All posts by : Techsarathy

Two weeks ago we hosted the State of the Open Home. It included a presentation by Prof. Michael Kane and Maharsi Pathak from the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northeastern University.

They presented about their research into lowering grid demand by reducing thermostat temperatures. They want to learn when and why a reduced temperature is too uncomfortable causing tenants to become thermally frustrated and reverting the reduction.

With Home Assistant we want every home to be about privacy, choice and durability and it’s how we built Home Assistant. Because we believe in choice, all data in Home Assistant is accessible and one can extend or built on top of our platform.

This architecture made it possible for Prof. Kane to create a custom version of Home Assistant for his research that gathers data about all devices, surveys users based on changes to devices and exports all this data back to their research lab. For this they leverage device integrations, added a custom survey feature to the UI and push notifications from the Home Assistant companion app to draw the user’s attention to the surveys.

But what makes me extra happy is that their research is focusing on home energy management. This has been a feature we added to Home Assistant in 2020 as our way to help tackle the climate crisis. It makes me proud to see that we are able to help researchers do their work and we hope to see more of this. We’re also looking forward to collaborating with Prof. Kane on using his research to improve Home Assistant.

The Open Home is our vision for the smart home. It defines the values that we put at the heart of every decision we make at Home Assistant. It’s woven into our architecture, licensing, community and everything else.

The Open Home is about privacy, choice and durability.

If you prefer video, skip to the end.

Privacy

Your home should be your safe space. A place where you can be your true self without having to bother about what the world thinks of you. A place where you don’t need to act differently to avoid an algorithm categorizing your behavior.

Privacy for the Open Home means that devices need to work locally. No one else needs to know if you turn on a light bulb or change the thermostat.

It is okay for a product to offer a cloud connection, but it should be extra and opt-in.

Choice

Devices in your home gather data about itself and their surroundings. Your data. Vendors shouldn’t be able to limit your access to your data or limit the interoperability of your devices with the rest of your smart home.

Choice for the Open Home means that devices need to make the gathered data available through local APIs. This avoids vendor lock-in and allows users to create their own smart home with devices from different manufacturers.

Durability

If there is one thing that technology firms are very good at, it is launching new products. However, maintaining the products and making sure they keep working is an afterthought for most. The result is that vendors can decide to no longer support your device, crippling it’s features or even prevent it from working at all.

As we install more and more devices in our home, durability is becoming more and more important. We shouldn’t have to buy everything new every couple of years because the manufacturer decided to move on.

Durability for the Open Home means that devices are designed and built to keep working. Not just this year, but for the next decade.

State of the Open Home

At the State of the Open Home, we presented our vision and how we, together with our friends from open source and academia, are working towards achieving it.

Last week we hosted the State of the Open Home and it included a demo of Genie.

Genie is an open, privacy-preserving virtual assistant by Stanford OVAL. During the impressive demo they showed it’s latest capabilities. The demos run on a Baidu speaker with custom firmware and on a Pi Zero. In both cases it connects to the Genie server running as an official Home Assistant add-on to do it’s magic.

Genie is the successor to the Almond project. With the help of various grants and sponsors Stanford is working on making Genie ready for general use.

If you want to learn more, check out the Genie website and the getting started guide on how to make your own. To get in touch with other Genie users and their dev team, check their Discord
or community forums.

If you end up using Genie at home, don’t forget to share the love and share your demo’s and tutorials.

Today we’re releasing Home Assistant companion app for iOS 2021.12. The big new feature: multiple server support. Find it in the app settings on iOS and Mac. Pro-tip: Swipe with three fingers left, right, or up to quickly switch between servers. Full release notes.

At the State of the Open Home I gave a quick demo, which I have embedded below:

Home Assistant Core 2021.12, the final release of the year 2021; And
I really think this release will contain a holiday gift for everyone!

With the holiday season coming, it is time to slow down a bit for the project,
and enjoy time with our family. In a couple of weeks, 2022 will be here!

All I want to add to these last release notes of 2021 is: Thank you.

Thank you for hanging out with the project. Thank you for contributing, and
thank you for reporting an issue. Thank you for helping out a fellow Home
Assistant user on the forum, chat, Reddit, or anywhere else. Thank you for
sharing your experiences, ideas, automations, scripts, YouTube videos,
and blogs; and above all:
Thank you for using Home Assistant ❤️

Happy holidays and for the last time in 2021: Enjoy the release!

../Frenck

PS: We are skipping the January release because of the
holidays. So, the first release in 2022, will be Wednesday, 2 February 2022.

• Brand new configuration panel
• The button entity
• Redesigned area panel and the area Lovelace card
• Users that can only log in from the local network
• Z-Wave JS SmartStart and entity categories
• Blueprint scripts
• Triggering on any, but only state changes
• Cast issues resolved
• Other noteworthy changes
• New Integrations
• Integrations now available to set up from the UI
• Release 2021.12.1 – December 12
• Release 2021.12.2 – December 15
• Release 2021.12.3 – December 17
• If you need help…
• Breaking Changes
• Updates for custom integration developers
• Farewell to the following
• All changes

Brand new configuration panel

The configuration panel has been revamped. Everything is more compact and
categorized. A bit of added color so you can recognize the item you need more
quickly.

The Supervisor panel and its sidebar item have been removed, and the panel
has been merged into the configuration panel. All OS, Core & Add-on
updates are now shown in the top of the configuration panel.

If you are using our Android, iOS, or macOS Companion apps, the sidebar menu
to configure those has also been moved into the configuration panel.

All configuration related items, neatly organized in a single place 🤘

The button entity

Introducing a new entity: the button entity.
Yes, it’s a button. What can you do with it? Press it!

We already have a switch entity in Home Assistant, but a switch has a state;
switches are either on or off. A button, however, is a push-button, like a
stateless or momentary switch.

Button entities can be provided by integrations and can be used for things like:

Examples use cases of button entities.

These are all things that can be triggered from Home Assistant but do not
really have explicit on or off states.

We have added support for this button entity to Google Assistant, Alexa and
HomeKit; allowing you to “press” those buttons from your favorite voice
assistant.

For this release, MQTT & KNX added support for providing buttons. The Shelly,
WLED, Elgato, Litter-Robot, TOLO Sauna, Tuya, Renault, and NAM integrations
have added button entities.

Additionally, ESPHome 2021.12
has added full support for buttons too! Besides adding a restart button,
you can now create button entities from ESPHome to trigger something on
your DIY project from Home Assistant.

Redesigned area panel and the area Lovelace card

The area panel has been redesigned. Instead of a list of areas, it now
shows a card for each area. The card shows a picture of the area.

Wait, a picture? Yes! You can now upload a picture for your area straight
from the Home Assistant frontend. So, you can make it look something like this:

But that is not all, @zsarnett created a brand new area Lovelace card.
This card will use the picture you’ve uploaded for your area, and it
automatically populates with entities of devices you have assigned
to that specific area.

Screenshot of a new area Lovelace card.

Users that can only log in from the local network

This new feature allows you to make users that are only allowed to log in
from the local network and not from the internet or cloud.

This can be useful if you have users that are not always at your home or
a dedicated user for a wall tablet that never needs to log in remotely.

Z-Wave JS SmartStart and entity categories

Setting up your Z-Wave device with Home Assistant is now easier than ever,
as Z-Wave JS now supports Z-Wave SmartStart!

When you have a SmartStart capable Z-Wave stick and device, you can now
set up the device by simply scanning the QR code on the device, using your
webcam, or using your mobile phone with the Home Assistant Companion app.

Including devices to your Z-Wave network has never been easier.

Additionally, Z-Wave JS had added support for entity categories, so
all your Z-Wave sensors are now neatly organized.

Blueprint scripts

This was actually in Home Assistant Core 2021.11 release, but we forgot to
mention it completely… Shame on us… Retry!

You can now create, provide, share Blueprints for scripts! This works
the same as with automations, except… well, it provides a script instead.

Script blueprints can be shared and imported, exactly like we do with
automations now. These can be really helpful to provide to other Home Assistant
users, as these scripts can be re-used in, e.g., other automations.

Triggering on any, but only state changes

Until now, writing automations that trigger on any state change of an entity,
but not on any attribute changes, was nearly impossible without adding
additional conditions.

We have now added a way to trigger on any state change, regardless of the state,
without triggering on attribute changes. If you set from or to, and
leave it empty, it will match any state but ignore attributes.

automation:
  trigger:
    - platform: state
      entity_id: media_player.living_room
      to: ~

The above example will only trigger if the state of the living room media
player changes, but not if any of its attributes change.

The same syntax is also supported for attributes. To trigger on all changes of
a specific attribute, you can use a similar syntax:

automation:
  trigger:
    - platform: state
      entity_id: media_player.living_room
      attribute: volume_level
      to: ~

The above example will only trigger if the volume level of the living room
media player changes.

Cast issues resolved

You might be aware of issues with using the Google Cast features
in Home Assistant. For example, casting a Lovelace dashboard didn’t
work as reliably as it should have been.

We have some good news, these casting issues have been resolved!

Although a bugfix, we think the impact was significant enough to warrant
its mention in the release notes.

Other noteworthy changes

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

• The Hue integration now only uses the v2 API when talking to compatible hubs.
  This means that all light updates and remote presses are instantly available
  in Home Assistant, and scenes are now also natively supported.
  Amazing job, thanks @marcelveldt!
• @farmio completely rewrote the Fronius integration adding support
  for all the latest, and greatest Home Assistant offers. Nice!
• Besides supporting the new button entity, ESPHome now also supports
  setting the mode and unit of measurement on number entities.
  Thanks, @jesserockz!
• Magic Home (Flux LED) got lots of love from @bdraco, adding support
  for new devices and features along the way.
• @jbouwh improved the as_datetime template method, which now supports
  the UNIX timestamp.
• The motionEye integration added sensors and service, thank you @dermotduffy.
• WLED devices can now be restarted and upgraded from Home Assistant.
• @chemelli74 added the climate platform support for Shelly, and
  @mib1185 added support for rebooting and upgrading Shelly devices.
• Entities provided by the Vallox integration now have unique IDs
  and can be adjusted from the UI. Thanks @viiru-!
• The Pi-hole integration now has a binary sensor to indicate an update is
  available, added by @andreasbrett.
• System Bridge has two new services for sending keyboard events to
  the remote machine, added by @timmo001.
• @klada added support for media player groups to Denon HEOS.
• The REST platform now supports templates for its headers and query
  parameters. Thanks, @koying.
• Mill now supports its 3rd generation heaters, thanks @Danielhiversen
• @hmmbob added support for ms-MY, nl-BE, pa-IN to Google TTS.
• Nanoleaf now pushes updates into Home Assistant, thanks @milanmeu.
• @micha91 extended Yamaha MusicCast with number entities for controlling
  equalizers, dialogue volume/lift, and the display brightness.
• The Levoit Core 400S air purifier is now supported by the VeSync integration,
  thanks for that @jparchem.
• The state of number helpers is now exposed to Prometheus. Nice, @alim4r!
• @tschamm added support for shutter controls to Bosch SHC.
• Notifications for Android TV can now send a notification with custom icons;
  Awesome adding @redahb!
• MQTT has seen multiple improvements in this release:
  • The select and number platforms now have command_template support (@jbouwh)
  • Switches now support device_class (@koying)
  • MQTT platforms can now set the object_id option (@Smeagolworms4)
  • Selects can now have a single or no options (@emontnemery)
  • Added ‘trigger’ support for Alarm Control Panels (@XaF)
  • Added lock.open support (@Hypnos3)

This release adds support for long-term statistics to the following integrations:

• Coinbase (thanks @TomBrien)
• Daikin (thanks @werkstrom)
• Darksky (thanks @jjlawren)
• devolo Home Control (thanks @Shutgun)
• HomeMatic (thanks @chriss158)
• Wallbox (thanks @hesselonline)

And the following integrations now have entity categories:

• AVM FRITZ!SmartHome (thanks, @mib1185)
• devolo Home Network (thanks, @Shutgun)
• Litter-Robot (thanks, @natekspencer)
• Network UPS Tools (thanks, @drthanwho)
• Rituals Perfume Genie (thanks, @milanmeu)
• Switchbot (thanks, @DCSBL)
• Z-Wave JS (thanks, @MartinHjelmare)

New Integrations

We welcome the following new integration this release:

• Balboa Spa, added by @garbled1
• Button, added by @frenck
• devolo Home Network, added by @Shutgun
• Evil Genius Labs, added by @balloob
• Jellyfin, added by @j-stienstra
• RDW, added by @frenck
• Ridwell, added by @bachya
• Tailscale, added by @frenck
• Tesla Wall Connector, added by @einarhauks
• TOLO Sauna, added by @MatthiasLohr

Integrations now available to set up from the UI

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

• Fronius, done by @farmio
• Trafikverket Weather Station, done by @gjohansson-ST
• Viessmann ViCare, done by @oischinger

Additionally, KNX can now partially be set up via the UI. The
connection is done via the UI, the entities are configuration in YAML; just
like before. Done by @marvin-w.

Release 2021.12.1 – December 12

• Fix Sonos sub & surround switch state reporting (@jjlawren – #61531) (sonos docs)
• Update logic for nest media source can_play for events (@allenporter – #61537) (nest docs)
• Fix HomeKit covers with device class window and no tilt (@bdraco – #61566) (homekit docs)
• Update frontend to 20211212.0 (@bramkragten – #61577) (frontend docs)
• Fix Hue transition calculation (@marcelveldt – #61581) (hue docs)
• enable grouped light if enabled in previous integration (@marcelveldt – #61582) (hue docs)
• Only publish nest camera event messages once per thread and bump nest version (@allenporter – #61587) (nest docs)
• Fix for failing Solarlog integration in HA 2021.12 (@Ernst79 – #61602) (solarlog docs)
• Fix availability for 3th party Hue lights (@marcelveldt – #61603) (hue docs)
• Bump aiopvapi to 1.6.19 to fix async_timeout passing loop (@bdraco – #61618) (hunterdouglas_powerview docs)
• Bump aiohue to 3.0.3 (@balloob – #61627) (hue docs)

Release 2021.12.2 – December 15

• Bump pysmappee to 0.2.29 (@bsmappee – #61160) (smappee docs)
• Upgrade lupupy to 0.0.24 (@majuss – #61598) (lupusec docs)
• Suppress errors for legacy nest api when using media source (@allenporter – #61629) (nest docs)
• Bump total_connect_client to 2021.12 (@austinmroczek – #61634) (totalconnect docs)
• Add additional-tag to machine builds (@ludeeus – #61693)
• Bump aiohue to 3.0.4 (@balloob – #61709) (hue docs)
• Update pymelcloud to 2.5.6 (@vilppuvuorinen – #61717) (melcloud docs)
• Add check for incompatible device trigger in Hue integration (@marcelveldt – #61726) (hue docs)
• Fix turn_off with transition for grouped Hue lights (@marcelveldt – #61728) (hue docs)
• Fix Flash effect for Hue lights (@marcelveldt – #61733) (hue docs)
• Blacklist availability check for a light at startup in Hue integration (@marcelveldt – #61737) (hue docs)
• Upgrade tailscale to 0.1.5 (@frenck – #61744) (tailscale docs)
• Bump brunt package to 1.0.1 (@eavanvalkenburg – #61784) (brunt docs)
• Fix ZHA unoccupied setpoints. (@MattWestb – #61791) (zha docs)
• Don’t override pychromecast MediaController’s APP ID (@emontnemery – #61796) (cast docs)
• Bump pychromecast to 10.2.1 (@emontnemery – #61811) (cast docs)
• Tibber, update library, fixes #61525 (@Danielhiversen – #61813) (tibber docs)
• Bump python-miio to 0.5.9.2 (@rytilahti – #61831) (xiaomi_miio docs)
• Ensure SimpliSafe websocket reconnects upon new token (@bachya – #61835) (simplisafe docs)
• Allow setting local_ip for knx routing connections (@marvin-w – #61836) (knx docs)
• Fix broken Environment Canada (@michaeldavie – #61848) (environment_canada docs)
• Bump google-nest-sdm to 0.4.8 (@allenporter – #61851) (nest docs)
• Bump aiohue to 3.0.5 (@marcelveldt – #61875) (hue docs)
• Update frontend to 20211215.0 (@bramkragten – #61877) (frontend docs)

Release 2021.12.3 – December 17

• Update ebusdpy version (@sindudas – #59899) (ebusd docs)
• Nextbus upcoming sort as integer (@ViViDboarder – #61416) (nextbus docs)
• Add restore logic to Shelly climate platform (@chemelli74 – #61632) (shelly docs)
• Fix OwnetError preventing onewire initialisation (@epenet – #61696) (onewire docs)
• Fix notify platform setup for KNX (@marvin-w – #61842) (knx docs)
• Bump aiohue to 3.0.6 (@marcelveldt – #61974) (hue docs)
• Brunt dependency bump to 1.0.2 (@eavanvalkenburg – #62014) (brunt docs)
• Bump flux_led to 0.26.15 (@bdraco – #62017) (flux_led docs)
• Fix none-check in template light (@emontnemery – #62089) (template docs)
• Add missing timezone information (@DeerMaximum – #62106) (vallox docs)
• Improve availability for Shelly Valve (@chemelli74 – #62129) (shelly docs)
• Fix Non-thread-safe operation in homekit light events (@bdraco – #62147) (homekit docs)
• Fix Non-thread-safe operation in logbook (@bdraco – #62148) (logbook docs)
• Bump google-nest-sdm to 0.4.9 (@allenporter – #62160) (nest docs)
• Add guard in call to activate_scene in Hue (@marcelveldt – #62177) (hue docs)
• Fix threading error in scripts with repeat or choose actions (@emontnemery – #62168)
• Fix threading error in zha (@emontnemery – #62170) (zha docs)

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.

Great news for Home Assistant users who’s preferred way of coding is C#: NetDaemon has just released a new version of their open source platform that allows you to use C# 10 for .Net 6 to write your applications or automations for Home Assistant.

This release includes a new API called HassModel which makes it easier than ever to interact with Home Assistant from .Net. It generates strong typed interfaces based on the entities in your own Home Assistant instance, their attributes and all available services and their parameters. Intellisense can be used to discover all your entities and available services directly from your IDE.

Check out the documentation and how to get started with NetDaemon

This project is not affiliated with Home Assistant, but leverages our open API.

Point eleven (.11), which means it is November! 🥶 (or 🏖 depending on where
you are in this world, of course.)

It also means: This is the second last release of the year…

Hacktoberfest is over! In the month October, people
contribute to projects (like Home Assistant) to celebrate open source.
I’ve seen lots of new faces and new contributors this month. To those I want
to say: Welcome! Thanks for contributing your free spare time; Thanks for
being a hero! ❤️

And, there is more! Something that isn’t really visible. In the background,
an army of contributors are improving a tremendous amount of Home
Assistant code, which improves stability, readability, and maintainability of
our project’s codebase. As a matter of fact, because of this incredible work,
counted by the number of contributions, this release might just as well be one
of the biggest ever. Work, you generally don’t notice, but is still done.
Weird huh? Another group of heroes! ❤️

For me personally, this has been a crazy month. After the last release, I was
sad to read about issues people had with the new Tuya integration. I went to
different stores, bought many Tuya devices, and spent a lot of time improving
the experience by extending device support. Hopefully, I’ve been able to do
enough to make the Tuya integration acceptable.

This release… a long-time wishlist item of mine is in: The icon picker! 😍
So cool to see this happening, it is amazing, beautiful, super helpful,
and it also supports third-party icon sets! 🤩

Oh, to spoil some inside information, you might want to block your
agenda for the Home Assistant State of the Union 2021 on Saturday 11 December,
8 pm (CET)!

Enjoy the release!

../Frenck

• Daylight saving time bug
• Visit devices and services
• Entity categorization
• The icon picker
• Tuya update
• Some nice new template filters
• Other noteworthy changes
• New Integrations
• Integrations now available to set up from the UI
• Release 2021.11.1 – November 5
• Release 2021.11.2 – November 9
• Release 2021.11.3 – November 11
• Release 2021.11.4 – November 15
• Release 2021.11.5 – November 19
• If you need help…
• Breaking Changes
• Farewell to the following
• All changes

Daylight saving time bug

If you have already transitioned daylight saving time (DST), you might have
experienced it already. If you have not switched yet, this message is extra
important for you.

Last weekend we experienced a bug with daylight saving time transitioning,
causing Home Assistant to crash or have higher CPU loads than usual.
If you experience this, restarting Home Assistant will resolve this issue.

This release has a more permanent fix for the issue, preventing it from
happening. If you can’t upgrade to 2021.11 right now, we have also published
Home Assistant 2021.10.7, which has the same bugfix included.

So if you still have to transition to a new summer/winter time, be sure to
upgrade!

Visit devices and services

Your device has a web interface, but you don’t remember the (IP) address it
has on your network… So you start guessing a couple of addresses; And end up
checking your router, looking it up in an app, or scanning the network…
Sounds familiar? Annoying, right?

Well, as of today, integrations can provide the URLs to devices or services
where the device can be managed or configured.

Screenshot of WLED that now has a button that links to the WLED web interface of the device directly.

If an integration provides a single web interface to configure multiple devices,
it can even deep-link to the specific device page for that device.

Over 50! integrations have already added support for this feature, which is
fantastic! Just to name a few integrations: MQTT, Tasmota, WLED, Synology, Plex,
Netatmo, Pi-hole, RainMachine, Plugwise, Sure Petcare, Axis, UniFi Controller,
FRITZ!Box, and many more!

If you are a custom integration developer, you can add support for this feature
too; Read all about it on our developer blog.

Entity categorization

Since we introduced the concept of devices, we have been seeing more and
more entities being created, which is great! It means we can automate on a lot
more device features. However, this does impose other issues, like:
clutter on a generated dashboard, unused entities exposed to voice assistants,
or turn on/off things in areas as a side-effect. Let me try to explain the
latter issue with an example.

Let’s consider a wall plug. It can be turned on/off using a switch entity,
however, my wall plug also has a switch to enable a child lock that controls
its physical button. Now, if I had this device in my living room area and
turned off all switches in my living room, it would turn off the switch and
the child lock! This is not what we want, right?

To resolve issues like these (and more), we introduce: Entity categories.

Entities without a category are now considered primary entities: The entities
we daily use and expect from a device, i.e., the power on/off switch.
Furthermore, entities can be categorized as configuration or diagnostic entities.
A configuration entity provides a setting/configuration option for the device,
while a diagnostic entity provides information about the device.

Take a light bulb as an example. The light entity itself is a primary entity.
However, the select entity that provides the power on behavior configuration of
the bulb is a setting of the device and thus a configuration entity. While the
sensor providing the signal strength of the light bulb is a diagnostic entity.

Another, more visual example, from the device page of a Sonos Move speaker:

Screenshot of the Sonos device page that now has entities categorized.

In the above screen, you can see the Sonos speaker itself is a primary control
entity, while the entities that provide device configuration options and
entities that provide diagnostic information about the device itself are now
separated nicely.

With entities that are non-primary (so are either configuration or
diagnostic entities), we now do the following:

• Non-primary entities are hidden from generated Lovelace dashboards. This
  reduces the clutter and makes the generated dashboards more useful for daily
  use.
• Non-primary entities are, by default, not exposed to Amazon Alexa or
  Google Assistant. You, of course, still can expose them, but by default,
  we don’t send them to these voice assistants.
• Non-primary entities are not called by service calls that target the device
  or area the device is in. They are only called if explicitly called by their
  entity ID.

Please note, the above-listed points are breaking changes, also listed in
the breaking changes section of these release notes.

Like the previous visit device or service feature, this new organization
capability has been adopted by many of our maintainers: 60+ integrations!
To name a few: Sonos, Z-Wave JS, Shelly, SwitchBot, deCONZ, Neato, Netatmo,
August, MQTT, Hue, Roomba, Tibber, AirVisual, KNX, motionEye, and many more.
Oh, and soon, we can add ESPHome to that list!

If you are a custom integration developer, you can add support for this feature
too; Read all about it on our developer blog.

The icon picker

Adding nice and matching icons to your entities, makes all the difference for
how your Home Assistant interface looks and feels.

Finding those icons was somewhat clumsy. You’d go to the
Material Design Icons website to find one,
remember its code and add the mdi: to your entity. Not a great
experience, especially with the number of icons available your browser doesn’t
always like that website.

Thanks to the great work of @piitaya, we now have
a beautiful, super easy, smart and fast icon picker! Yes, you can now search
and choose icons, straight from the Home Assistant interface.

Screen capture showing the new icon picker in action.

When you start typing, it not only looks for icons that match the MDI code, it
also looks for aliases and categories of the icons. That way, you’ll always
find the icon you’re looking for.

Third-party custom icon sets can also utilize this feature; however, the author
of that set needs to add compatibility for it. For example, the
Hue icons by arallsopp
added support for this feature already.

Tuya update

Our previous release included an update to the Tuya integration, making it use
the official API instead of a soon-to-be-removed API. Sadly, this update did
not live up to our standards, for which we want to apologize.

Tuya had initially planned to deprecate the old API in December, giving users
2 months to migrate. That’s not a lot of time, so we decided to move forward
with releasing the updated integration. Tuya pushed back the timeline for
sunsetting the old API with 6 months; but it was too late for us to change course
and ship the old integration.

The updated Tuya integration had some bugs and also was missing some features
compared to the previous integration and various available custom components.
This caused some users to have a poor experience. To make up for this, @frenck
spent a good chunk of time on bringing the Tuya integration up to the latest
standards and adding a ton of new features and bug fixes.

Almost all Home Assistant entity platforms are supported now, including
(binary) sensors, covers, vacuums, and even cameras! However, be aware that
Tuya has a lot of devices and variations, so there is still work left to be
done; We have done everything we can to provide a solid base this release.

As a final note: Some people complained about that this integration relies
on the cloud. We have always supported integrations with both local and
cloud APIs. Integrations with cloud APIs allow people to adopt Home Assistant
without having to replace all devices in their house. Although we recommend
local, using devices that require the cloud, or are fully local,
is a choice everyone should make for themselves.

Some nice new template filters

For some of our more advanced users, this release has some helpful template
improvements included as well!

Let’s start with the new today_at filter/function that @Petro31 added. It
allows you to quickly get a DateTime at a certain time of today. This can be
really helpful if you need to compare against another DateTime. For example:

# Is the current time past 10:15?
{{ now() > today_at("10:15") }}

Next up is @raman325, who added the area_entities and area_devices filters
and functions which allow you to get all devices or entities that are in an area.
The methods return a list, which you can loop on.

{{ area_entities('Living Room') }}  # ['light.ceiling', 'media_player.tv', ...]

Lastly, @Petro31 added another one: the average filter and function. It does
what you think it does… It calculates the average of a list of items you pass
to it.

{{ [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] | average }} # Result: 3

Other noteworthy changes

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

• Debug traces of automations and scripts are now stored! So you no longer
  lose them when you restart Home Assistant. Thanks @emontnemery
• @frenck adjusted the number entity and it can now be displayed as a slider
  instead of an input box. Home Assistant will automatically figure out which
  is the best to use.
• Add support for fan groups! Thanks @bdraco!
• Thanks to @ludeeus, the Supervisor integration now has binary sensors that
  can tell you which add-on is running or not.
• @allenporter blew our minds this release by adding initial support for
  WebRTC streams and cameras to Home Assistant.
• But had a good reason, he added support for Nest Battery Cameras
  and Nest battery Doorbell Cameras to Home Assistant! Thanks @allenporter!
• When you log in to Home Assistant, there is now a “Keep me logged in”
  checkbox! Awesome @MartinTuroci
• @goyney updated the Material Design Icon to
  version v6.4.95 ensuring we have all the latest icons available in our new
  beautiful icon picker.
• Sure PetCare now supports the Felaqua devices, thanks @benleb!
• The MQTT number platform now has support for providing a unit of measurement
  and resetting the number field (by @frenck and @emontnemery).
• The Broadlink integration added sensors for voltage, current, overload,
  and total consumption. Thanks @felipediel!
• WLED now has the much requested sliders for speed & intensity controls.
  Thanks, @rytilahti!
• OpenGarage has seen lots of updates and love from @Danielhiversen, adding
  lots of sensors in the process.
• With the recent improvements made to the VLC media player integration and
  add-on, there is now a way to get TTS working by connecting some speakers to
  your Blue, ODROID or Raspberry Pi. Thanks, @mib1185 & @MartinHjelmare!

Adding support for long-term statistics is a much requested feature; This
release adds support for long-term statistics to the following integrations:

• AEMET (thanks @Noltari)
• Efery (thanks @tkdrob)
• EnOcean (thanks @davidlb)
• Gogogate2 (thanks @thomas-svrts)
• Huisbaasje (thanks @dennisschroer)
• Nest (thanks @allenporter)
• Ondilo ICO (thanks @TheNogl)
• OpenWeatherMap (thanks @dkt01)
• Plugwise (thanks @bouwew)
• REST (thanks @koying)
• Scrape sensor (thanks @lukas-hetzenecker)
• Tado (thanks @Noltari)
• Tado sensors (thanks #58111)
• WAQI (thanks @davidlb)

New Integrations

We welcome the following new integration this release:

• LOOKin, done by @ANMalko

Integrations now available to set up from the UI

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

• Aurora ABB Solar PV, done by @davet2001
• Efergy, done by @tkdrob
• Flux LED, done by @icemanch and @bdraco
• OctoPrint, done by @rfleming71
• Stookalert, done by @frenck
• Venstar, done by @garbled1
• VLC Media Player Telnet, done by @MartinHjelmare

Release 2021.11.1 – November 5

• Swap sharkiq vacuum is_docked with is_charging (@tomgie – #58975) (sharkiq docs)
• Fix mop attribute for unified mop and water box in Xiaomi Miio (@OGKevin – #58990) (xiaomi_miio docs)
• Fix timedelta-based sensors for xiaomi_miio (@rytilahti – #58995) (xiaomi_miio docs)
• Bump aiopvpc to 2.2.1 (@azogue – #59008) (pvpc_hourly_pricing docs)
• Accept all roborock vacuum models for xiaomi_miio (@rytilahti – #59018) (xiaomi_miio docs)
• Fix Nut resources option migration (@ollo69 – #59020) (nut docs)
• Environment Canada config_flow fix (@gwww – #59029) (environment_canada docs)
• Bump velbus-aio to 2021.11.0 (@Cereal2nd – #59040) (velbus docs)
• Constrain urllib3 to >=1.26.5 (@frenck – #59043)
• Correct migration to recorder schema 22 (@emontnemery – #59048) (recorder docs)
• Increase time to authorize OctoPrint (@frenck – #59051) (octoprint docs)
• Remove use_time sensor from mjjsq humidifers (@rytilahti – #59066) (xiaomi_miio docs)
• Change minimum supported SQLite version to 3.31.0 (@emontnemery – #59073) (recorder docs)
• Correct rescheduling of ExternalStatisticsTask (@emontnemery – #59076) (recorder docs)
• Bump flux_led to 0.24.14 (@bdraco – #59121) (flux_led docs)

Release 2021.11.2 – November 9

• Bump total_connect_client to 2021.11.2 (@austinmroczek – #58818) (totalconnect docs)
• Adjust frag_duration setting in stream (@uvjustin – #59135) (stream docs)
• Bump flux_led to 0.24.15 (@bdraco – #59159) (flux_led docs)
• Bump aioguardian to 2021.11.0 (@bachya – #59161) (guardian docs)
• Guard against flaky SimpliSafe API calls (@bachya – #59175) (simplisafe docs)
• Guard against missing data in ReCollect Waste (@bachya – #59177) (recollect_waste docs)
• Change ReCollect Waste device class to date (@bachya – #59180) (recollect_waste docs)
• bump aioshelly to 1.0.4 (@mib1185 – #59209) (shelly docs)
• Bump flux_led to 0.24.17 (@bdraco – #59211) (flux_led docs)
• Fix tradfri group reachable access (@janiversen – #59217) (tradfri docs)
• Increase timeout for fetching camera data on Synology DSM (@mib1185 – #59237) (synology_dsm docs)
• Add Battery sensor regardless if the battery_percent_remaining attribute is supported or not (@Adminiuga – #59264) (zha docs)
• Fix condition for fritz integration (@chemelli74 – #59281) (fritz docs)
• Remove illuminance sensor (@bieniu – #59305) (xiaomi_miio docs)
• Revert “Use DeviceInfo in shelly (#58520)” (@thecode – #59315) (shelly docs)
• Support generic xiaomi_miio vacuums (@OGKevin – #59317) (xiaomi_miio docs)
• Bump paho-mqtt to 1.6.1 (@emontnemery – #59339) (mqtt docs) (shiftr docs)
• Bump velbusaio to 2021.11.6 (@Cereal2nd – #59353) (velbus docs)
• Update frontend to 20211108.0 (@bramkragten – #59364) (frontend docs)

Release 2021.11.3 – November 11

• Fix rpi_camera setup hanging on initialization (@enegaard – #59316) (rpi_camera docs)
• Fix state of sense net_production sensor (@kbickar – #59391) (sense docs) (emulated_kasa docs)
• Update frontend to 20211109.0 (@bramkragten – #59451) (frontend docs)
• Fix zeroconf with sonos v1 firmware (@bdraco – #59460) (sonos docs)
• Ignore None state in state_change_event (@dgomes – #59485) (integration docs)
• Fix wirelesstag switch arm/disarm (@sergeymaysak – #59515) (wirelesstag docs)
• Remove incomplete segment on stream restart (@uvjustin – #59532) (stream docs)

Release 2021.11.4 – November 15

• Air visual : robustness at startup when evaluate time interval (@jugla – #59544) (airvisual docs)
• Override api url in norway_air (@ludeeus – #59573) (norway_air docs) (met docs)
• Fix firmware status check for Fritz (@chemelli74 – #59578) (fritz docs)
• Always use a step size of 1 for z-wave js fans (@mkowalchuk – #59622) (zwave_js docs)
• Fix favorite RPM max value in Xiaomi Miio (@bieniu – #59631) (xiaomi_miio docs)
• Bump zeroconf to 0.36.12 (@bdraco – #59133) (zeroconf docs)
• Bump zeroconf to 0.36.13 (@bdraco – #59644) (zeroconf docs)
• Bump greecliamate to 0.12.4 (@cmroche – #59645) (gree docs)
• Ensure flux_led bulbs turn on even if brightness is 0 (@bdraco – #59661)
• Update aiolookin to 0.0.4 version (@ANMalko – #59684) (lookin docs)
• Fix bug in AirVisual re-auth (@bachya – #59685) (airvisual docs)
• Bump greeclimate to 0.12.5 (@cmroche – #59730) (gree docs)
• Bump flux_led to 0.24.21 (@bdraco – #59662) (flux_led docs)
• Bump flux_led to 0.24.24 (@bdraco – #59740) (flux_led docs)
• Fix invalid string syntax in French OwnTracks config flow (@spacegaier – #59752) (owntracks docs)

Release 2021.11.5 – November 19

• Use source list property instead of the attribute in Denon AVR integration (@bieniu – #59768) (denonavr docs)
• Fix typo in attribute for Fritz (@chemelli74 – #59791) (fritz docs)
• Fix Netgear init error on orbi models (@starkillerOG – #59799) (netgear docs)
• Bump velbusaio to 2021.11.7 (@Cereal2nd – #59817) (velbus docs)
• Fix invalid string syntax in OwnTracks config flow translations (@spacegaier – #59838) (owntracks docs)
• Strip out deleted entities when configuring homekit (@bdraco – #59844) (homekit docs)
• Bugfix in Tuya Number value scaling (@PlusPlus-ua – #59903) (tuya docs)
• Fix Tuya back scaling in Climate and Humidifer entities (@frenck – #59909) (tuya docs)
• Store: copy pending data (@balloob – #59934)
• Remove test_check_package_version_does_not_match (@emontnemery – #59785)

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.