Home Assistant Podcast 64 – 0.107, we bid adieu to Lightify and say hello to Quentin 00:00 / 1X

Lightify Says Goodbye

Lightify by Osram will be closing their cloud servers in August 2021. This will remove cloud access to Lightify gateways, which powers remote access and Google Home/Amazon Echo capabilities.

As the LIGHTIFY System is a cloud based system, the majority of functions will unfortunately be lost and LIGHTIFY app control will be only very limited.

To control your smart lights and plugs beyond August 31st, 2021, you need to fully reset your entire system. Afterwards you can simply integrate it into any other ZigBee® compatible system

https://www.osram.com/cb/lightify/lightify-home/lightify-home-faq/index.jsp

Philips Hue continues v1 hub deprecation

As we mentioned back in episode 50, Philips Hue are continuing with their plans to deprecate their v1 hue bridge. If you wish to still use the v1 bridge, you’ll need to download another Hue app which is designed to work with that bridge.

Nabu Casa Cloud adds 5 new data centres

To reduce latency and the time it takes to load your remote connection to Home Assistant, Nabu Casa have added 5 new data centres for their Home Assistant Cloud service. When restarting your Home Assistant instance, you should automatically connect to the closest data centre.

0.107

New Features

Multiple Lovelace Dashboards

Allows you to have multiple Lovelace UI’s.



For example you may have a dedicated UI for tablets, another UI you use for your phone. You can also choose to restrict dashboards to admin users. A great feature to stop kids from being able to control the parents room.

New Card Picker with Live Preview

When editing Lovelace views via the interface, there is an awesome new live preview which allows you to select which type of card you want to display, using your own data. The preview from the release notes looks very cool

Data tables are faster

Probably a pain point for many users, the entities filtering is quite slow. From this release it should be lightning fast

Homekit Get some new features

Includes initial basic support for Homekit enabled TV’s and Homekit occupancy sensors

https://github.com/home-assistant/core/pull/32188

https://github.com/home-assistant/core/pull/32404

Breaking Changes

Many many breaking changes this release, here’s some highlights…

Some Group functionalities have been removed

Now that the states UI has been removed, there are some features of Groups which have also been removed as of this release.



The group.set_visibility service is removed

View and control configuration options against a group



Before upgrading, check your groups don’t still have these hanging around.



[Phil Note] When I upgraded to the beta, Home Assistant didn’t enter safe mode. However the group being in invalid state stopped some components from loading, including lights and fans.

Facebook Messenger

If you’re using the Facebook Messenger notification platform, it might be harder for you to send messages to users now. Facebook have removed the BROADCAST MESSAGE option, which means Home Assistant may not be able to send a message to a recipient unless they have recently messaged your Facebook Page.

Units of time

Time units have been standardized throughout all integrations. If you rely on time units in your automations, best to check they still function as required.

https://github.com/home-assistant/core/pull/32065

Other Noteworthy Updates

ZHA Component now supports light flashing

If you’re using the direct Zigee light component with a zigbee radio, you can now have your zigbee lights flash as an effect.

https://github.com/home-assistant/core/pull/32234

SMS Support for Pushbullet

It is now possible to use the Pushbullet notification platform to send SMS messages.

https://github.com/home-assistant/core/pull/32347

Amazon Echo can now start and stop timers

If you have Home Assistant timers you want to control with voice, you can now expose them to your Amazon Echo and say “turn on/off [timer name]”.

https://github.com/home-assistant/core/pull/32616

Rohan’s Kevo Lock

Kwikset Kevo

Quentin

Blog post about wifi & zigbee channels at https://statusq.org/archives/2018/01/09/8435/

Jonathan Oxer / SuperHouse #23: Preparing your home automation system for death: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aaLGKBgTZc

Using two Shellys to control the bathroom lights: https://community.home-assistant.io/t/shelly-fan-control-or-why-my-bathroom-light-switch-now-has-two-ip-addresses/118280

Weather from the University of Cambridge: https://github.com/quentinsf/weather_cambridge_dcst

Controlling Rollease motorised window shades: https://github.com/quentinsf/rollease2mqtt/tree/master/rollease2mqtt

Monitoring the outputs of my home alarms system with ESP8266 boards: https://community.home-assistant.io/t/monitoring-home-alarm-outputs/140415

Robin Cole’s plugin for reading Hue sensors and switches in HA: https://github.com/robmarkcole/Hue-sensors-HASS

Follow @nabucasa Home Assistant Cloud by Nabu Casa Easily connect to Google and Amazon voice assistants for a small monthly fee that also supports the Home Assistant project. Configuration is via the User Interface so no fiddling with router settings, dynamic DNS or YAML. Website

Todays Guest

Quentin Stafford-Fraser Quentin lives in Cambridge, England, where he splits his time between working for the University, running a small software company, and walking his spaniel. Website Follow @quentinsf

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