Home Assistant

2022.6: Gaining new insights!

Franck Nijhof Comments

šŸ‘‹ Hi there, Home Assistant Core 2022.6!

The June release brings insights! Insights on how you are doing with your energy usage, and insights into what all the devices in your home are up to!

But that is not all June has to bring. Besides this release and the release party, we have two additional events lined up for you this month!

On June 15, we will be hosting a Matter in Home Assistant workshop!

The workshop will show you what weā€™ve been up to and allow you to actually test it out by adding your first Matter device to your own instance! Iā€™m excited for this one; Iā€™ve ordered the parts listed in the workshop details for myself šŸ¤—.

The day after, June 16, the second event: Letā€™s get loud!

This event is all about a new approach to home audio and music in an open solution that values the Open Home. Join this event for the latest news and audio demos from Home Assistant, ESPHome, Raspiaudio, andā€¦ something new!

Also: Hi Jacqueline Raaflaub! šŸ‘‹ Jacqueline has joined Nabu Casa; she will help out with support and assist in moderating our community. We are excited to have you, and welcome!

Anyways, this Home Assistant Core release is a nice release with a couple of new features and lots of cleanups under the hood. Together with the upcoming events, this is going to be one exciting month!

Enjoy the release (and upcoming events)!

../Frenck

Missed our release party live stream on YouTube? Donā€™t worry! You can watch the recording of it right here!

Comparing data in the energy dashboard

Did you use less or more energy thanā€¦ Yesterday? Last week? Month? Year? We all want to know if we are on the right track, right?

This release introduces the capability to compare energy data against the previous period directly from the energy dashboard!

Clicking the ā€œCompare dataā€ button in the top right of your energy dashboard will instantly compare the period you are currently viewing with the same period before that. It adds the previous period to the graphs using a lighter bar color.

Screenshot showing energy usage being compared from last week with the week before that

In the above screenshot, my energy usage of this week is compared with the week before; since, a week is selected as the period to view.

The same also works for other graphs; for example, the screenshot below shows the solar energy production for today compared with yesterday.

Screenshot showing solar energy production data compared with the day before

Logbooks have never been better!

The logbook received a significant overhaul this release. The backend of the logbook got a lot of optimizations. Data processing has been polished and optimized to make logbooks load super fast, creating an experience that is as smooth as possible.

We added the logbook to more places as well. It is now shown on device and area pages. That way, you can instantly see the last activity for that specific device or, in case of an area, of all the devices in that area.

And on top of all that: Logbooks are now live! You can see events live on your screen, while the logbook updates instantly when events are happing!

Screen recording showing a live logbook feed on the device page The logbook on this device page, when motion is detected the logbook updates in real-time.

Also new: The logbook can now show device events too! This is helpful for entity-less logs, like device events of button presses. deCONZ, Elk-M1 Control, Philips Hue, Lutron CasƩta, Shelly, and the Mobile App added support for this new feature.

Thanks @bdraco, for your hard work on the logbooks!

Streamlining the OAuth2 experience

Home Assistant has quite a few integrations that use the OAuth2 standard to authenticate your Home Assistant instance with a third-party service. Some examples are Home Connect, Spotify, Netatmo, Xbox, Withings, and Google Calendars.

OAuth2 can be pretty complex, as services often implement additional requirements on top of the OAuth2 specifications. So, if ā€œOAuth Redirect URIā€ gives you the shivers, you definitely will know what drama we are talking about. Additionally, for most, you need to register a developer account, create an application, get the client ID and secret and configure YAML šŸ„“

This release aims to make this all easier and streamline this experience A LOT.

Screenshot showing adding OAuth2 application credentials can now be done via the UI

@allenporter has been busy adding support for managing OAuth2 application credentials directly from the UI! (screenshot above.) This removes the need to edit YAML (and restart Home Assistant). Additionally, the UI will now guide you through this all when setting up the integration. Awesome!

Also, we have extended My Home Assistant to be able to support OAuth2 authentication redirects! Itā€™s fast, simple, privacy-aware, and nothing for you to set up. It just works! No more redirect URI frustrations. šŸ¤˜

We have updated the documentation of all integrations using OAuth2 to reflect all these changes.

Calendar triggers with offsets

The last release, we introduced the calendar trigger; in this release, the calendar trigger is extended with offset support!

Offsets can be helpful for use in automations, as it allows you to alert ahead of the actual calendar event happening. For example, triggering a notification the evening before trash day, a birthday reminder a week early, or a reminder 15 minutes before a meeting.

Screenshot showing the calendar trigger using an offset
Use the calendar trigger to schedule anything in your home!

Create a calendar and add events to it as a schedule, for example, for your thermostat or lights, and use an automation to trigger and adjust these devices based on the plan you have defined in that calendar!

This way, you can create complex schedules with repeating patterns and schedule exceptions, with the ease of using your calendar.

Improved scene editor

Scenes are great for restoring states of multiple devices to a previous state, e.g., to quickly set a lighting mood in a room, using an automation, script, or a button on your dashboard.

When creating scenes, it creates those scenes based on the state of a whole device (including all of its entities). However, what if you want to add a specific entity to a scene and not the entire device?

Well, now you can!

Screenshot showing the scene editor adding a single entity to the scene

It is a small but welcome improvement that makes it possible to include single entities into a scene without adding the whole device. Of course, you can also still add the entire device if you want to.

Database performance

This release builds on the database improvements from 2022.4. Disk writes have been reduced to preserve SD card lifetimes and new APIs have been added, which get event/historical data to the frontend even faster.

The database storage format is further optimized, with an additional size reduction ranging from 25-40% for most installs on top of what has been gained in previous releases. This is achieved by storing events more efficiently.

Data stored in the database before upgrading to this release isnā€™t compacted. The size reduction will occur over time when new data gets recorded, and older data gets purged.

If you are using SQLite (default) or MySQL, you will benefit from a faster date parser, which speeds up multi-hour history and logbooks.

We recommend not to miss this release to ensure that future database changes and migrations will be faster.

Other noteworthy changes

There is much more juice in this release; here are some of the other noteworthy changes this release:

  • The System Health menu now shows database information, including versions and estimated database size. The version number of the OS Agent is now also listed. Thanks, @bdraco & @ludeeus.
  • The ā€œPreload Cameraā€ setting shown on every camera feed has been moved! It is now part of the entity settings, preventing unintentional toggling. Thanks @bramkragten!
  • @goyney upgraded the Material Design Icons to version v6.7.96, providing us with 100 new, fresh, and really useful icons! Thank you!
  • The this variable in template entities is now also available for use in their actions! Thanks, @emontnemery.
  • A big shout out to @yosilevy, who has been improving support for RTL languages (Right to Left) in the UI! Thank you!
  • @balloob added support for the media browser to the GStreamer and VLC media player integrations.
  • The as_timedelta template filter/function, added by @eifinger, allows you to convert many time strings (including ISO8601) into a timedelta object. Awesome!
  • Lots of you asked for it; the ā€œYAMLā€ tab is now the first tab shown in the developer tools.
  • @Noltari has been extending the QNAP QSW integration, adding support for diagnostics, a reboot button, and binary sensors for anomaly detection.
  • Got a Ring doorbell? And want to fool the others in your house someone is at the door? Now you can! Thanks to @grablair you can now trigger the ding! This is useful for notifications, of course ;)
  • Tasmota covers now support tilting, thanks @emontnemery!
  • @rappenze added support for garage doors to Fibaro, nice!
  • The QR Code integration now works on all installation types, thanks @cliffordwhansen!
  • Venstar now has CO2 and IAQ sensors when the thermostat supports it, awesome @hall!
  • Using a NETGEAR? @starkillerOG added the speed test sensors!

New Integrations

We welcome the following new integrations this release:

Integrations now available to set up from the UI

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

Release 2022.6.1 - June 2

Release 2022.6.2 - June 4

Release 2022.6.3 - June 6

Release 2022.6.4 - June 7

Release 2022.6.5 - June 10

Release 2022.6.6 - June 14

Release 2022.6.7 - June 22

Need help? Join the community!

Home Assistant has a great community of users who are all more than willing to help each other out. So, join us!

Our very active Discord chat server is an excellent place to be at, and donā€™t forget to join our amazing forums.

Found a bug or issue? Please report it in our issue tracker, to get it fixed! Or, check our help page for guidance for more places you can go.

Are you more into email? Sign-up for our Building the Open Home Newsletter to get the latest news about features, things happening in our community and other news about building an Open Home; straight into your inbox.

Backward-incompatible changes

Below is a listing of the backward-incompatible changes for this release, per subject or integration. Click on one of those to read more about the breaking change for that specific item.

If you are a custom integration developer and want to learn about breaking changes and new features available for your integration: Be sure to follow our developer blog. The following are the most notable for this release:

Farewell to the following

The following integrations are also no longer available as of this release:

All changes

Of course, there is a lot more in this release. You can find a list of all changes made here: Full changelog for Home Assistant Core 2022.6