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2021.7: A new entity, trigger IDs and script debugging

Franck Nijhof

Happy July, which means Home Assistant Core 2021.7!

An interesting release, with a bunch of little goodies to make things easier in creating automations, scripts and doing templating. Those are things that in general, make me very happy. Mainly because, well, I use Home Assistant to automate 😁

Also, we are saying “hi!” 👋 to a new type of entity, which is really exciting and I can’t wait to see how that is being put to use in the future.

Lastly, I want to give a shout-out to @klaasnicolaas! He has been an intern with Nabu Casa for the last months. Besides doing the community highlights, he has been working on some awesome stuff that will land in upcoming Home Assistant releases.

His internship is now over, and he passed with a nice grade. Yet, he could not leave without a little present as it seems. He contributed the Forecast.Solar integration, bringing in energy production forecasting for your solar panels. Really cool!

Alright, that’s it! Enjoy the release!

../Frenck

New entity: Select

In this release, we welcome the select entity to the Home Assistant family. The select entity is a close relative of the dropdown helper (also known as input_select).

The difference is that while the input select is configured and managed by you, the select entities are provided by integrations.

This means integrations can now provide entities that give a choice. Either in the Lovelace UI, but also via automations using services, and via the Google Assistant.

Screenshot of a select entity, providing a choice from a list of options Screenshot of a select entity, providing a choice from a list of options.

Some integrations started implementing the first select entities as of this release. MQTT & KNX made it available for use, WLED uses it to provide controls on selecting and activating a user preset, and with Rituals Perfume Genie you can now change the room size for your diffuser.

Trigger conditions and trigger IDs

If you are creating some complex automations in YAML, you might be familiar with this. Consider a big automation, with a whole bunch of triggers. But how would you know which of those triggers actually triggered the automation?

You can now assign an id to your triggers that is passed into automation when triggered, allowing you to make decisions on it.

automation:
  - alias: "Trigger IDs!"
    trigger:
      - platform: state
        id: "normal"
        entity_id: binary_sensor.gate
        state: "on"
      - platform: state
        id: "forgotten"
        entity_id: binary_sensor.gate
        state: "on"
        for:
          minutes: 10
    ...

The above example triggers the same automation twice, when the gate opens and when the gate is left open for 10 minutes (probably forgotten). Each trigger has its own ID.

Now introducing the new trigger condition! So you can add a condition on which trigger fired the automation.

automation:
  - alias: "Trigger IDs!"
    ...
    action:
      ...
      - condition: trigger
        id: "forgotten"
      - service: notify.frenck_iphone
        data:
          message: "Someone left the gate open..."

You can use the trigger condition in all places where all the other conditions work as well, including things like choose from a group of actions.

Rather use the UI to create and manage your automations? No problem! These new features have been added to the automation editor as well!

Screenshot of using a trigger condition in the automation editor Screenshot of using a trigger condition in the automation editor.

Script debugging

In Home Assistant Core 2021.4, we added the ability to debug automations. In this release, we’ve made these same powerful tools available for scripts!

So, this helps for the next time you are wondering: Why didn’t that script work? Or why did it behave as it did? What the script is going on here?

Screenshot of using the new script debugger on my office announce script Screenshot of using the new script debugger on my office announce script.

The above screenshot shows a previous run of a script, using an interactive graph for each step in this script; with the path it took highlighted. Each node in the graph can be clicked to view the details of what happened on each step in the script sequence.

Referencing other entities in triggers and conditions

A small, but possibly helpful, change to our script and automations. You can now reference other entities for the above/below values of numeric state triggers and conditions. Both sensors and number entities can be used.

For example, you can now trigger an automation if the outside temperature is higher than the temperature inside.

automation:
  - alias: "Notify to close the window"
    trigger:
      - platform: numeric_state
        entity_id: sensor.outside_temperature
        above: sensor.inside_temperature
    action:
      - service: notify.frenck_iphone
        data:
          message: "Close all windows, it is warm outside!"

The numeric state conditions supports the same.

Additionally, the time conditions now support a similar thing using other sensors that provide a time in the before and after options. Time triggers added support for that already in a previous release.

Working with dates in templates

If you ever tried to work with dates in templates, you probably know that that is hard. And honestly, that will never go away, times, dates and timezones are complex little beasts.

However, we realized that the hardest part of using date & times with templates is converting the state of a sensor or text to a datetime. This release adds a small template method to help with that: as_datetime.

It can be used as a filter or as a method. Here is an example of calculating the number of days until my drivers’ license expires:

{{ (states('sensor.drivers_license') | as_datetime - now()).days }} days

Series version tags for Docker containers

If you are using the Home Assistant Container installation method, we recommend using a specific version tag; however, that means you need to update the version tag each time we release a new patch version of Home Assistant.

Thanks to @kmdm, as of this release, we also provide a series version tag that always points to the latest patch version of that release, in addition to all existing tags we already provide.

docker pull ghcr.io/home-assistant/home-assistant:2021.7

The 2021.7, will contain the latest July release, even if that is actually version 2021.7.2.

Other noteworthy changes

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

  • Z-Wave JS got quite a few updates this release:
    • A new zwave_js.multicast_set_value is available, allowing to issue a set value command via multicast. Thanks, @raman325!
    • Each node now has a status sensor available and can be pinged using the new zwave_js.ping service. Added by @raman325.
    • The Z-Wave JS configuration panel now has a “Heal Network” button, thanks @cgarwood!
    • Z-Wave JS Server connection can now be re-configured from the Z-Wave JS configuration panel, added by @MartinHjelmare.
    • Z-Wave JS logs can now be downloaded, thanks @raman325!
  • The Google Assistant integration now has support for fan speed percentages and preset modes. Thanks, @jbouwh!
  • @jbouwh didn’t stop there and added fan preset mode support to Alexa too!
  • The Philips TV integration now supports Ambilights, added by @elupus.
  • Yamaha MusicCast integration now supports grouping services, thanks @micha91!
  • @raman325 added a whole bunch of sensors to the ClimaCell integration!
  • WLED now supports local push. Updates are now instantly both ways. Also, the master light can be kept and added support for controlling user presets.
  • Setting up Xiaomi devices has gotten way easier! There is no need to do difficult things to get the tokens. Instead, Home Assistant can now extract the tokens from a Xiaomi Cloud account. Thanks, @starkillerOG!
  • More Xiaomi updates, @jbouwh added support for fan percentage-based speeds and preset modes.
  • @RenierM26 added a lot of new services to the Ezviz integration, thanks!
  • Tibber had quite a few improvements and now provides a power factor sensor, added by @Danielhiversen!
  • Google Translate TTS now supports the Bulgarian language, thanks @hristo-atanasov!
  • If you have a SmartTube, you can now reset your reminders, thanks @mdz!
  • KNX had quite a lot of updates and added support for XY-color lights, thanks @farmio.
  • @OttoWinter added support for presets, custom presets and custom fan modes for climate controls in ESPHome. Awesome!
  • Nuki now has a service to enable/disable continuous mode, thanks @anaisbetts!
  • @cgomesu added quantiles to Statistics integration, thanks!
  • The Home Assistant login page now better support password manager, thanks, @rianadon!

New Integrations

We welcome the following new integrations this release:

New Platforms

The following integration got support for a new platform:

Integrations now available to set up from the UI

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

Release 2021.7.1 - July 8

Release 2021.7.2 - July 12

Release 2021.7.3 - July 16

Release 2021.7.4 - July 21

If you need help…

…don’t hesitate to use our very active forums or join us for a little chat.

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

Read on →

Community Highlights: 27th edition

Klaas Schoute

The 27th edition of the Home Assistant Community Highlights! Some interesting things popped up around our community, which we thought was worth sharing.

But first I have one more announcement. My internship is (almost) over and I’m happy to say that I passed and completed it with a good grade. That also means that this community highlight is the last one from me as an intern, time will tell when the next one will appear.

Do you want to share something for the next edition? Information on how to share.

./Klaas
Intern on Home Assistant Energy

Blueprint of the week

This week’s blueprint is that of bfranke1973, who has created a blueprint with which you can receive a notification when a device loses connection with the network. Try it out! Read more about it on the community forum or install this automation in your instance with a click on the My button!

Love Lock Card

Do you ever accidentally turn on a light or switch? Then try the love lock card made by CyrisXD. With this, you can create a card that is locked and you can unlock it with, for example, a pin code or a simple click on the card.

Lovelace Dashboard

This week again we have a new Lovelace dashboard for the necessary portion of inspiration 😄 This time the one from swake88 who is improving his dashboard for use on a mobile device. If you want to know more about it, check out the comment part on Reddit.

Would you also like your dashboard to be in the community highlight? Drop it on Reddit and maybe I’ll pick it out for the next edition.

Statistic Tools

Home Assistant has a number of tools for working with statistics, but the question is how can you best approach this. Carlos has written a very good guide on how to get started and how to make cards that use this data.

Got a tip for the next edition?

Have you seen (or made) something awesome, interesting, unique, amazing, inspirational, unusual or funny, using Home Assistant?

Click here to send us your Community Highlight suggestion.

Also, don’t forget to share your creations with us via Social Media:

See you next edition!

Community Highlights: 26th edition

Klaas Schoute

The 26th edition of the Home Assistant Community Highlights! Some interesting things popped up around our community, which we thought was worth sharing.

Do you want to share something for the next edition? Information on how to share.

./Klaas
Intern on Home Assistant Energy

Power-up your ESPHome Projects

Speaking of interesting stuff, have you seen what cool new stuff has come to ESPHome? Read more about it in this blog.

Blueprint of the week

This week’s blueprint is that of danielbook, who created a blueprint that turns on the lights of a room based on a motion and brightness sensor. You will no longer be in the dark when you get home 😉 Try it out! Read more about it on the community forum or install this automation in your instance with a click on the My button!

Floor3D Card

Last time we shared a dashboard with floorplan, this time the floor3D card from adizanni, which you can use to get started with your own floorplan.

Lovelace Dashboard

This week again we have a new Lovelace dashboard for the necessary portion of inspiration 😄 This time the one from suckfail which has a dashboard with a variety of cards. If you want to know more about it, check out the comment part on Reddit.

Would you also like your dashboard to be in the community highlight? Drop it on Reddit and maybe I’ll pick it out for the next edition.

Chore Tracker

Are you tired of doing those household chores all the time, or do the kids just don’t want to unload the dishwasher? Make it more fun with the chores tracker made by djbrooks022, where you can earn points for every chore you complete!

Do you want to get started? Then find all the information here.

Got a tip for the next edition?

Have you seen (or made) something awesome, interesting, unique, amazing, inspirational, unusual or funny, using Home Assistant?

Click here to send us your Community Highlight suggestion.

Also, don’t forget to share your creations with us via Social Media:

See you next edition!

Power-up your ESP8266 and ESP32 projects: browser-based installation and configure Wi-Fi via Bluetooth LE

Paulus Schoutsen

ESP8266 and ESP32 are microcontrollers made by the Chinese company Espressif. Microcontrollers are teeny tiny computers with little processor power, memory and space that can interact with sensors, send infrared commands and many other things.

With the ESP devices Espressif has achieved something formidable: their devices have Wi-Fi, are compatible with code for the popular Arduino microcontroller and they are cheap. Like, $5-including-shipping-from-China-cheap (AliExpress) or $15 for 2 on Amazon cheap. So cheap that they are the de facto standard for microcontrollers used in IoT products, both for manufacturers and creators in the DIY space.

Quindor and DrZzs playing with an ESP32-based QuinLED running WLED Quindor and DrZzs playing with an ESP32-based QuinLED running WLED (YouTube)

Microcontrollers are just computers and so are nothing without their software. Open source software like ESPHome, WLED and Tasmota allow users to turn their ESP8266 and ESP32 devices into powerful little machines that can gather information and control devices. In your home, microcontrollers are the eyes and ears while Home Assistant is the brain.

But these projects all have a common problem: it is difficult to get started. We identified three pain points:

  1. Installing the software on the microcontroller.
  2. Connecting the microcontroller to your wireless network.
  3. Configure the software on the microcontroller.

These pain points stand in the way for creators to reach a wider audience. It’s our mission to make local home automation succeed, and these projects, and all the possibilities that they unlock, are an important part of this.

Today, we are introducing some things to make using microcontrollers easier.

Using terms everybody understands

We are going to start using words that a user understands instead of forcing the technical terms on them. Terms like “firmware” and “flashing” are the correct terminology but for inexperienced users they do more harm than good. They will make the user feel uncomfortable before they even start.

So instead of “upload firmware” we’ve updated the ESPHome dashboard to talk about “installing”. We are encouraging other projects to do the same.

Things will get more technical as a user continues playing with microcontrollers. But this change might just be that little thing why they will actually continue.

ESP Web Tools: Installing projects on your microcontroller via the browser

We have created ESP Web Tools. ESP Web Tools allows project websites to offer a great onboarding by enabling users to install the software on their microcontrollers via their browser. All the user has to do is connect their microcontroller to their computer and hit the install button on the website. ESP Web Tools will automatically select the right build for your microcontroller and install it.

This works for both the ESP8266 and ESP32 and with any project for these devices. This technology is powered by Web Serial, a web standard for serial communication that is part of Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge.

ESP Web Tools Web has already been adopted as part of the onboarding by WLED and ESPEasy.

Learn how to add ESP Web Tools to your website

If you have an ESP32 or ESP8266 device handy, you can try it out right here:

ESP Web Tools uses code written by @MakerMelissa from Adafruit. We’re currently relying on an enhanced fork that can fit a wider range of use cases, including ours. We have a pull request open to get our changes contributed back.

ESP Web Tools website

Note: We don’t like to use technology that is not available in all browsers and cannot be made available in other ways. However, in this case the benefits outweigh the cons. We hope that Firefox and WebKit add support for Web Serial in the future.

Improv Wi-Fi: Open standard to provision Wi-Fi credentials via Bluetooth Low Energy

We have created Improv Wi-Fi. Improv Wi-Fi is a free and open standard that anyone can use to offer a user-friendly way for users to connect their devices to the wireless network.

Improv Wi-Fi logo

For open source firmware there are two popular ways of getting a device to connect to your wireless network. The device sets up a wireless network and you need to connect to it via your phone or laptop, or the user compiles the network and password into the firmware before installing it on the ESP. Both methods are difficult and error prone, they offer a bad user experience.

If you look at off-the-shelf products, you see another approach: send Wi-Fi credentials to the device via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). BLE allows the user to get instant feedback if something goes wrong. This technology is used in many products, but there is no open standard that is free to implement. Improv Wi-Fi is an open standard that is free to implement.

Open source projects often host their control interface as a website on the ESP device. Improv Wi-Fi supports this and when provisioning is done, the user can be redirected to a URL to finish onboarding.

Improv Wi-Fi can be used today to provision ESP32 microcontrollers running ESPHome (ESP8266 devices do not support BLE). Users will soon be able to provision devices with the Improv Wi-Fi service via the Home Assistant Android and iOS apps. All these implementations are open source and can be used in your projects.

Improv Wi-Fi is also available for the web in the form of a button that can be added to your website. This will allow users to configure and set up a device from any browser that supports Web Bluetooth.

If you’ve used the installation button in the previous section but have not yet connected it to the wireless network, you can onboard that device here:

Improv Wi-Fi website

ESPHome Dashboard: simplified and streamlined

With ESPHome users don’t program microcontrollers, they configure them. Tell ESPHome there is a temperature sensor on pin 3 of your ESP device and ESPHome will install custom software on your ESP device that makes this information available in Home Assistant.

# Example ESPHome configuration
sensor:
  - platform: dht
    pin: D2
    temperature:
      name: "Living Room Temperature"
    humidity:
      name: "Living Room Humidity"
    update_interval: 60s

Result of how it shows up in Home Assistant with the example ESPHome above

The ESPHome Dashboard has been updated with a simplified and streamlined wizard for new configurations. You now enter the name of your project and your Wi-Fi credentials and it will install it on your ESP device via the browser. After that all further updates will happen wirelessly.

ESPHome: embracing projects

We want to make it easy for creators to sell ESPHome powered products that offer a great user experience. ESPHome projects embrace local control and integrate nicely with Home Assistant, and so each extra ESPHome product that our users can buy is a win.

To make it easier to keep creators and users connected once a product is installed, projects can now add a project identifier and version to their firmware (docs). With today’s release this information will be available in the device information, logging output and the mDNS discovery info.

The goal is to integrate the projects tighter into the ESPHome dashboard by showing the project’s logo, link to the documentation and issue pages and allow installing updates.

Why we build this

Home Assistant’s mission is to make local home automation a viable alternative to cloud based solutions and accessible to everyone.

To make this mission a reality, we started the company Nabu Casa. Together with the community, Nabu Casa develops Home Assistant and ESPHome and is funded solely by people that support this mission. No investors or loans.

If you want to help fund our work, subscribe to Home Assistant Cloud.

Community Highlights: 25th edition

Klaas Schoute

The 25th edition of the Home Assistant Community Highlights! Some interesting things popped up around our community, which we thought was worth sharing.

Also, keep an eye out for the ESPHome release next week Wednesday. We’re going to have some great announcements!

Do you want to share something for the next edition? Information on how to share.

./Klaas
Intern on Home Assistant Energy

Blueprint of the week

Are there more people who turn their lights on and off at certain times when they go on holiday?

This week’s blueprint is that of timgiwo, who created a blueprint that can repeat the behavior of your lights from the past week, so it seems like you are still at home. Try it out! Read more about it on the community forum or install this automation in your instance with a click on the My button!

Slider Button Card

Mattieha made a button card that also included a slider, so you could, for example: switch a light but also immediately adjust the brightness with the slider. Useful for those who want to keep their dashboard compact.

Floorplan Dashboard

This week again we have a new Lovelace dashboard for the necessary portion of inspiration 😄 This time the one from theone11 who has a dashboard with a floorplan, definitely recommended to take a look at the repository because there is a lot of explanation on it.

Would you also like your dashboard to be in the community highlight? Drop it on Reddit and maybe I’ll pick it out for the next edition.

Ispindel

Between the community submissions, we came across a nice project that works with ESPHome, it’s a sensor with which you can monitor your own homebrew, for example, the alcohol percentage and the temperature. Cheers Alexander! 🍻

Got a tip for the next edition?

Have you seen (or made) something awesome, interesting, unique, amazing, inspirational, unusual or funny, using Home Assistant?

Click here to send us your Community Highlight suggestion.

Also, don’t forget to share your creations with us via Social Media:

See you next edition!

Home Assistant OS Release 6

Stefan Agner
Home Assistant OS Release 6 Logo

Home Assistant OS 6.0 stable is available now!

Highlights:

  • OS Agent for better OS integration with Supervisor

  • Support for additional Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices

  • Smaller virtual machine disk images

  • Improved: Generic x86-64 system support

Table of contents

Operating System Changes

OS Agent

Operating System release 6 comes with a new, Go written daemon called OS Agent. This allows the Supervisor to access more aspects of the OS. One such aspect is to move the data to an external data disk or wipe data to start over without reinstalling. Note however that at this point, the required logic in the Supervisor and Frontend is still being developed.

Under the Hood

Under the hood, the OS was updated to the latest upstream Linux 5.10 kernel as well as Buildroot 2021.02.1. The latest Buildroot release brings tons of new software versions along with bug and security fixes. Some key components which received an update were systemd 247 and the Docker Container Engine 20.10.6.

Other Changes

  • The short name of the OS used throughout the software stack was renamed to “haos”. From a users perspective not much changes, but it leads to new file names.
  • The Home Assistant CLI is now started on tty1 instead of the login prompt. The HA CLI banner shows the IP and other device information without the need to attach a keyboard to login.
  • The default shell of the root user is now the Busybox ash. This allows to use scp and similar tools using SSH.
  • The system start is now delayed until the system time has been synchronized with an NTP server. This avoids connection issues to SSL/TLS enabled servers when the system time is off. In practice, the delay should only be a few seconds. The system proceeds with startup after 90s in case the NTP server was not reachable (e.g. if no Internet connectivity is available).

Device Support

Raspberry Pi

All Raspberry Pi versions were updated to use the Linux Kernel 5.10 from the Raspberry Pi team, just like Raspberry Pi OS. The latest Bluetooth firmware for CYW43455 (Raspberry Pi 3 B+/4) with security fixes is now part of the Raspberry Pi images.

Generic x86-64

In Home Assistant OS 6 the board/image “Intel NUC” was renamed to “Generic x86-64”. Existing “Intel NUC” installation will automatically migrate to the “Generic x86-64” image on update.

Already with OS 5 the “Intel NUC” image was usable for most UEFI capable x86-64 systems. With the rename that fact is emphasized. Home Assistant OS is open to changes to add drivers to extend support for other x86-64 platforms. However, keep in mind that we don’t have access to all x86-64 hardware, so support for devices is on a best effort basis.

Other Changes:

  • The Intel IGC network driver supports Intel network cards such as I225-LM/I225-V used on some newer Intel NUC devices.

  • With Home Assistant OS 6 the latest version of the Barebox bootloader 2021.05.0 which fixes boot from hard disks larger than 2TB.

  • The ACPI kernel driver for Thinkpad devices is enabled.

Open Virtualization Appliance

The virtual disk images are now built from a sparse file as source, which leads to smaller effective disk image sizes. Disk images are now also distributed in the more common zip file format (except the qcow2 images which are mostly used on Linux, they continue to be in the xz compression format).

By default, the image now has a serial console enabled which is useful to access Home Assistant OS on headless host systems.

Additional Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Device Support

Ralink rt27xx/rt28xx/rt30xx, as well as Realtek 87xx/88xx devices, are now supported on boards that don’t have onboard Wi-Fi/Bluetooth. This is also true for the OVA image for virtualized environments (when using hardware passthrough functionality). For the OVA image, also Intel firmwares are now part of the image so that Intel Wi-Fi/Bluetooth devices can be used in passthrough mode as well.

Homematic IP Support

@jens-maus contributed OS support for Homematic/Homematic IP dual-stack support for RPI-RF-MOD or HM-MOD-RPI-PCB devices. This together with the RaspberryMatic CCU Add-On offers the full functionality of RaspberryMatic embedded in Home Assistant.

Google Coral PCIe AI Accelerator Support

@ryddler enabled the driver for Google Coral PCIe TPU devices. This allows to use Google Coral Mini PCIe Accelerator or M.2 Accelerator on all boards supporting PCIe.

That’s all Folks! Now go out and update!

Community Highlights: 24th edition

Klaas Schoute

The 24th edition of the Home Assistant Community Highlights! Some interesting things popped up around our community, which we thought was worth sharing.

Do you want to share something for the next edition? Information on how to share.

./Klaas
Intern on Home Assistant Energy

Blueprint of the week

I think this situation is familiar to many parents: your children who get out of bed too early and who you would like to learn when it is the right time to get out of bed.

This week’s blueprint is that of koosvanw, who created a blueprint for the above situation that works with a light that can change color and where the brightness can also be adjusted. Try it out! Read more about it on the community forum or install this automation in your instance with a click on the My button!

Threedy card

Do you have a 3D printer and are you not quite sure how to display it in a beautiful way in your Lovelace dashboard? Then try this card from dangreco, which works well in combination with octoprint.

ESPHome weather station

Have you always wanted to build a weather station in your garden? Then try the ESPHome variant of hugokernel, it is quite extensive with many measuring options.

Garage fingerprint

This week we also came across something cool that was shared on our subreddit page. For example, you could open a garage door by means of geofencing from your phone or with an NFC tag. But Nhminer has tried another option, namely opening with a fingerprint sensor 😲

Do you want to know more about it? Then also check this forum topic.

Got a tip for the next edition?

Have you seen (or made) something awesome, interesting, unique, amazing, inspirational, unusual or funny, using Home Assistant?

Click here to send us your Community Highlight suggestion.

Also, don’t forget to share your creations with us via Social Media:

See you next edition!

2021.6: A little bit of everything

Franck Nijhof

A little bit of everything. That is probably the best way to describe this release. It is a packed release, with a lot of small new features everywhere!

Sonos got quite a bit of love, Hue now supports push updates, the UI has a lot of usability tweaks, MQTT added quite a few attributes, themes can now support modes… seriously, I can go on forever with this list.

So, no new big features (something might be cooking for the next release…), but a nice release that has something for everybody. Definitely worth scanning the all changes section for your favorite integrations.

../Frenck

Support for custom Dark mode themes

Previously, all themes automatically used our light theme as the base to build on. As of today, themes can be based on our default dark theme as well!

Not only that, @spacegaier added support for themes that can support both a Dark & Light mode in a single theme! This allows Home Assistant to select the dark or light mode of your custom theme automatically.

Screenshot of a custom theme supporting both light & dark mode Screenshot of a custom theme supporting both light & dark mode.

If you are a theme developer, you can find more information on how this works in the frontend documentation.

Oh, and of course, all your existing themes will still just work as before.

Collapsed attributes

Some entities provide quite a few attributes and those show up in the user interface. Most of the time, you don’t need to those and often contain technical data that only confuse or clutter.

To unclutter the more information entity dialog from these attributes a bit, the attributes will now show up collapsed into a bar and can be revealed with a click.

Screen recording of the collapsible entity attributes Screen recording of the collapsible entity attributes.

Time format settings

A couple of releases back, we added the possibility to select the number format that Home Assistant uses when showing numbers. Awesome! But… what about the formatting of time?

That question was raised a lot that release and many of you requested the same feature for time formatting, for example, if one prefers a 24-hour format.

Well, you can thank @spacegaier for this one:

Screenshot of new time format setting Screenshot of new time format setting.

You can find this new setting in your user profile.

Disable polling updates on any integration

One returning feature request, for many integrations, is adding controls for tuning the polling interval an integration uses.

For example, if an integration has an API that needs to be paid for and you don’t need too many updates, it can be a cost saver to use a slower polling interval.

Another often requested example is things like battery-powered devices, or maybe a device you only want to poll during the day and not during the night.

This release, we add support for disabling polling on every integration via the integration system options; for ALL integrations.

Screenshot of the system options of an integration showing the disable polling option Screenshot of the system options of an integration showing the disable polling option.

Wait? Disable polling?! Yes :)

So, there are many different requests on, for example, changing polling rates (also known as scan interval), but also requests for polling on a schedule, or, only based on other input (e.g., triggered by a motion sensor).

Therefore, we decided to provide the maximum flexibility for any use case you can come up with. Disabling polling makes Home Assistant stop polling automatically. However, you can use the homeassistant.update_entity service on those entities to trigger a poll for information.

This means, once you’ve disabled polling for an integration, you can create automations and completely customize when you poll that integration from that point on. All based on your own schedule, conditions or triggers.

Network integration

This release adds a new Network integration, created by @bdraco, to help other Home Assistant integrations to get the right information about your network.

It also provides you a single place to tell Home Assistant about your network. It is an advanced feature and thus will only show up if you have advanced mode enabled on your user profile.

You probably don’t need to change these settings, by default, Home Assistant will auto-detect the right configuration. However, if you have a more complex network configuration, with multiple network adapters or VLANs, you can now select the interface Home Assistant integrations should use.

Screenshot of new Home Assistant Network settings in the general configuration Screenshot of new Home Assistant Network settings in the general configuration.

Please note that this is a new feature that needs to be implemented/used by other integrations. At this point, not all integrations will honor these settings yet.

Other noteworthy changes

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

  • The Modbus has been receiving lots and lots of love from @janiversen, a big shout out to him for continuously improving it for the past weeks!
  • The Hue integration now supports push updates! Blazing fast response times if you are using that platform.
  • @balloob and @bdraco have been working on replacing date/time/timezone handling in Home Assistant. Right on time.
  • All services, for all integrations, now have updated information for their service calls. This means all service calls now have a nice new UI. Amazing job @tkdrob!
  • Support for the new colors modes is slowly expanding. This release Elgato, Z-Wave JS, KNX and MQTT have added support.
  • Sonos got some love from @mountainsandcode, @AaronDavidSchneider and @jjlawren. A lot of fixes and improvements, but also added support for controlling the state of the hardware buttons and controlling your Sonos alarms!
  • The developer state tools, now shows the name of the entity additional to the entity ID. Searching/filtering the list now supports wildcards (*). Thanks, @spacegaier!
  • Thanks to @PeteBa, there is now a recorder.purge_entities service that allows you to purge data from the recorder database for specified entities.
  • Watson TTS has added a bunch of new voices to choose from, thanks @demikl!
  • Ding dong! @bdraco added support for doorbell buttons to the HomeKit Controller integration.
  • BMW Connected Drive, now provides a bunch of sensors about your last trip. Thanks, @EddyK69!
  • @emericklaw added a new feature that allows you to duplicate a scene!
  • My Home Assistant now supports linking to the Ingress interface of an add-on!
  • Light templates now have support for effects, transitions and a bunch more properties, thanks to @jacekpaszkowski!
  • VeSync now supports Etekcity light bulbs, thanks @sdrapha.
  • The universal media player now supports overriding a lot of commands! Thanks for adding that @Drafteed!
  • @mdz continues expanding the SmartTub integration adding service to change filtration settings and snoozing reminders.
  • The Elgato integration now supports the new Elgato LED strips.
  • If you are into Oracle DB, @mciupak made sure our recorder can now use that.
  • Z-Wave JS integration now shows progress when adding or re-interviewing a device. Thanks, @cgarwood!
  • The Nexia integration now also supports controlling American Standard thermostat, added by @bdraco.
  • @Drafteed added support for changing channels on your LG NetCast TV, thanks!
  • @mib1185 ensured that the UX for counters and number helpers look nice!

New Integrations

We welcome the following new integrations this release:

New Platforms

The following integration got support for a new platform:

Integrations now available to set up from the UI

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

Release 2021.6.1 - June 3

Release 2021.6.2 - June 4

Release 2021.6.3 - June 7

Release 2021.6.4 - June 11

Release 2021.6.5 - June 15

Release 2021.6.6 - June 20

If you need help…

…don’t hesitate to use our very active forums or join us for a little chat.

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

Read on →

Community Highlights: 23rd edition

Klaas Schoute

The 23rd edition of the Home Assistant Community Highlights! Some interesting things popped up around our community, which we thought was worth sharing.

Do you want to share something for the next edition? Information on how to share.

./Klaas
Intern on Home Assistant Energy

Blueprint of the week

This week’s blueprint is all about medication. It may happen that you forget to swallow it, what if you create an automation that sends you a message as a reminder every time? Mati24 has now made a handy blueprint for that, try it out!

Read more about it on the community forum or install this automation in your instance with a click on the My button!

Swiper card

Not enough space on your Lovelace dashboard? Then try the swiper card made by bramkragten, with which you can easily swipe through different cards in the same card frame.

Lovelace dashboard

Also this week we have a new Lovelace dashboard for the necessary portion of inspiration 😄 This time the dashboard of DoIGotSkillz, who made one for use on a tablet wall mount.

Would you also like your dashboard to be in the community highlight? Drop it on Reddit and maybe I’ll pick it out for the next edition.

Homegame

Recently we had an item about switching entities in Minecraft, well this time it’s a game again but in 2D. svendroid made a proof of concept game that you can play in the browser, you can adjust the map so that your own light entities work with it.

Demo of the 2D game

Doesn’t this also remind you of the old Pokemon games from the past? 😅

Got a tip for the next edition?

Have you seen (or made) something awesome, interesting, unique, amazing, inspirational, unusual or funny, using Home Assistant?

Click here to send us your Community Highlight suggestion.

Also, don’t forget to share your creations with us via Social Media:

See you next edition!

Community Highlights: 22nd edition

Klaas Schoute

The 22nd edition of the Home Assistant Community Highlights! Some interesting things popped up around our community, we thought was worth sharing.

Do you want to share something for the next edition? Information on how to share.

./Klaas
Intern on Home Assistant Energy

Blueprint of the week

Are you one of those who always leave the doors open?

Then this week we have a nice blueprint for you! BasTijs has made a blueprint that announces through text to speech in the house, that a door is open and only stops when the door is closed again.

Try it out! Read more about it on the community forum or install this automation in your instance with a click on the My button!

Sun card

On our Home Assistant reddit page we also encountered another nice project, namely that of AitorDB. Who made a Lovelace card that shows the position of the sun when it rises, is at its highest point and sets again.

Collapsed card

Is your Lovelace dashboard overflowing with cards and do you want to make some free space? Then try the card made by RossMcMillan92, which makes it possible to collapse entire cards and reappear as a dropdown.

Hyperion - HA bridge

You have those TVs where LEDs are mounted on the back so that the colors of the TV continue over the wall behind it, this is also called ambilight. If your TV is not equipped with this, you can also make this yourself through the Hyperion project. pimw has also written an instruction post about this on our community forum on how to connect the bridge to Home Assistant.

Got a tip for the next edition?

Have you seen (or made) something awesome, interesting, unique, amazing, inspirational, unusual or funny, using Home Assistant?

Click here to send us your Community Highlight suggestion.

Also, don’t forget to share your creations with us via Social Media:

See you next edition!