Home Assistant Podcast 58 – 0.101, Switchbot Curtain and talking to Stephan 00:00 / 1X

State of the Union Meetups

If you can’t make it to the Home Assistant state of the union in Amsterdam, there are a couple of meetups happening in Germany where you can join others watching the live stream.

Berlin – Germany

6:00pm -> 9:00pm

https://www.meetup.com/Berlin-Home-Assistant/events/265634883/

6:00pm -> 9:00pm https://www.meetup.com/Berlin-Home-Assistant/events/265634883/ Grünstadt – Germany

6:30pm -> 9:30pm

https://www.meetup.com/Home-Assistant-Meetup-Rhein-Main-Neckar/events/265920456/

Starting Times (Local)

The keynote speech by Paulus will be kicking off on November 13th 6:30pm Amsterdam time. To save you the headache, here’s the time in some popular cities

US West Coast – 9:30am Wednesday

US East Coast – 12:30pm Wednesday

London – 5:30pm Wednesday

Moscow – 8:30pm Wednesday

New Delhi – 11pm Wednesday

Perth – 1:30am Thursday 14th

Melbourne – 4:30am Thursday 14th

Auckland – 6:30am Thursday 14th

https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html?iso=20191113T173000&p1=137&p2=179&p3=136&p4=16&p5=166&p6=176&p7=196&p8=152&p9=22&p10=103

Switchbot Curtain Launch

Switchbot, which is a small device Isabella introduced us to in Episode 25 have launched a new kickstarter for a curtain controller.

The project reached 100% funding within 12 minutes, and is one of the coolest home automation kickstarters I’ve seen for a while.

Small robot attaches to your curtain rail and can open and close curtains by pushing them open/close

Has an optional solar panel which can be used to keep the device charged

Kickstarter shipping date is August 2020

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/switchbot/switchbot-curtain-make-your-curtains-smart-in-seconds

0.101

New Features

Airly Integration

Shows air quality data in Poland, Germany and UK

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/26375

Shows air quality data in Poland, Germany and UK https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/26375 Apprise notifications

Apprise allows you to send a notification to almost all of the most popular notification services available to us today such as: Telegram, Discord, Slack, Cisco Webex, Amazon SNS, Gotify, etc.With this integration you’ll be able to open up Home Assistant to send notifications to many more platforms.

https://github.com/caronc/apprise/

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/26868

Apprise allows you to send a notification to almost all of the most popular notification services available to us today such as: Telegram, Discord, Slack, Cisco Webex, Amazon SNS, Gotify, etc.With this integration you’ll be able to open up Home Assistant to send notifications to many more platforms. https://github.com/caronc/apprise/ https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/26868 Solar-Log Integration

If you have a solar power inverter which is compatible with Solar-Log, you can now integrate your data inside Home Assistant.Once connected, Home Assistant will be able to report things like consumption and yield from all of your inverters.

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/27036

If you have a solar power inverter which is compatible with Solar-Log, you can now integrate your data inside Home Assistant.Once connected, Home Assistant will be able to report things like consumption and yield from all of your inverters. https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/27036 Sinch SMS Notifications

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/26502

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/26502 Microsoft Teams

If you’re one of the three people using Microsoft Teams, you can now integrate it with Home Assistant. Once integrated Home Assistant will be able to send notifications to a team channel.

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/27981

Breaking Changes

API Password

The biggest breaking change for this release.Before Home Assistant had the concept of usernames and passwords, there was just an “API Password”. It has been possible to keep using this single password moving forward.From 0.101, Home Assistant will no longer accept any requests to the API or front-end which appends the API password in the URL, for example ?=api_password=x Additionally the concept of “trusted networks” has also been removed. Where it was possible to make calls to Home Assistant without a password if the request originated from within the trusted network range. From 0.101 you’ll need to update your configuration if you still use the legacy API password. Previously the API password was specified under the HTTP component in your YAML file. You’ll now need to setup a password via the auth provider section in your YAML. These features have been deprecated since March/April 2019, but have now officially been dropped since 0.101

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/27656

The biggest breaking change for this release.Before Home Assistant had the concept of usernames and passwords, there was just an “API Password”. It has been possible to keep using this single password moving forward.From 0.101, Home Assistant will no longer accept any requests to the API or front-end which appends the API password in the URL, for example ?=api_password=x Python 3.6 Support has been deprecated

In order to keep Home Assistant available on the latest versions of Python, Home Assistant 0.101 officially deprecates support for Python 3.6.Python 3.8 has been released as of October 14th 2019.

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/27680

In order to keep Home Assistant available on the latest versions of Python, Home Assistant 0.101 officially deprecates support for Python 3.6.Python 3.8 has been released as of October 14th 2019. https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/27680 Roku power off state is changing

Roku TV’s will now report a state of “standby” instead of “off” from 0.101

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/28148

Roku TV’s will now report a state of “standby” instead of “off” from 0.101 https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/28148 New Turn On Service for Ecobee

Previously, calling climate.turn_on would cause the ecobee thermostat to turn on in heat mode, regardless of the mode when the thermostat was turned off. Now, the thermostat will turn on to the last “active” HVAC mode (i.e. “heat”, “cool”, or “auto”)

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/27103



Previously, calling climate.turn_on would cause the ecobee thermostat to turn on in heat mode, regardless of the mode when the thermostat was turned off. Now, the thermostat will turn on to the last “active” HVAC mode (i.e. “heat”, “cool”, or “auto”) https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/27103 MQTT JSON Lights can now specify floating point numbers

This breaking change might be a bit technical to understand, so let us explain.In previous versions of Home Assistant any calls made to a JSON MQTT light with a transition set would be converted to a round number. For example 2.5 seconds would be converted to just 2 seconds.From 0.101 Home Assistant will now send these transition times as “floating point numbers” allowing half seconds etc to be accepted.

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/27253

This breaking change might be a bit technical to understand, so let us explain.In previous versions of Home Assistant any calls made to a JSON MQTT light with a transition set would be converted to a round number. For example 2.5 seconds would be converted to just 2 seconds.From 0.101 Home Assistant will now send these transition times as “floating point numbers” allowing half seconds etc to be accepted. https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/27253 Hipchat and Stride have been removed

The chat services are being closed down, so these components are going away

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/27399

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/27934

Other Noteworthy Updates

Add for condition support for binary_sensor, light and switch conditions

You can now have conditions inside your YAML which will apply when a binary_sensor has been in a state for a period of time.

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/27153/files

Chat with Stephan

Link to Pressure Mat on Amazon

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

Stephan McKillen Started with Homeseet and x10 in 1999 Home Assistant Configuration

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