Just found out about actionable notifications. What a game changer. So many things you can do quickly. Just getting things figured out with them. So far I just have open camera feed if door opens.

What is everyone else using actionable notifications for?

I designed this vehicle battery monitor a little while back using an ESP32C3 running ESPHome and a wide input range switching power-supply with very low quiescent current to keep track of my vehicles' batteries. I have an old tractor, military truck, and vintage car which all see little use during winter months. It works with 12V and 24V systems, and has been really great for helping me avoid dead lead-acid batteries, which are expensive to replace.

Specs, ESPHome config files, and more info are here: https://granzscientific.com/product/bm1/

Also here: https://www.tindie.com/products/granzscientific/wifi-iot-vehicle-battery-monitor-esphome-ha/

Would love some feedback from the community!

Hi all, Frenck here 👋

I've seen a lot of questions and worries about this pop up here, so I wrote down my takes and views in one place.

Short version: you upgrade to 2026.11, everything you had in HACS comes along automatically, and nothing costs money.

The longer version covers why we built it in, what changed (installing something new got a lot nicer), and why we picked the name Marketplace.

And a big thank you to Joakim (ludeeus), who created HACS and donated it to the Open Home Foundation.

../Frenck

I've been building out my Home Assistant setup for years, and it finally reached a point where I’d like to share how I built it. The most important difference to other setups is that while as much as possible is using YAML configuration over UI, no YAML is written by hand. Everything is defined in Python through a framework I built (PyConf), which compiles down to ~457,000 lines of generated YAML from about 63,000 lines of Python.

The framework is what makes it fun to work on. The house is defined as a hierarchy of areas (rooms, porches, garages, plus an accessory dwelling unit), each knowing its lights, locks, cameras, thermostats, and media players. Devices are typed objects: adding one to an area registers all of its entities automatically. Devices and entities carry semantic tags, so a magnet sensor registered as an exterior door becomes a security device that shows up on the security dashboard and triggers door-open alerts, while lights tagged 'accent' stay out of occupancy automations. Behavior lives in self-contained “apps” with their own configurable inputs, so you can tune things from the UI without touching code. Dashboards are generated from the same model: 13 of them, including one per wall-mounted tablet, each automatically showing the views for the devices in its room.

It is developed like software, because it is: 5,400+ automated tests across 374 test files, a six-stage pre-commit pipeline (ruff, usort, black, flake8, YAML regeneration, mypy), validation that catches duplicate automation IDs and missing actions before deploy, and git-based deploys with automatic rollback if validation or reload fails. I started this long before the AI revolution, but it turns out that this is what makes AI based development much easier and more robust. Using this model, it is trivial to ensure that when I add a device, I do it in one place. It’ll automatically show up on all dashboards where it needs to show up, without me or AI having to remember to update all the configs.

Scale: 1,000+ connected devices across 83 areas, 120+ ESPHome devices, 33 cameras, 40+ manufacturers.

A few of my favorite automations:

• Bed weight sensors detect who is in bed; getting up at night lights dim WLED floor strips so you can see without waking anyone or bumping into things.
• Two CPAP machines on smart plugs: when power draw crosses a threshold, the house goes into night mode.
• The dishwasher's status shows in the under-cabinet toekick lights: red = dirty, yellow = running, green = clean.
• Temperature and humidity sensors in the fridges, so a failing fridge gets noticed before the food does.
• Opening a window pauses heating/cooling, closing it resumes, including a sliding door and motorized window that aren't smart out of the box, driven by a Raspberry Pi with an SDR replaying RF remote commands over MQTT.
• Garage bays on ratgdo smart openers, with WLED bay lighting that follows the door state and controllers that shut down if they overheat.
• A medication reminder that starts polite at 9 AM and gets progressively less polite through the day, with NFC tags and notification buttons to mark pills taken.
• Five BambuLab 3D printers reporting completion and failure individually, so you know exactly which one needs attention.
• A 4-level alert system (Clear/Info/Warning/Severe) with per-person subscriptions, rate limiting, and actionable buttons, so a garage door alert comes with a 'Close it' button.

Self-healing is built in: tablets that lose connection get navigated back home, stale backups trigger alerts, and anything unavailable for 24+ hours gets flagged. WLED controllers and Inovelli light switches are automatically provisioned, so config drift is fixed quickly, usually without anyone noticing. My Zigbee network used to need daily restarts; since I moved to the ZBT-2 coordinator it has been flawless, so the auto-recovery I built for it mostly sits idle now, which is the best possible outcome for a self-healing system.

The house also has voice satellites that pause media in the room when they activate, and six dogs tracked three ways: BLE room triangulation, GPS collars, and AirTags for when one hides under furniture.

Happy to answer questions or go deeper on any piece, especially the Python-first config side.

This "little" remote control opens and closes the rolling gate in front of our house, as well as the garage door, from a distance as I approach the property via internet.

Bonus features:
- the current charge level of our home solar battery (which helps me decide whether or not to plug in the car to charge)
- the arrival time of the next train at the nearby railway crossing (i.e., when the barriers will come down)
- button for our wallbox in the basement; unfortunately, it always defaults to a "neutral" state, but it needs to be set to "off" to schedule a delayed charging session via Home Assistant

The device consists of an ESP32 and a 2.8-inch ILI9341 touch display, housed in a small plastic box. The ESP32 connects to the car’s Wi-Fi network and our home’s Home Assistant server.

I will preface this by saying that everything regarding Home Assistant was built off vibes and the soldering portion of this really put my skills to the test (I have no skills). With some custom CAD and my Prusa XL for 3D printing the case (and the tank lid in clear PETG), it is almost done.

I started this because I wanted to monitor the water level in my Waterbox AIO. Then I realized I could automate my Kessil light. Then, obviously, “what about pH monitoring?” And temperature was easy enough to add, so I could finally ditch the shitty dummy probe from Amazon.

Naturally, this turned into an ESP32 aquarium controller with a custom Home Assistant dashboard, optical water-level sensors, pH calibration, and a draggable sun that controls the lighting. Apparently I needed another hobby inside my hobby.

The tank has Java fern, Anubias, hornwort, water spangles, water onion, and a few other plants, with no injected CO₂. It also has a betta—or at least it did. He’s currently in a hospital tank, which unfortunately might soon become a hospice tank. Hoping he gets to come home and enjoy the unnecessarily elaborate setup I’ve built for him.

Hardware / supplies

• Waterbox AIO 10 aquarium
• ESP32-S3 development board — N16R8 version
• Screw-terminal breakout board for the ESP32
• Waterproof DS18B20 temperature probe with a DFRobot terminal adapter
• Two DFRobot SEN0205 optical water-level sensors
• ElectroCookie solderable prototyping board
• Resistors for separate voltage dividers on each water-level signal
• DFRobot Gravity Analog pH Meter V2 interface board
• H-101 pH electrode
• DFRobot Gravity 16-bit ADS1115 ADC module
• pH calibration buffers and probe storage solution
• Kessil A80 Tuna Sun aquarium light
• M5Stack DAC2 module — GP8413 dual-channel 0–10V output
• 3.5 mm TRS cable and screw-terminal adapter for the Kessil control connection
• WAGO lever connectors for power and ground distribution
• Hookup wire, connectors, solder, and plenty of patience
• Aqara G3 camera
• Home Assistant and ESPHome running on my home server

I built custom cards for:

• pH: sliding scale, species reference bands, alerts, and a two-point calibration form that saves calibration to the ESP32
• Temperature: animated thermometer plus expandable history
• Water level: an illustrated tank with subtle surface ripples and a slowly swimming fish; the displayed level changes between normal, low, and critical
• Lighting: an interactive sun that controls the aquarium’s simulated day
• Camera: tank view alongside the readings

The lighting controls

There are two modes:

• Live mode follows the actual time.
• Manual mode lets me drag the sun across the sky and immediately change the lamp’s brightness and spectrum. It holds that position instead of snapping back to the clock.

There are also separate brightness/spectrum sliders and a settings panel for sunrise, sunset, ramp duration, peak brightness, and dawn/daytime/dusk spectrum.

The current freshwater profile runs 10am–4pm, with a 30-minute ramp up, a 50% daytime plateau, and a 30-minute fade down. Spectrum stays toward the warmer end of the Tuna Sun’s range.

I don't own a Pro Controller 2, and honestly I got tired of getting off the couch every single time just to press the power button on the console. So I made Home Assistant do it for me.

I had an M5Stack Atom Echo lying around after moving my voice assistant to the HA Voice PE, so it got a new job: waking up my Nintendo Switch 2.

A sleeping Switch 2 listens for a BLE advertisement from its paired Joy-Con 2 (Nintendo company ID 0x0553, state byte 0x81, console MAC inside). The Atom Echo spoofs the Joy-Con's Bluetooth address and broadcasts that packet for 2 seconds – the console wakes up just like you pressed HOME.

Huge credit to alexvnesta/switch2controller for reverse-engineering the wake packet.

What I added on top (ESPHome on the Atom Echo)

- One-click pairing: undock the Joy-Con, press HOME near the Atom, hit "Save captured Joy-Con" in HA. It stores the MAC + packet and reboots with the Joy-Con's address. No copying hex strings around.
- Wake button in HA + the physical button on the Atom (LED glows blue while broadcasting)
- Auto input switch: an automation switches my Google TV to the Switch's HDMI 2 s after the wake signal
- Voice: "Nabu, włącz Switcha" (Polish for "turn on the Switch") is matched locally by a conversation trigger, so there's no LLM round-trip
- Google TV tile: a tiny sideloaded app that sits next to Netflix/YouTube. Select it with the TV remote → it calls an HA webhook and jumps straight to HDMI 1

So now it's: grab the TV remote → click the "Switch 2" tile → console wakes up and the TV is already on the right input. Zero steps off the couch.

I've had one-way voice for several years... TTS and pre-fabbed MP3 clips to announce various things.

This time of year, the cheekiest (US here, but it seems like the most appropriate adjective) of my audio automations is triggered by a binary sensor that goes true if the date is before Thanksgiving and any of the following conditions are met:

• album name contains "Christmas" or "holiday" or "merry"
• song name contains "Christmas"
• artist name contains "Christmas" or "holiday"
• ...etc.

When that sensor turns true, an automation fires that 1) stops the music, and 2) plays one of several MP3 clips that scolds the household (one says, "it's too early for that sh%$").

While digging for other clips to play, I came across the classic Michael Scott, "oh, god, NO, NO..." and put that in rotation.

That got me thinking... how great would it be if HA were listening in and was able to interject, "That's what she said" at the appropriate moment? Perhaps when key phrases are uttered? In my experience with non-US speakers that don't quite have the grasp of the joke, saying that phrase even at incorrect times can be particularly funny... which would inevitably happen with voice rec/automation.

I have dabbled with a local voice assistant, but the responsiveness isn't what I'd hoped just yet. But maybe someone else can figure this one out.

EDIT: Is it important to mention that I refer to this automation as "GRINCH MUSIC ASSISTANT" in Node-RED?

Literally moving in this week so I'll be purchasing asap , I'm new to this so let me know how you installed also but I do have HA set up on an old pc and ready to go

I maintain ws_core, an integration for personal weather stations. It takes the raw readings (temperature, humidity, pressure, wind, rain total, and optionally UV, solar radiation and lightning) and calculates a myriad of items.

It's out for a few months, and quite a few of you are using it, thank you also to whomever has contributed to it.

Screenshots of the two of the dashboards:

Some examples what you can do with it:

• Water the garden only when it needs it. It calculates evapotranspiration (ET₀) and a water deficit from your own readings, can feed Smart Irrigation, and has a blueprint that skips watering after rain.
• Pull in awnings and blinds before strong gusts.
• Get warned before frost, in time to cover plants or drain outdoor taps.
• Know when it's too hot to work or exercise outside, from UTCI and WBGT heat stress.
• Rain alerts from your own gauge, plus an optional countdown to the next rain.
• Fire danger, a barometric outlook from your own pressure readings, snow, degree days and more, if you want them.

There are a ton more features in there, all documented properly.

It comes with 10 ready-made automation blueprints and 5 dashboards, and setup suggests the right sensors for common stations.

New in recent releases

• Forecasts that learn from your own station. Pattern Forecast gives the chance of rain in the next 1, 3 and 6 hours, frost overnight, a hot day, strong gusts and thunderstorms, learned from your station rather than a regional model. It can learn from the history Home Assistant already has, so numbers can appear minutes after you turn it on. Each forecast says when it has proven itself (maturity: skilled), so your automations can wait for that.
• A rain chance that keeps score. It checks your station's rain estimate and the forecast provider's against your gauge every 6 hours, and leans on whichever has been right more often where you live. 2.13.5 makes the comparison fair by scoring both on the same 6 hours.
• Sensors that explain themselves. A blank value now tells you why: a missing sensor, a formula that doesn't apply right now, or a model still collecting data.
• Faster storm warnings. Nearby lightning raises the alert straight away and keeps it for 30 minutes after the last strike.
• A new phone-friendly dashboard (screenshots): the whole picture on one screen, pop-ups for the details, and an optional photo of the current weather behind it. Needs only Bubble Card.

Privacy. The calculations run inside Home Assistant. By default it fetches a forecast and runs an hourly sanity check against Open-Meteo (free, no API key); you can turn both off, and everything else that uses the internet is opt-in. No telemetry.

Getting started

1. Search for Weather Station Core in HACS, download it and restart Home Assistant.
2. Add the integration and check the sensors it suggests for your station.

I test on a Shelly WS90 and would love to hear how it does on other stations.

Docs

• Method and equations: https://kmich.github.io/ha_ws_core/science/
• Pattern Forecast guide: https://kmich.github.io/ha_ws_core/guides/pattern_forecast/
• Sensor reference: https://kmich.github.io/ha_ws_core/sensors/
• Source: https://github.com/kmich/ha_ws_core

AI disclosure: I used AI coding tools extensively while building this integration. All architecture decisions and hardware validation were done by me, and I reviewed and tested the resulting code against my actual Shelly WS90 station.

I'm looking to replace the switches in my house to smart switches, wanted to know which ones that are available in the UK are compatible with Home Assistant and work well, for people in the region with experience :)

What I need - light on+off+dimming on the switch directly.

Scenes would be an added bonus, but not necessary.

Thanks!

I have been planning to install a couple of those tablets/displays around my home, but other than being able to activate the alarm or turn things off when leaving, I cannot find a good reason for them.

Yes, they look nice, but they're completely useless. What's your take on this? Tell me why I'm wrong.

1. My phone is always in my hand, I can always check on things.
2. If I need a camera panel, that seems to be an OK reason, but which wall would be a good place to put it so I can always see things? Monitoring 6-7 cameras would surely require a large monitor to be visible from 10+ feet away. A small tablet is useless.
3. It's much more practical to switch my TV to the camera feed with the press of one button than to turn around and focus on a small tablet 12 feet away.
4. A nice display next to a bed or the sofa by the TV seems much more practical than a fancy tablet on the wall.
5. Why would I want to go to a wall tablet to change the music and control my Spotify?
6. Voice controls are mostly enough for anything i ever need.

Found these very old “Stick N Find” Bluetooth things, they’re like the precursor to AirTags released in the 2010s. Assuming they still working any reason to not throw them away? Not sure if there’s any creative way to use them.

I got tired of grabbing my phone to dim the lights mid-movie, so I made an Android TV app. You pick one key on your remote, press it, and a Home Assistant panel slides in over any app: lights (brightness/colors), climate, scenes, locks, covers, cameras. Back closes it.

You can also link a doorbell button or sensor to a camera, so a small camera window pops up over your show when it fires.

Local only, no cloud, no ads, no analytics. Pairing is a QR code that opens your own HA login page, so 2FA works.

Google makes me run a closed test with 12+ people for 14 days before release, so I'm looking for testers with an Android TV / Google TV. Testers get Pro for free.

Join: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.aykutkorkut.flickbar (or email hello@haflickbar.com with your Google account and I'll add you)

More info: https://haflickbar.com

The camera picture in the screenshots is a sample image. Not affiliated with Home Assistant.

I found Haven here on Reddit and wanted to try it on our living room Samsung. Credit to u/naturelgass for building and sharing the original project!

We adapted it into a household dashboard with camera snapshots, house status, weather, energy, water, and notifications. Home Assistant opens it when the Roku screensaver starts, and pressing Roku Home takes us back to watching TV. No TV root needed—it runs as a Tizen app.

Here’s the walkthrough: https://youtu.be/hda5WXHWlpI

I can confirm that I have two SLWF01 Pro’s running on two recently installed Senville SENA-09HF-IAA mini splits. No hardware modification required

So at the moment my Partner and I use a shared Google Calendar that I setup for our events/schedules. We use one calendar and prefix our name to the event so we can differentiate. EG:

Name1 - Office

Name2 - Dentist

Both - Dave's Wedding

I've managed to remove Google from most things and was wondering what privacy/security focused alternatives there are.

I was looking at Proton, but it seems it doesn't play nicely with HA, due to it being encrypted. I also can't test without signing up, so not helpful.

I could self-host if there's a suitable option.

I guess I could go Proton still, have HA in read-only, then use the native Proton App for adding events, just helpful to have the option to use HA.

In addition, is there a better setup for multiple people & calendars? How do you do "both" attending? Do I actually need 3 calendars?

In an ideal world, Proton would release a native HA app!

Mac users with an M series CPU have the option of loading iOS / iPadOS Apps on their Macs, I use it for several apps I find handy to be there, including the HA Companion App. I recently noticed that while the App recognizes it's the Companion App, it doesn't have the Companion App Settings section that allows you to turn on Kiosk mode. I assume maybe there are some iOS/iPadOS calls that the emulation doesn't support, but is it possibly just something few people would use and not worth the time? Anyone else tried to use this?

Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWd3CM_M17k

I'm Xus, the developer. Altillo is a free, MIT-licensed macOS app that lives in the notch (or a virtual island on displays without one). Home arrived in 0.11.0 and is included in the current 0.12.0 release. It's a beta section that talks directly to Home Assistant on your network. No account, no Altillo server, no analytics. macOS 26+ only. It's an independent project, not affiliated with Home Assistant.

What works today: lights (click to toggle, drag to dim, tiles glow in the bulb's colour), switches, fans (on/off), covers with position, scenes and scripts, a sensor row, rooms from your areas, and a doorbell peek with a camera snapshot. It finds your instance on the network and signs in with Home Assistant's own login page (OAuth + PKCE); the resulting long-lived token stays in the macOS Keychain. Plain http only on the LAN; remote needs https.

Not yet: climate, locks, alarm, garage door control, media players, live camera, multiple servers, iPhone. Apple Home on the Mac only through Shortcuts, and that's still "coming soon".

The video uses the app's demo home; the doorbell picture is an illustration.

Download: https://altillo.app/ Code: https://github.com/XusBadia/altillo

I'd like to hear where discovery or sign-in fails (reverse proxies, custom ports, self-signed certs) and which entities look wrong.

I recently built a POE mmWave setup (Ethernet-> POE splitter -> ESP32-ETH01 + LD2412). It works very well in the open air. However, my plan is to put it inside my ceiling (ie, above the ceiling drywall). As part of that, I put the ESP+LD2412 portion into a single gang box and taped the LD2412 to a blank faceplate. This didn’t work, as it reported constant motion and constant presence. The plate is a standard plastic Leviton plate, which I thought should work. What am I missing? I tried recalibrating, but without luck. Any other ideas?

Again, my plan is to put the whole box (faceplate side down) above the ceiling, without cutting the drywall, so the sensor would be going through both the faceplate and the drywall.

Hi everyone, I’m the developer, so full disclosure up front.

NetMon monitors the devices on your home network (NAS, cameras, router, IoT gear) and alerts you on Telegram, email or ntfy as soon as one stops responding. The probe runs as a Home Assistant add-on, so if HA already runs on a Pi or a mini PC you don’t need extra hardware.

It works with a small online server that stores the results, shows a status page and sends the alerts. Because the server sits outside your home, you still get notified if HA, the router or the whole line goes down.

It’s in beta, so expect rough edges. I host the server, and there are paid tiers (with a limited founder tier) for people who don’t want to run their own.

Add-on and info:

https://netmonhome.net/

https://github.com/ba1090/netmon-homeassistant

I’d love your feedback:

1. Would you want device status exposed as entities or sensors in HA?
2. What would you monitor beyond ping?
3. Any problems installing the add-on?

Thank you!

Andrea