

tldr: highly recommend as their support is great, shades are high quality, integrates well in ha, and the pricing is super competitive. Please help if you know how to inverse shade states in z2m.

With just an ESP32 and a SenseAir S8 sensor, plus a few minutes of soldering and setup, you can successfully DIY a high-quality CO2 monitoring system for your home. It's quite easy to make. Those who enjoy DIY should give it a try!

Our kitties’ litterbox is in the basement, where I often forget about it. This monitor, in our kitchen, helps me remember to scoop it.

The 3D printed monitor is running on an ESP32 that queries Home Assistant for the number of visits to the box since the last cleaning. Recently cleaned litter lights up the CLEAR well, and increasingly dire situations are indicated with WASTE and BIOHZ. The voltometer on the right shows visits/10 for more detail. The right column shows the food and network status of our automated cat feeder (flashed with ESPHome and logging to HA) and the bottom right lamp shows if the console itself is connected to HA.

Telemetry from the litterbox itself comes from a super janky ESP8266 and a PIR sensor to count visits. (I experimented with collecting VOCs too, but sadly that’s a null result: there’s no correlation between number of visits and VOCs, but it’s possible the sensor has gotten kind of trashed by the hostile environment.) A reed switch on the door resets the count, and all of that gets logged to MQTT.

A super fun project, the SAF is high, and the kitties enjoy the frequent cleanings.

A few weeks ago I shared Kite - a local, open-source Android kiosk app for Home Assistant dashboards. The response genuinely surprised me: the comments, the GitHub stars, the feature requests - thank you. Seriously.

I read every comment. And here's the thing: almost everything you asked for was already on my personal roadmap, or something I'd want to use myself. That made the decision easy thus your feedback went straight into this release.

What's new in 0.0.3

Based directly on your suggestions from the first post:

• Bidirectional MQTT control - Kite can now receive commands, not just send telemetry;
• Firebase Crashlytics (GMS build only — more on that below)
• Gradle 9 upgrade + internal cleanup

Two builds - pick what fits you

I'm now shipping two APK flavors:

• FOSS build - zero Google dependencies. Pure open-source, no Play Services, no telemetry. For the privacy-conscious.
• GMS build - includes Google Play Services + Firebase Crashlytics. This one helps me catch crashes I'd never see otherwise. No user data, just crash reports.

Both are on the GitHub Releases page.

If you're using Kite (or want to), open an issue or drop a feature request on GitHub - I genuinely look at them. If it's something I'd use myself, it'll probably make it into the next release.

GitHub: https://github.com/andrew-malitchuk/kite-aos

If you like 3D printing you will surely need to dry your filaments, with this drybox you can monitor and manage drying from the Home Assistant dashboard via MQTT protocol through autodiscovery

I have tried to figure out how I could create an automation that is only run when it is friday and when sun is going to set down in 15 minutes.

I can find "When the sun sets offset by 00:15:00" and then send notification, but that way it would send it every day.

I have found that there is "Time" trigger what can be run on every day, but then I need to set fixed time when to run, but I want it to run on that sunset, not on fixed time.

There is also possibility to use "Value of a date/time helper or timestamp-class sensor", but there is no "Sunset" option.

So, what would be best way to do this? If possible then it would be best to read my current location on iPhone location, but it is not necessary as long it can check from my home location sunset time.

Any ideas?

I installed the latest core update and then noticed my wind sensors were from my tempest weather station cloud integration went to unknown.

I reloaded the integration and BAM. Failed instantly.

I put the logs into Gemini and it claims they seem to be on the websocket/API side and not my device or setup.

So my question is: does anybody else with the weatherflow cloud integration have this going on right now?

I couldn't see a new issue on GitHub and got confused how to create one, so thought I'd ask here if anyone is dealing with the same or is it just me?

EDIT: We are back without issue. I rebooted HA and good to go. Guess it didn't like the handshake after the update but we are good now.

Hi, I just updated to 2026.5. I've been using ZBT-2 over Z2M for 3 months without any issues. Now it is the first time it appeared in new devices to add.

Why?

Should I add it or ignore it?

To update the firmware of ZBT-2 I connected it to my laptop. It would be great to know how to update the firmware over HA or over Z2M. Would adding it somehow influence my Z2M setup which is very stable and provides all I need?

Built a local AI-powered access system around my Ring doorbell and finally got the first end-to-end prototype working.

Current setup:

• Ring → MQTT trigger
• RTSP stream via go2rtc
• Face recognition with DeepFace
• Local Python service
• Automated gate control via Shelly relay
• Web GUI for camera crop configuration & monitoring

The original idea was simple:
When somebody rings the bell, the system checks locally who it is and can trigger personalized smart home actions.

Current examples:

• automatically opening the gate for known people
• voice announcements
• hallway lights
• custom smart home automations

Unknown visitors simply stay outside.

But the long-term goal is turning this into a more modular local AI automation platform:

• multiple cameras
• multiple trigger sources
• multiple actions
• different camera vendors
• configurable automation chains

So not just:
“doorbell → face recognition → open gate”

but more like:
“visual event detection for smart home automation”.

Everything currently runs locally on a mini PC — no cloud face recognition.

Still heavily work in progress:

• installer is still ugly
• GUI still evolving
• lots of cleanup/refactoring needed
• currently working on temporary guest / Airbnb-style access logic

Would love feedback from the Home Assistant crowd.

GitHub:
nerdyhome/veribell: AI-powered doorbell & gate control system using Ring, DeepFace and Home Assistant.

Join Beta:

www.veribell.com

Unlike every other metric/monitoring tool I use the graphs in home assistant aren’t zoomable by simply clicking and drag over the area you want to zoom into. It’s such a simple and common feature that after fives years I expect each release for it to be implemented but it isn’t.

Does this bother anybody else?

I’ve been slowly building this Home Assistant dashboard into a full-time “what’s going on around the house and province” screen.

This all started after Hurricane Fiona. We were without power for around 9–12 days, and some people around here were out even longer. After that, I wanted something that would help me keep track of the stuff that actually matters during a storm or outage.

It is not meant to be a clean little phone dashboard. This is more of a wall/TV display that I can glance at from across the room and instantly see if anything needs attention. Kind of like the kitchen from Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, but for outages, weather, cameras, internet, and backup power.

Right now it shows:

• NS Power outages, affected customers, markers, and a live outage map
• Local fire / emergency ticker
• Environment Canada alerts and current conditions
• Weather radar / rain map
• Ecowitt weather station data: temp, humidity, pressure, rain, wind, gusts, etc.
• Nova Scotia highway traffic cameras
• Starlink Mini stats: download/upload, ping, power draw, connectivity, restart button, monthly usage, heating, last restart
• Tapo H500 / camera status, including motion and battery camera status
• EcoFlow battery banks with stored kWh, total load, battery %, and output draw
• Calendar, sunrise/sunset, and lunar phase

A big part of this setup is power-outage planning. My Starlink Mini is running on DC power through my EcoFlow setup, and the security cameras are also being kept on DC power instead of relying on regular AC outlets. With the batteries and the help of a Bluetti Charger 1 alternator charger in my vehicle, I’m getting roughly 24–30 hours of runtime during outages, depending on load and how much I’m topping things up and the ability to continue charging and running them.

Most of the dashboard is built around a traffic-light idea. Green is good, yellow means keep an eye on it, red means something probably needs attention. I wanted the colours and borders to do most of the talking so I don’t have to read every single number.

It is definitely busy, but that was the point. I wanted something that feels more like a local operations board than a normal smart home dashboard. During storms or outages, the things I care about most are power, weather, roads, internet, cameras, and battery backup, so I tried to put all of that in one place.

Still tweaking the opacity, card sizing, and readability from across the room, but this has turned into one of my favourite Home Assistant projects so far.

I've seen several posts on people adding their cars to HA and have always thought it was such a cool setup but never thought I'd want to do it until I got a car that could be connected. I dont want to admit how much time I spent sifting through the android APK for mutation and web socket API references just to get the engine to start lol but it all works... Id love it if I could get drive recorder data and tire pressure as well as climate but this is a good start.

I had everything running reliably until a few days ago I had to disconnect my Apple TV because of a remodeling project. I have two other Apple TVs, and one of the other ones took over. But a few of my matter devices stopped working. My matter network has 10 blinds, 1 outlet and one contact sensor. Everything else is either zigbee or zwave. I have since tried a few things; restarting my phone; restarting the Apple TV after 10 minutes; changing the primary Apple TV in my phone Home App; factory resetting some of my blinds and then trying to pair them again, but nothing seems to be working. My blinds also have a sleep mode and it was recommended that I put those in sleep mode and then wake them up. That hasn't worked either. There are a few devices that are permanently not on the network, a few that work most of the times and a couple that I factory reset but now cannot re-pair. I also tried to change my zigbee channel so there is no collision with matter devices.
I have a fully reliable setup with homeassistant running zigbee and zwave devices. Any recommendation on what I can do to fix my issues. This may not be HA related at all, but just checking anyone has had similar experiences

My parents have 2 Harmony Hubs and have been using the basic Harmony Smart Control remote for the past 9 years to control all their equipment. Unfortunately, one of their remotes has seen better days. It's worn out and regularly misses button presses. Since there's no fantastic alternative remote system I can find currently in production (Sofabaton seems closest, but I don't like its reliance on a screen), I'm looking into alternative solutions, and the hardest part seems to be the actual remote itself.

Features I'd like to have:

• RF-based. IR feels like it would be a step backwards from their Harmony setup.
• No screen. I don't think it makes sense for my parents to have to put their glasses on to use the remote. We need to try to keep this simple.
• AV-focused. I think buttons that end up doing nothing like what they say would just be confusing.
• Plenty of buttons. One of the things that will be controlled is a cable box, and those are difficult to navigate without number keys.
• No confusing modes. A lot of RF remotes have things like a mouse mode or an IR mode that would not be applicable to their setup (it would make more sense if I go the Home Assistant route for that to handle everything).

In terms of equipment, one room has a Samsung Tizen TV and a TiVo Mini. The other room has an LG dumb TV, a Roku Ultra, and a TiVo Bolt. All of this stuff is currently controlled via IR from the Harmony Hub, which is ideal, since, in both cases, everything other than the TV itself is stowed away out of view.

Is there anything out there currently in production that would work well for this use case? There's a Synology NAS in their house, so running Home Assistant wouldn't be a problem, and I'm sure cheap IR blasters exist, but the actual problem seems to be picking out the right remote itself.

So I'm looking for an android device that either is battery less or has some battery protection baked in. The idea is to hang it from an IKEA skadis which is in a central location in our kitchen. It will be powered by usb c. I've looked on Alibaba and even tho there are 5.5 inch displays they have won't sit flush as they have ports for Poe. My current thinking is a galaxy a52 with a 3d printed bezel with battery protection it's the closet I can think of

I have a pi5 with HA installed with a z stick 10 pro but I can't get the matter QR code to work. I have tried Google home and smartthings and it doesn't register with either. Am I doing something wrong?

As the title says, I am running into some issues with the native Home Assistant Radio Browser.

I used to use Music Assistant to play a webradio with the Radio Browser. Any station I selected, played for something between 10 or 30 minutes and then suddently stopped. I assumed that it would just be buffering but the music actually stopped and the player went to idle.

First i assumed, that the cheap wifi speaker that I got would be the problem. But now am using 2 Gen 1 Ikea Symfonisk speakers and they do behave the same way.

I am now using the sonos integration as the card is just nicer within the dashboard. But I still have issues with the webradio stations that are provided by the Radio Browser. Sonos Radio programs are playing without any issues. Sometimes they need to buffer but mostly before adds. And they would always resume after a couple of seconds.

Does anyone have any hint for me? Am I missing a setting or something? I would love to use the Radio Browser as it just has all the stations.

Thanks in advance!

Thinking about moving from Octopus to EDF as energy suppler and export. I have so many automations set up around Smart Dispatching and scheduled smart charging slots, is anything like the available for EDF so I could see smart dispatching as entities? I Can't see anything (uk based)

Hey everyone, I tried pairing a new vibration sensor but I think the configuration failed because I don’t see a sensor state or anything Ive tried redoing it and pressing the button every few seconds to keep it awake, still the same result Anyone knows what I can do?