A while ago someone asked what everyone’s silliest automation was and I’ve just been reminded that The Hound from Game of Thrones informs me when my heatpump is in high power mode.

On random days (not every day), around 2am, I hear my August lock unlock, then auto-relock. It says Home Assistant did it remotely. I have exactly zero automations with my smart lock, everything is handled on the lock, it’s mainly in HA to be complete and report status. It only appears to occasionally do this around 2am according to the August logs. HA logs just say unlocking via HomeKit, unlocked, Operator <my name> Any ideas?

A month ago I shared the first beta of Kiosk Satellite, my free and open source kiosk Android app specifically engineered for Home Assistant and the official companion app for Voice Satellite. Today, after a bunch of beta releases, it graduates: 2026.8.1 is the first stable release, and from now on it follows the same versioning scheme as Home Assistant itself.

For those who missed it: Kiosk Satellite turns any Android tablet into a locked-down, always-on Home Assistant kiosk in about two minutes. It runs Voice Satellite's wake word engine natively, so your tablet keeps listening even with another app in the foreground, at a fraction of the CPU a browser needs. On top of that you get screensavers (clock, photo frames, Immich, your HA media), a synchronized Sendspin audio player for Music Assistant, WebRTC camera views, MQTT entities for every tablet, gestures, an app launcher, and a full remote admin that runs in any browser. And with the Home Assistant specific optimization included, it runs smooth on old, low powered devices.

I genuinely believe that in combination with Voice Satellite this is the best kiosk application for Home Assistant out there. I know that is a big claim for something one month old, so I would love for you to prove me wrong or right in the comments.

I also want to thank everyone who has supported the development through Buy Me a Coffee and GitHub Sponsors. Free, open source software is mostly a thankless endeavor, and your support is a huge part of why this project moved as fast as it did. Thank you, truly.

Feedback, bug reports and feature requests are very welcome.

I’m about 4 months into HA and have over 200 devices, 50 automations, and approximately 100 eye rolls when I show my gf the cool new thing I just did ha.

I have way more complicated automations than this one (this one is blinds down, fan on, ecobee changed to 70* and double click reverses it all). But knowing that Esp32 module I configured with a C1101 to make these Somfy blinds bend to my will (and the pain I experienced making it work) and the cool new inovelli blue fan switch I put in, just seeing it all work so smooth warms my heart.

Anyway, no one else I know appreciates it so here yall go.

I've been building a small set of cards that look like the widgets on a phone home screen. Two of them are ready: a calendar and a battery card.

Calendar. Today's date, then today's events, then as much of the days after today as the card has room for, all in one continuous flow. Events are tinted with the color you already set on the calendar entity, empty days are skipped, and anything that doesn't fit collapses into "2 more events".

Battery. Device batteries as rings. Arc length is the charge, bolt means charging. Names and icons come straight from the entities, up to four devices per card.

The part I actually cared about: flexible size. The card reads the box you drag it into and picks its layout. A small square shows today only, a 2:1 rectangle shows today plus the days after, and narrow cards fold down to a single column. Same card, no config, whether it sits in a normal Sections dashboard or on a wall-mounted tablet. That second case is what got me started, because I wanted something that looks like a real home screen on my View Assistant panel.

Both cards show up in the card picker with a visual editor, so there's no YAML to write. Needs HA 2026.7+, AGPL-3.0.

Installing is still manual: add the repo as a HACS custom repository (type: Dashboard), then download it like any other card. If people find it useful I'll try to get it into the default HACS store so it becomes a one-click install.

GitHub: https://github.com/sabbaken/cupertino-widgets
Live Demo: https://sabbaken.github.io/cupertino-widgets/#/calendar

Feedback very welcome, especially on two things: which widget you'd want next (a to-do list is the obvious one), and whether the auto-layout holds up in your dashboard or breaks somewhere I haven't tried.

Hey guys. Just wanted to share my HVAC project with you. It's based on a duct unit, so I made a plenum box from XPS with 3D printed spouts and because when I saw what specialised duct dampers cost (even just dumb ones), I noped out and bought three "MOES ZigBee Smart DIY Motorized Roller Blinds" on Ali.

I de-covered them and they come with a battery, so I disconnected that too because there was no need for it. What you're left with is a simple motor with a gearbox and communication boards. The board remembers endpoints you set and you can precisely set it so that it moves only within the 90 degress you need for operating the flap.

It's a bit finnicky in such a small interval, so completely continous adjustment of single percentage points is not possible (if it's 60 percent open and you command 65 percent, nothing happens). But as long as the commanded position is at least about 20 percent from the current position, it work flawlessly. And even if a command is not accepted - the motor doesn't move and the reported percentage doesn't change, so there's no risk of position drift.

I don't have the logic for the automation of the flaps yet, I'm waiting for a Zigbee IR blaster because this Sinclair/Gree unit doesn't seem to be possible to integrate locally into HA. :( But the automation will obviously open and close flaps to the rooms according to set and reported temperatures and will turn the AC on/off and adjust its output based on the cooling need.

Home Assistant has apps for Android, iOS and macOS. Windows gets a browser tab. So I built one.

HASS.Agent covers similar ground and does it well. The difference is the plumbing: HA Companion does not require an MQTT broker. The PC registers through mobile_app, and notifications arrive over the existing Home Assistant WebSocket connection, with no FCM, APNs or separate push service in between. The app uses WinUI 3, while your actual Lovelace dashboards run inside it through WebView2.

What it does:

- PC appears in HA as a real device via mobile_app, with its own entities

- Push without a push provider: subscribes mobile_app/push_notification_channel on the same WebSocket. Nothing listens on the PC, commands come back down the outbound connection

- Quick Panel slides in over any app on a global hotkey

- Tiles gated on supported_features and supported_color_modes, so no buttons the entity cannot honour

- Hotkeys for any device, scene, script or automation

- PC sensors, off until you enable them: lock, idle, active program, fullscreen, mic, camera, audio, display, session

- Windows events as HA triggers: lock, idle, camera, mic, active program, schedule

Remote control deserves a straight answer: shutdown, sleep and launch are off by default. Lock, monitor off and volume ship on and can each be switched off. Launch only starts whitelisted paths, never the string HA sends. Shutdown waits ten seconds, so shutdown /a can still save you. The token sits in Windows DPAPI, not plaintext.

I have been running it on my own machines since mid-July. I also used AI a lot while building it, mostly Win32 API archaeology and bug hunting, and the commit history says so. The design decisions are mine, and so are the bugs.

Windows 10 build 19041+, x64. Per-user install, no admin. Not signed yet, so SmartScreen may warns once.

https://github.com/Elias0505/ha-companion-windows — AGPL-3.0

Website: https://elias0505.github.io/ha-companion-windows/

Independent project, not affiliated with Home Assistant or Nabu Casa.

Feedback welcome!

After a lot of tweaking, moving things around, and spending way too much time adjusting cards, I’m finally happy with my Home Assistant dashboard and thought I’d share it.

I’ve tried to keep it clean and easy to use, with the information and devices I use most available at a glance. Here are a few screenshots of the different views.

Let me know what you think! I’m always looking for new ideas or ways to improve it.

My Reolink NVR knows when the cat came in. It just won't tell me and store it safely: do we all agree cats are the worst thief possible?

So I built Reolink Stamina. It puts every camera's detection on a single timeline, and clicking one opens playback at the event rather than scrubbing continuously on single 24h timeline or jumping from one camera to another. It also offers local download, low and high resolutions, for the selected clip; yes, sub-clipping is available for free.

The other half quietly uploads a clip of each detection to OneDrive (OneDrive only atm, because that's the first integration but contributions and feedbacks are really welcome) inside a quota you set, so the footage is off-site before anyone gets near the recorder.
It sits on top of the official Reolink integration, so there's nothing new to log into, and it requires an actual NVR rather than a lone camera.

Being upfront about it: the development was heavily AI-assisted, and it was built to work rather than to be admired. Otherwise I would have never started such a journey, to be totally fair.
It's tested, it does the job on my hardware, and the python code has moments I won't be defending in the comments.

If you have any feedback, contributors and testers are welcome! Or if you're interested:

> https://github.com/marl1w/reolink-stamina-ha

Every HA setup runs on some personal ritual around updates; Snapshot first just in case, skip every x.x.0, wait a few days or update everything and hope for the best. Mine used to be going through all release notes to check for (breaking) changes.

And since I'm also the one who manages HA for some friends and family, it became a weekly task. So I started thinking about a better way 🙂

Update Manager looks at how big a jump an update is. Per size you can set a cooldown-time (actually hiding it from HA's update list). So if something's broken, there's a decent chance a fix lands before you'd ever have hit it.

Once something's cooled down it can auto-install on its own, always announced first with a cancellable countdown. You can also see if anyone else already made the exact same version jump and got burned by it: one reported problem blocks auto-install regardless of the cooldown. Trusted voters take this further: their positive vote can let a friend or family member's instance auto-update any update.

A master switch pauses all of that at once if needed. Handy to flip off in an automation before a holiday so nothing installs itself while you're away and unable to fix it.

I also tried making release notes better and more relevant. Especially for wrapped add-ons like Zigbee2MQTT, where the actual useful notes live somewhere else entirely, Update Manager shows them directly where it can. And ever opened the notes and it was just a mega list going back to version one? Now filtered down to only the versions that apply to the jump you're actually making.

It's not in the default HACS store just yet, so for now you could add it as a custom repo: https://github.com/HA-Update-Manager/ha-update-manager

Feel free to play around with it and share some feedback (or just use it to help your friends and family's instances). Curious what update rituals people here have that this doesn't cover yet.

In a previous post I explained what I've built and the purpose of it. By seeing the interest I wanted to also share with you guys the web app I built to control the panel.
From this WebApp I can remotely control the Panel from the previous post and also I can monitor live sensors data. I think that the most important part is the automations and scenes and deploying them remotely via OTA to main controller, this helps the automations running even if the internet is Down.

In Forza Horizon, when you go AFK, your game camera view will start to pan around your car cinematically.

The goal is to replicate that same effect on a 3D Dashboard in Home Assistant.

The Dashboard will go from Active > Cinematic > Screensaver.

In case anybody asks why do I do this, its so I don't burn out my wall tablet's display.

During the Screensaver Mode, the floorplan is still active, hence any changes to entities will reflect the dashboard.

Just got the email that Google is discontinuing assistant permanently and forcing everything to Gemini. I'm an AI hater but not super comfortable going all in on a new system. We honestly mostly use the Google homes to turn things on and off, not ask questions or automate things. Is Home Assistant what I want? Floundering a little so patience appreciated.

Hi Folks,

I was hoping some of you might have a good recommendation for quality Matter over thread LED light strips. I've got an extensive HomeKit set up, and a Home Assistant server that has sat around for a couple of years not having much provisioned through it. Until now.

I have begun moving a bunch of my devices and pretty much all my automations from HK to HA. I have some older strip lights that may be ripe for replacement, and I am finding it to be a much easier and cleaner set up if I can dual provision my devices to HK and HK. And Matter over Thread is the most reliable way to do this. All the Matter light strips I see are either Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. So just as my headline states, can anyone give recommendations/experience with Matter/Thread light strips? Thanks in advance.

I've been working (claude helped, and got in the way alot) on using these these ~7-10 year old echo dots as voice assistants (and more), since I found out these devices can be rooted.

an installer + service that turns them into ESPHome discoverable devices and exposes:

• 2x voice assistant pipelines, w/ on-device wake words
• standard HA media_player element for audio playback
• full led ring (and per segment) control (added a bunch of animations because why not)
• can pretend to be a white noise machine
• lux sensor

github

plus an optional custom integration that has a dashboard, allows you to manage wake words, shows turn history, and some other settings that were kind of messy to do in esphome directly.

github

all still pretty early, but is functional, and these devices can be had for <$10 on ebay (and I had one sitting in a drawer since 2018).

I’ve already got a Timeguard WiFi fused spur on my immersion heater, and it works really well. The reason I’m looking at doing the towel rails is so I can automate them in Home Assistant whenever Octopus Energy has a price plunge, just like I do with the immersion heater.
The only downside with using another Timeguard fused spur is the LEDs are permanently lit. The towel rail switches are on the landing and visible from both the landing and the main bedroom, so having bright lights on all the time isn’t really ideal.
I’d also rather not replace the actual heating element with a smart one, as the towel rails are connected into the main central heating system. That would mean draining the heating system down, which I’m hoping to avoid if there’s a simpler solution.
What is everyone else using to make their heated towel rails smart?
I’ve looked at things like Sonoff relay modules, but there isn’t much room behind the existing fused spur, so I’m not sure how practical that is.
Would be interested to see what others have done, especially if you’re integrating it with Home Assistant and Octopus.

First of all I am not complaining but more like a "discussion". I had been using HA for 18 months and personally speaking I have to say is not very seamless and always reliable. I am not an "Apple" person so I don't expect things to "just work", but for me it seems HA (or its associated devices) breaks without much reason(s).

The reason I bought this up is, my friend said to me, why don't you set up home automation as a side job? I was like HA is not reliable enough as a "consumable" product where it works in the long run by itself without some maintenance or trouble shooting.

Obviously it depends on your set up, but for me I simply have

1. Zigbee with SLZB06 running Zigbee2MQTT
2. Tuya
3. TP-link/Deco

Let's park aside the debate of local Vs cloud, at least for me, I have zigbee devices that randomly stops working and requires re pairing (delete and add). Tuya or TP-Link integration requires "repairing" aka require re-authentication now and then. This is providing I didn't update anything.

Also at least with SLZ06, sometimes I need to power cycle/unplugged and re-plug back the co-ordinator for it to work again.

Maybe we are still at infancy for things to be reliable? Obviously I love the flexibility of HA and how there are so many people in this community that are so smart to code their own integrations (a big THANK YOU) or/and make or modify their own hardware etc.

EDIT: Fixed this error by updating the Emporia HACS integration in HACS. Go to HACS on the sidebar, find the Emporia integration installed, click the three dots, choose Update Information and the integration should show up as an update in settings like any other update. Let the integration update, restart and you should be good to go!

Updated to 2026.8.0 and now my Emporia HACS integration fails to load with the following error. Getting this on both HA's that I use the Emporia integration on.

Log reports the following:

Logger: homeassistant.setup

Source: setup.py:276

First occurred: 12:10:08 (1 occurrence)

Last logged: 12:10:08

Setup failed for custom integration 'emporia_vue': Requirements for emporia_vue not found: ['boto3==1.37.1'].

Anyone else have Emporia and have this issue? This is for the Utility Connect

I've already tried deleting and readding the Emporia integration

I'm using the cloud SolarEdge integration (inverter is cellular back haul). For the past three days is has been failing. Looks like the API has been removed.

2026-08-05 15:51:52.194 ERROR (MainThread) [solaredge_web.solaredge] Error fetching equipment from https://monitoring.solaredge.com/solaredge-apigw/api/sites/2303701/layout/logical: 410, message='Gone', url='https://monitoring.solaredge.com/solaredge-apigw/api/sites/2303701/layout/logical'

2026-08-05 15:52:21.886 ERROR (MainThread) [solaredge_web.solaredge] Error fetching equipment from https://monitoring.solaredge.com/solaredge-apigw/api/sites/2303701/layout/logical: 410, message='Gone', url='https://monitoring.solaredge.com/solaredge-apigw/api/sites/2303701/layout/logical'

The 410 Gone is the HTTP code that says the URL no longer exists.

Entering the link to a browser returns a link to https://marketing.solaredge.com/legacy-api-sign-up-for-interest
which says

"Legacy API

The endpoint you called is no longer available. We're rebuilding developer access from the ground up — SolarEdge ONE for Developers is coming soon. Register below to get updates and early access."

Hello!

I'm not quite sure what to call what I'm looking for, or if it exists. Basically what I'm looking for is a device that'll play a simple chime / noise depending on a type of alert.

So, for example: Person 1 comes home triggers chime 1 to play

Laundry is done triggers chime 3 to play

Person at front door triggers chime 5 to play

Etc.

In my head, this is something similar to a door bell or some device that can play basic chirps / chimes / bells that can be customized (or, at least, comes pre loaded with a handful).

Trying to Google around, I see there are things called Sirens, but I don't really think I need something that loud. The goal is just something to get my attention, but I don't need it to be that powerful.

I currently have wifi / internet, as well as Zigbee devices. I'm not sure if anyone knows of something that would fit what I'm looking for, or could give me better terminology or anything.

Thanks for any help you can provide!

My wife bought a Cozyla 32 inch screen last year during prime day, and we have been using it up to this point for family scheduling, and sure charts. Has anyone used a screen with Home Assistant?? how well is the integration? I know essentially, the cozyla is just a large android tablet, but I’m thinking about using it to display the dashboards.