0.90: Remote UI, Streams, User Groups

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It’s time for Home Assistant 0.90 and it’s just wow. This release is so packed with cool stuff that it’s difficult to even know where to start, so let’s just jump in.

The first big feature is that Home Assistant Cloud now supports remote control. This allows you to check in on your home while away from home. Get a notification that motion was detected? Now you can easily check what happened and take action while away. It works end-to-end encrypted. Only thing needed to get started is to enable it. That’s it.

For more information on how it works, check out the documentation or listen to the latest episode of the Home Assistant Podcast.

Screenshot of the Remote UI preference. Screenshot of the Remote UI preference.

Camera streams for everyone

With this release we’re getting serious about cameras. @hunterjm has worked months on this and it’s finally ready for the first reveal. With the stream component, we will be able to forward streams from cameras in your house and repackage it into formats that your display devices understand. Previously, streaming cameras was limited to 2 frames per second and only in the frontend. For the first version we focused on the HLS format, which is supported by modern browsers and Chromecast. Each camera integration will need to be individually updated, for the first version we have only added support for the generic camera integration.

So what is possible now? You can start streaming your frontdoor feed on your TV when the doorbell rings or you can install a camera in the nursery and turn your Google Home Hub into a babymonitor.

To get started, add stream: to your configuration.yaml, configure the generic camera and start using the new camera.play_stream service.

User Groups

This has been a long time in the making, and has been worked on for a long time: you can now put users in groups to prevent them from being able to configure things from the UI. Users in the new “users” group will not see links to the configuration panel or to the developer tools. This is currently a UI feature, not a security feature. We’re working on making this a security feature by limiting access at API level too.

Smarter SmartThings

If you use Home Assistant Cloud, setting up SmartThings will now automatically leverage Cloudhooks. This means that you will not need to expose your instance to the internet to start using SmartThings. Yay for easy set up and thanks @andrewsayre! SmartThings support has also been added for 3 axis sensors and air conditioners.

Area love

This release also adds some more love to areas. Thanks to @Swamp-Ig, areas will now be included as room hints when you sync Home Assistant with Google Assistant. This should make setting up a breeze.

Areas can now also be used as targets in services. Just specify area_id instead of entity_id in your scripts or automations.

We’ve also made areas a part of the set up flow for integrations. When you add an integration, we will check which devices are added and ask you to configure them right away. That way you won’t forget.

VSCode extension

In case you missed it, earlier this week Kees Schollaart released the first version of his Home Assistant extension for the free text editor VSCode. It will connect to your instance and will provide you with entity ID autocompletion while editing your config!

New Platforms

Release 0.90.1 - March 21

Release 0.90.2 - March 26

If you need help…

…don’t hesitate to use our very active forums or join us for a little chat. The release notes have comments enabled but it’s preferred if you use the former communication channels. Thanks.

Reporting Issues

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

Backward-incompatible changes

  • http.api_password - Deprecated - Users who are still using api_password for authentication will need to move its configuration under auth_providers. Please see the updated documentation for further details. Those who don’t make this change will see an INFO level reminder in the Home Assistant logs until the fix is made for a time, but please note, api_password authentication will eventually be removed completely and we advise users to change to use one of the other authentication methods. If you manually specify auth providers in your configuration.yaml, you will need to migrate your API Password from the http section to the auth provider section to continue using it. (@awarecan - #21884) (api docs) (frontend docs) (hassio docs) (http docs) (mqtt docs) (websocket_api docs) (zeroconf docs) (camera.proxy docs)
  • Default Config - Default config no longer contains the discovery component. That is now part of the initial written configuration.yaml. If you rely on default config and want to use discovery, add discovery: back to your configuration.yaml.
  • Netatmo
  • Utility Meter - Currently the offset configuration parameter is an integer that limits daily cycles to have offsets in days, monthly cycles to have offsets in months, etc. This change increases the flexibility of offset by making it a more flexible time period that can be described in a combination of hours, days, months, etc. This makes it possible for a yearly cycle to start at a given day of a given month. Please see the updated documentation for the new configuration options. (@dgomes - #20926) (utility_meter docs)
  • KNX - An update for xknx to version 0.10.0 requires users to update their configuration by changing target_temperature_address to target_temperature_state_address. Other fixes and features:
    • Connection config can now be configured in xknx.yml.
    • Introduce a configurable rate limit which limits the number of KNX telegrams sent to the bus per second.
    • Users who configured their lights via xknx.yml no longer need to manually set min_kelvin and max_kelvin (fixes #21251) (@marvin-w - #21541) (knx docs)
  • Nanoleaf - The Nanoleaf component now supports both nanoleaf lights, Aurora and Canvas. As a result of this change the user needs to change the platform from nanoleaf_aurora to nanoleaf (@Oro - #21913) (light.nanoleaf docs)
  • FireTV- is now androidtv. Instead of having near-duplicate integrations for androidtv and firetv, the decision was made to combine them into one. Users will need to change - platform: firetv to - platform: androidtv in their configuration. (@JeffLIrion - #21944)
  • Tellstick - Some configuration cleanup. The way Tellsick sensor configuration was set up using dynamic values for named sensors will not be supported in future versions of Home Assistant. Users that have configured the optional named sensors initiated with only_named will have to update their configuration. Make sure to check the updated documentation for further details. (@endor-force - #21402) (tellstick docs)
  • MQTT - Pass Message object to MQTT message callbacks instead of topic, message and qos. Users of custom components please take note, these values are now available on the passed in message object: msg.topic, msg.message, msg.qos. The old method will continue to work for now but will print warnings. (@emontnemery - #21959) (mqtt docs)

Beta Fixes

All changes