Home Assistant Podcast 57 – 0.100, Hacktoberfest 2019 and wireless technologies with Tony 00:00 / 1X

Hacktoberfest 2019!

Hacktoberfest is live for 2019, and Home Assistant is again participating.

The first 50,000 developers who have registered at hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com and make 4 pull requests before the end of October may be eligible to receive a free t-shirt.

For Home Assistant, you can contribute directly either through new components, or help out by adding or improving documentation on the Home Assistant website.

Home Assistant State of the Union 2019

ING are once again hosting the Home Assistant State of the Union which will be held in Amsterdam on November 13.

The event has already reached capacity! Hopefully this will be live streamed somewhere.

https://www.eventbrite.nl/e/home-assistant-state-of-union-2019-registration-74331081265

0.100

New Features

Google Assistant via Nabu Casa can now report states

If you have Google Assistant integrated with Nabu Casa, Home Assistant can now push entity states to Google Assistant, similar to how it does for the Amazon Echo.This will allow you to create actions in Google Assistant which can respond to entities changing states from Home Assistant.

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/27112

If you have Google Assistant integrated with Nabu Casa, Home Assistant can now push entity states to Google Assistant, similar to how it does for the Amazon Echo.This will allow you to create actions in Google Assistant which can respond to entities changing states from Home Assistant. https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/27112 DOODS Image Processing Support

DOODS stands for Dedicated Open Object Detection Service

Designed to run as a Docker container to allow you to process images to detect objects (like people, furniture etc).The states and attributes are very similar to the Tensorflow component

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/26208

DOODS stands for Dedicated Open Object Detection Service Designed to run as a Docker container to allow you to process images to detect objects (like people, furniture etc).The states and attributes are very similar to the Tensorflow component https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/26208 iZone Climate Platform

The custom component is now an official integration in Home Assistant!

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/24550

The custom component is now an official integration in Home Assistant! https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/24550 Kaiterra integration

Supports devices and sensors from Kaiterra. One of which is called a Laser Egg, which is a Wifi sensor designed to detect gasses and chemicals in the air inside your house!

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/26661

Supports devices and sensors from Kaiterra. One of which is called a Laser Egg, which is a Wifi sensor designed to detect gasses and chemicals in the air inside your house! https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/26661 Here Travel Time

Here Travel Time is a new travel time sensor. HERE offers a Freemium Plan which includes 250.000 free Transactions per month, and requires an API key to be integrated with Home Assistant.

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/24603

Here Travel Time is a new travel time sensor. HERE offers a Freemium Plan which includes 250.000 free Transactions per month, and requires an API key to be integrated with Home Assistant. https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/24603 Soma Smart Shades

Official support for the Soma Smart Shades.Soma recently released their Raspberry Pi controller image, allowing you to turn a Raspberry Pi into a control unit for your blinds. This integration now talks to that directly.

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/26226 MQTT Service Phil uses : https://github.com/andersonshatch/soma-ctrl

Official support for the Soma Smart Shades.Soma recently released their Raspberry Pi controller image, allowing you to turn a Raspberry Pi into a control unit for your blinds. This integration now talks to that directly. https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/26226 : https://github.com/andersonshatch/soma-ctrl IKEA Fyrtur Blinds

For those lucky enough to have the new IKEA smart blinds, these should now be supported with the native Tradfri integration in Home Assistant.

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/26659

Breaking Changes

A lot of breaking changes in this release, here’s a couple of highlights

Deprecated Integrations have now been removed

We mentioned these back in episode 55. Webscraping components such as UPS and Fedex have now been removed. You should be able to find them from the Home Assistant Community Store if required though.

https://community.home-assistant.io/t/custom-component-hacs/121727

We mentioned these back in episode 55. Webscraping components such as UPS and Fedex have now been removed. You should be able to find them from the Home Assistant Community Store if required though. https://community.home-assistant.io/t/custom-component-hacs/121727 Updates for Ecobee Users

Ecobee climate devices will now be setup from the UI. Existing users should have their settings from the YAML and other configuration files imported when you upgrade.As part of this change, any Ecobee specific services such as “ecobee_resume_program” are being moved away from the climate platform, and will instead be moved to an ecobee platform, for example “ecobee.resume_program”

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/26634

Ecobee climate devices will now be setup from the UI. Existing users should have their settings from the YAML and other configuration files imported when you upgrade.As part of this change, any Ecobee specific services such as “ecobee_resume_program” are being moved away from the climate platform, and will instead be moved to an ecobee platform, for example “ecobee.resume_program” https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/26634 Transmission Download Client moving to UI setup

Setting up an integration with the Transmission download client can now be done from the Integrations menu in Home Assistant. No more configuration YAML needed.As part of this change, existing users who have set the monitored_conditions flag in their configuration YAML will need to remove this, as now all sensors and switches will be imported by default.

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/26434

Other Noteworthy Updates

Plex can now be setup via the UI

Similar to Transmission above, without any breaking changes. You can now setup the Plex integration without the need for any YAML.

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/26548

Similar to Transmission above, without any breaking changes. You can now setup the Plex integration without the need for any YAML. https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/26548 ZHA Integration now supports Sirens and Warning Devices

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/26046

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/26046 Template devices and sensors now define an availability template

When an integration is offline, Home Assistant can mark sensors and switches as unavailable. This unfortunately didn’t work for sensors and switches which are based on templates.Now there is an availability template, allowing you to specify a template which can tell Home Assistant when that sensor or switch is no longer online/available.This is available across the board, including lights, fans, covers etc.

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/26513

When an integration is offline, Home Assistant can mark sensors and switches as unavailable. This unfortunately didn’t work for sensors and switches which are based on templates.Now there is an availability template, allowing you to specify a template which can tell Home Assistant when that sensor or switch is no longer online/available.This is available across the board, including lights, fans, covers etc. https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/26513 Google Home Devices can now arm and disarm alarm panels in Home Assistant

You’ll need to provide your voice PIN, for that extra bit of security.

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/26249

Todays Guest

Tony Lamont .Net Software developer and armature PCB designer.

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