Home Assistant Podcast 40 – finishing out 2018 with the 0.84 release 00:00 / 1X

Last Episode for 2018

0.84 is the final release for 2018, and so this will also be the final episode for 2018.

First release for 2019 will be 0.85 launching Wednesday 9th January 2019.

0.84

New Features

Cloud Webhooks

Home Assistant cloud subscribers will now have access to cloud webhooks. With this feature, you’ll be given a unique URL which can be used to send data to your local Home Assistant installation. You don’t need to setup any port forwarding or expose your Home Assistant instance to the internet!

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/18672

Awair Sensor Platform

Adds support for Awair (https://getawair.com) air sensors. Will include temperature, humidity, CO2, and some other device-dependent sensors.

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/18570

U.S. Geological Survey Earthquake Hazards Program Feed

Will add geo_location entities to your Home Assistant when a Earthquake event is tracked by the US Geological Survey. A radius can be defined to only include earthquakes within a certain distance from home. A minimum magnitude can be defined to only include earthquakes with that magnitude or higher.

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/18207

Wunderlist

You can create tasks in Wunderlist from within Home Assistant.

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/18339

qBittorrent Sensor

Allows you to see information from your qBittorrent client in Home Assistant.

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/18618

Allows you to see information from your qBittorrent client in Home Assistant. https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/18618 Entur departure information sensor

Realtime departure information about public transport in Norway. Fetches timing information from the open api of entur once a minute to show how long before next bus, ferry, train or similar is leaving the station.

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/17286

Integration of LightwaveRF switches and lights with Home Assistant

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/18026

Breaking Changes

Lutron Light Component

State attributes will now all be lowercase, to be consistent with other Home Assistant components.

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/18650

Systemonitor

The “since_last_boot” option has been removed from the Systemmonitor component.

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/18644

MQTT Lights

When defining an MQTT light in your configuration.yaml file, you will now need to specify the new “schema” key, which will tell Home Assistant whether you’re using json or templates.

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/18227

Camera Push Platform now uses webhooks

You’ll need to post your images to a webhook endpoint, as the camera_push endpoints are now removed.

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/18380

Support for Multiple Rainmachine Controllers

You’ll need to slightly update your configuration.yaml file if you intend to use multiple rainmachine controllers.

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/18989

Instapush Notify Platform has been removed

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/19051

Other Noteworthy Updates

When setting up Home Assistant, you must now have an authentication provider

It was possible to setup Home Assistant without setting up an auth provider. Now you must at least have one. This will make Home Assistant more secure. You can still use settings like trusted networks, if you wish to have a way to bypass the login screen.

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/18854

MQTT Components will now re-configure if discovery info is updatedIf you use MQTT disovery, and you make changes to your device and re-push it through MQTT discovery, it will now be re-created in Home Assistant. Previously you may have needed to restart Home Assistant to clear out the old entity.

Xiaomi Vacuums now have a “last cleaned” time

WIll allow you to easily see when the last time the vacuum cleaner was run

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/19043

The Hosts