Home Assistant 2026.3: A clean sweep
2d 3h ago by lemmy.world/u/thehatfox in homeassistant from www.home-assistant.io
I wish I had some water meters that I could monitor to take advantage of the Energy dashboard, but sadly I don't have a submeter I can access.
Home Assistant just keeps methodically getting better!
In a world where everything is entshitifying this project is really refreshing
I have a smart water meter installed by the utility provider with a cloud integration, unfortunately the readings have a 24-48h delay so it’s no use for real time monitoring.
This update seems pretty tame from the release notes, but I was worried about the python update.
I have a lot of HACS integrations, and several HACS custom repository integrations that are updated very slowly when things get updated around them.
I'm happy to report that all of my integrations work just fine after the update.
HA is fantastic once you’re past the learning curve but is still aggressively unintuitive sometimes, and I find little irritants all the time. Why can’t you make the Settings pages and sub-pages top level menu items? Why are entities and devices buried so deep in Settings? Why can’t you edit Zones from the Map view? Why can’t you easily rename entities in bulk on a per-device basis? Why can’t you automatically replace entity references in Automations with an updated entity name? Why isn’t there good documentation overall about how the system works instead of just technical documentation with narrow focuses? Why is the discord full of Linux elitist types who expect you to know the system when you’re trying to learn it?
It’s the little things everywhere that make me long for a Valve Software level of polish. There has been progress like the push to not manually configure things with YAML, but it’s so slow.
The fact that dimming a room turns ON all the lights in the room is actually wild
Dimming is just light.room: turn on > XX% so it makes sense that it would turn on all lights assigned to that specific entity. I use Adaptive Brightness so that I don't have to fiddle with dimming lights manually. The sun does that for me.
I know how it works, I'm just saying it's unintuitive. It's not how any other smart home system works.
I use adaptive brightness too, actually. But nearly every time I'm manually adjusting a room's existing brightness, I don't want every single unpowered devices to turn on, too.
You could create a separate light group for the ones you typically do have on at those times and just use that when you want to dim the room lights
What would you expect it to do? I would think you're telling it to set all lights to whatever level...
I would expect it to behave like all other smart home systems, or like a physical dimmer switch/power switch.
Dim the lights that are already on, and ignore the ones that are off?
I'm just pointing out here that you and I have different expectations; how could the software know what you intended?
99% of the time I want to adjust the current lighting, I don't want to first turn on all lights and then adjust all of those lights to a uniform standard before individually toggling them all individually. Powering on all unpowered lights when adjusting brightness should be the edge case, IMO (also again not just my opinion, but the industry standard)
For the record all other smart home systems treat room groups the way I am describing (like a dimmer knob and power switches). But there isn't even an option in HA for rooms to "only adjust devices currently in use". The smart home companies seem to have researched how people naturally intuit such things.
If you're adjusting the same lights repeatedly, you could set them up as a group.
It's more work, but you could also write a script that detects the current status of each light then sets the brightness if it's on. I use something like that for our smart porch lights that are on a smart switch - if the switch is off, turn it on, wait a bit for the lights to get on the network, then set them to the right color or whatever. (The switch normally stays on, but it gets turned off occasionally and it doesn't automatically turn on after a power outage.)
I haven't used other automation systems - I avoided them because I didn't want to get locked into one, until I found HA. I also have never thought to "dim a room" - actually I've never used entire room controls at all, they never made a lot of sense to me, but then I generally only have one or two lights in a room to control.
The conversation topic was unintuitive aspects of HA, I'm aware hacky workarounds exist, but I find this (pretty central) behavior quite clunky.
I also find it crazy that you've never wanted to dim or brighten more than one light at a time lol but then again, diversity is the spice of FOSS!
This one broke zigbee2mqtt for me but I'm not sure why. I rolled back for now.
Again?? Sigh...
right lol
Thanks for the heads up! Half my network is through z2mqtt
Wake word on mobile is very exciting, but it doesn't seem to work on my device. It won't even let me turn it on, and says that HA is not my default assistant even though it definitely is.
I've got it working on my S24. I've been waiting so long for this.
I was excited too! But they mention it kills the battery as Google doesn't let the access the system API for it, so we'll see whether it stays enabled.
I used their advice from the blog to make an automation that turns it on when I'm home, and off when I'm away.
I spend 90% of my time at home so that probably won't help my battery much 😅
You probably have a charger at home, though.
Haha you got me, I do have a charger at home. I'm just not used to charging in the day, I normally charge overnight. But I guess I could charge more if needed.
To be fair, doubling the amount of charge cycles is not great for your battery. So even with a charger available one should consider whether it's worth it.
Thanks for commenting that. I only quickly read the blog. I've just set those automations up.
Ended up having to change my default assistant, then change it back to Homeassistant for it to recognize that it was the default. There's already a bug report for it as well.
Any smart bulbs we can still flash? Once they're set up and joined, I want to use the BT for presence detection.
Flash with ESPHome? Not that I'm aware of (but would be nice to know)
Edit: just found this: Smart Bulb (9W/RGB+CT) - Preflashed & Preconfigured
I'm happy with the Shelly bulbs, they work without internet shenanigans and can do MQTT, etc...
I have used Pi Zeros and ESPresense for prsence detection... seem to work ok, but if you're wanting to do room-level detection, (ie who's where), then that seems to be really difficult to tune the sensitivity
Really impressed with the way they keep building this out.
Oh, and before I forget: have you seen our brand new merch store?
🤮
The software's free, bud.
The software is free, but no dev works for free.
Thay have a company that pays for dev time, that company will need funds.
Might get some socks for work
My comment was in support of the store. The software's free, this is how you can "pay for it"
The software is free, but no dev works for free.
It's possible to engineer software well and still earn a living.
That said, engineering software poorly is often a choice, usually made by people who are poor engineers. In some cases, and I suspect this may be the case for Nabu Casa Inc., the people are such poor engineers that they aren't even aware that their software is poorly engineered. Many technology companies are better at business than they are engineering.
Edit: actually no, I don't think Nabu Casa Inc. are unaware of their poor engineering, I think they just don't care. They're far more concerned with maintaining their company's profits.
You are the classic example of why Open Source project developers hate some of their communities.
Toxic through and through. Go vibe code your own solution.
But you still use it with all of these objections?
I mean, so are free-to-plays full of microtransactions and dark patterns.
Do you think this is a good analogy
I was already going to buy a shirt. Maybe I'll get a hat, too. Just for you
Why so negative? Bands also makes merch to increase their income, should we hate on them as well?
Oh, look at that: the Linux Foundation also sells merch https://linuxfoundation.store/ - maybe you should stop using Linux?
Microsoft also has merch; so does Android.
I can't find any merch store for Apple, so I guess your an Apple fanboy.
Also, merch for organizations providing free shit is a way to financially contribute and to get the word out about the project. Especially something like home assistant where most people have never heard of it, and many may think it's too hard, you can get the word out and maybe even get some people interested in getting free from corpo ecosystems.
Do any sell key caps to replace the windows key on keyboards?
Why so negative?
It's clear that the Nabu Casa Inc. people, who also happen to be the Home Assistant project leaders, are focussed on making money over making well engineered software.
For example, Home Assistant's settings page includes an entry for Nabu Casa Inc.'s cloud services product as the first entry in the list and there's no option to switch it off.
Home Assistant is engineered in such a way as to make it difficult to install on operating systems that aren't under control of Nabu Casa Inc., like Home Assistant OS or Home Assistant Container. If Home Assistant were engineered well, it would be simple to take individual Home Assistant packages and build and install them on any distribution, as has been customary in the free software community for decades. As far as I know, there's no reason Home Assistant must be an operating system rather than simply individual packages. See https://feddit.uk/post/17543373 and especially https://feddit.uk/post/17543373/12207671 .
Bands also makes merch to increase their income, should we hate on them as well?
If a band makes selling merch their purpose, over and above making decent music, then I would likewise scorn them.
It's clear that the Nabu Casa Inc. people, who also happen to be the Home Assistant project leaders, are focussed on making money over making well engineered software.
It's clear that Paulus created a free home automation product and developed it for 5 years. For free.
In 2018 they started a fund raising system which also helped provide secure remote access for those that don't know how to do it themselves.
I'd say they are focussed on making well engineered software over making money.
I’d say they are focussed on making well engineered software over making money.
I think you must have a different idea of what "well engineered software" means because to me, nothing you've said implies a focus on making well engineered software.
Writing software without remuneration doesn't imply a focus on well engineered software. A person can write software without remuneration with a focus on anything, not necessarily good engineering. For example, one can write software without remuneration with a focus on financial reward in future. Which is exactly what appears to have happened. Working without pay to build a business with the expectation that the business will be profitable in future doesn't imply that the business will be built on good engineering.
Helping secure remote access for those who don't know how to do it themselves doesn't imply a focus on well engineered software. Educating people isn't the same thing as engineering software, let alone engineering software well. Ease of use isn't the same thing as good engineering; one can engineer easy to use software well and one can engineer easy to use software poorly. Nabu Casa Inc. have done the latter.
@rah
Guess how Open Home Foundation is financed: https://www.openhomefoundation.org/
Eh?
I actually missed that on my first pass.
Thanks for the heads up!
I also love the breakdown of costs. It's one of those little things that shows their mentality.