Home Assistant 2026.5 introduces RF and RS-232 Control

0:04 [SPEAKER_02]: Hello and welcome to the home missing podcast. [SPEAKER_02]: My name is Phil and with me, I've got Rheum. [SPEAKER_02]: How you doing mate? [SPEAKER_00]: Hey, good, how are you? [SPEAKER_02]: This podcast is sponsored by Home Mrs. [SPEAKER_02]: Cloud by Nabukasa. [SPEAKER_02]: For a small monthly fee, you'll unlock powerful features, like secure, effortless access to your system from anywhere, which works of voice assistance, off-site backups, and more.

0:26 [SPEAKER_02]: It's all configurable in the UI with no Yamult needed. [SPEAKER_02]: It also supports development of home assistant, ESP home, and other open home foundation projects. [SPEAKER_02]: Click the link in the description to learn more. [SPEAKER_02]: This episode is also sponsored by our friends at Apollo Automation, makers of open-source smart home sensors built for the home assistant ecosystem.

0:48 [SPEAKER_02]: They're an official open home foundation commercial partner, and their devices are built with local control, privacy, and reliability in mind. [SPEAKER_02]: Almost everything they offer is works with home assistant and made for ESP home certified, giving you full control and flexibility right out of the box.

1:06 [SPEAKER_02]: and the best part, they build in the open, working directly with the community to create sensors that people actually need. [SPEAKER_02]: If you're deep into home assistant or just getting started, definitely check them out at ApolloAutomation.com. [SPEAKER_02]: We're on 26.5 is here. [SPEAKER_02]: We're here to talk about it today.

1:25 [SPEAKER_02]: But before we do, we do have the usual stuff to get through first. [SPEAKER_02]: Shout out to our new members on Patreon as well, Jason and Griff. [SPEAKER_02]: We really appreciate your support. [SPEAKER_02]: And of course, I shout out to our executive producers, Jason and Benny. [SPEAKER_02]: State of the open home was just on, good to see people in person.

1:46 [SPEAKER_02]: I was disappointed I didn't get to make it, flights to Europe got a bit crazy past month or so so it was a bit hit messy flights were going to go on on a get but yeah I thought why so skip this year. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to go next year. [SPEAKER_02]: I'll see how we can go getting there next year.

2:04 [SPEAKER_02]: But this is a main takeaway from the event. [SPEAKER_02]: If you can get a watch on YouTube, it is on the Open Home Foundation YouTube channel. [SPEAKER_02]: If you're going to want to go back and watch it, they'll get building in the open. [SPEAKER_02]: So, [SPEAKER_02]: The open home foundation has got a GitHub repo available with a now triaging and building out of roadmap for home assistant, and I'm guessing all the other projects will be there as well.

2:31 [SPEAKER_02]: So the roadmap is there if everyone to look at every couple of months, they're going to adjust the priorities on that roadmap. [SPEAKER_02]: it's only available for open home foundation team to prioritise and move it along, make sure everything's where it needs to be. [SPEAKER_02]: But the goal here is to make everything more approachable.

2:57 [SPEAKER_02]: So if you want to see where home assistant is heading or if you've got some insights into what is being proposed, you can go and look at that roadmap. [SPEAKER_02]: They've got some of the things in basically columns or lanes on where everything got the statuses. [SPEAKER_02]: So when they get close to integrating, they'll have like a scoping phase where they'll go out and go, yep, we need to get some more information from the community.

3:22 [SPEAKER_02]: They might reach out to people on Discord or ask people's opinions on things. [SPEAKER_02]: The comments are open, so if you've got an idea or something like that, you can go on the related card and then you can also see the epics and the tasks that have been broken down from those items on the work map and see where everything's at.

3:42 [SPEAKER_02]: I think this is fantastic for home assistant and all the other open home foundation projects. [SPEAKER_02]: It's always good to get like some clarity on what's coming next and also see some decisions on why things aren't progressing. [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe you want a particular feature, maybe it's on the roadmap, but it's just not progressing, maybe there's some questions that are outstanding.

4:03 [SPEAKER_02]: they are very detailed on those cards well on GitHub descriptions. [SPEAKER_02]: You can see white decisions are made, what purpose they're for, I was ready to run from frank and I think it would matter being that the specific triggers and stuff and there was a whole bunch of details and research done into that.

4:24 [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I'm really liking this building and the open. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, which is, I mean, it's kind of always been like that, like even with the architecture documents and like all of that kind of stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: But I think this is just a little more into that too, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And it just, again, keep it even more open.

4:42 [SPEAKER_00]: So you kind of know where your stuff is, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Like, hey, I'm really looking for this stuff, where could it be? [SPEAKER_00]: And now, just to be clear for those, I don't familiar. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't believe that includes, [SPEAKER_00]: things like fixes, right? [SPEAKER_00]: If there's a bug or something like that, I think those will be treated with a little different priority, where, again, if almost a sentence doesn't start, that's a bigger problem.

5:05 [SPEAKER_00]: They're not going to spend time putting it on the road and just kind of fix it. [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's a good thing overall, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so the current lanes that they've got are there's considering where their opportunities that they've been considered about. [SPEAKER_02]: So I consider top three in that lane at the moment are better group interactions, notifying someone being more simple, and the voice is more transparent.

5:28 [SPEAKER_02]: The next stage of the roadmap is shaping where they want to explore it, get some more information from the community. [SPEAKER_02]: Current top three on those are bundled core with HATOS to eliminate download weight and unblock users with restrictive networking, so I'm making the whole.

5:46 [SPEAKER_02]: HHS, more HHS experience better, music assistant, home assistant settings, integration so the ability for home assistant and music assistant sort of to become one settings pane. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm guessing just by reading that title there. [SPEAKER_02]: And dashboards can be shared and imported like blueprints.

6:04 [SPEAKER_02]: So that's currently shaping. [SPEAKER_02]: And I've got something to talk about dashboards in a little bit too as part of the 2026.5 release. [SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, it's currently right now in the ReadyState. [SPEAKER_02]: It's top three items at Security Dashboard, shows the variety of security item, dual access card for light control, and a rearranged items in the card editor, so it matches people's expectations.

6:29 [SPEAKER_02]: So, there's a whole, and there's like 26 items being built right now, complete the removal of advanced mode. [SPEAKER_02]: I'd like advanced mode. [SPEAKER_02]: I feel like feeling a little bit. [SPEAKER_02]: So, yeah, that's currently what's going on. [SPEAKER_02]: The big one actually being built right now on the web app, which I do want to talk about, is actually, this is what I was talking about when I went in before.

6:59 [SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't purpose of secret triggers. [SPEAKER_02]: That is another car that was working. [SPEAKER_02]: But the one I was reading that had a lot of information from Frank was the HTTP server configuration through the UI, being removed from port 8123. [SPEAKER_02]: Now that will essentially mean that if you have a dedicated device like a MSS and green home is yellow, you won't need to access home assistant on port 8123 anymore, you will just access it on port 80, allowing things for like HTTPS certificates and all that fun stuff that comes with running a web server.

7:35 [SPEAKER_02]: Do check out it's on roadmap. [SPEAKER_02]: It's it should number 47 on the open home foundation roadmap in GitHub. [SPEAKER_02]: It has a lot of details, a lot of considerations, they're making. [SPEAKER_02]: So a lot of people, I think home, it gets a lot of negative feedback, you know, like, oh, why are they changing this?

7:52 [SPEAKER_02]: They haven't considered this. [SPEAKER_02]: On that card alone, like, they've already thought out things like, and it has to be a support for people that are running Docker containers, that has to have Docker versus proxy support, you know, we can't conflict with this. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, look at this project, look at Cadi, look at [SPEAKER_02]: So that there's a lot of thought that goes into it before it gets the build stage and then when they're building they're also finding actually this is a block up this is an issue.

8:23 [SPEAKER_02]: So if you've got any ideas on this it's a comment to open to the public I believe so you can just go in and comment on them so if you're seeing something. [SPEAKER_02]: I've got an idea for something on the roadmap you can go in and let your voice be heard there. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and just to be clear, it's on the open home foundation where we get how not on the home system to get help.

8:43 [SPEAKER_02]: Correct. [SPEAKER_00]: Right. [SPEAKER_00]: Little confusing, but it makes sense that it's there because it's over our chain across all the projects, I think. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, so they've got home assistant, music assistant, SP home, there's the device database, I prefer to call, yeah, there's a whole bunch of different views you can see as well.

9:02 [SPEAKER_00]: What's interesting is one of the things I noticed there is when you go on deck at Hubby's. [SPEAKER_00]: is a cloud code or cloud is in there too. [SPEAKER_00]: That's one of the contribute words. [SPEAKER_00]: Nice. [SPEAKER_00]: After that. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think they use cloud set up the repot or something.

9:17 [SPEAKER_02]: Well, maybe not, maybe they don't include it more. [SPEAKER_02]: That makes sense. [SPEAKER_02]: Everyone's using A-Y-I now and why shouldn't. [SPEAKER_02]: It happens all's project like use A-Y. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, absolutely. [SPEAKER_00]: The difference is I think, you know, it's not a vibe coded, right?

9:31 [SPEAKER_00]: It's like in the sense that [SPEAKER_00]: There is somebody who definitely knows what they're doing, reviewing a lot of these things, so, and yeah, which is awesome. [SPEAKER_02]: Now, one of the cool things that I found out like while watching that Saturday Open Home was actually from Missy.

9:48 [SPEAKER_02]: She dropped a few little hints in there. [SPEAKER_02]: There are some easter eggs on product pages, and even the Saturday Open Home page, like so if you scroll down to the bottom of the [SPEAKER_02]: play with all the animations, all the icons down at the bottom, apparently for the ZPT2.

10:09 [SPEAKER_02]: If you enter the Konami cheat code, or which is the or I can't remember the code now, but the old game code for whatever console that was for, that would unlock a game somewhere that could play. [SPEAKER_02]: And if you go to the voice PE product pages and there's their WA2, if you click all the circles you can find on the page, like as part of the design, once you've done that, it unlocks another game that you can play on that page.

10:37 [SPEAKER_02]: Believe that's what the easter eggs are. [SPEAKER_02]: So if you're bored and looking for something hidden on those pages, there you go. [SPEAKER_00]: most funny and yeah economy code if you don't know it like see what up up down down the frail if I be a search like it's that you can for those of us that that have a memories yeah so it's it's great [SPEAKER_02]: In terms of hardware drops, Project Blast was referred to as being mentioned a few times now.

11:08 [SPEAKER_02]: Project Blast looks like it's going to be the next hardware to be released by Nebuchasa, which is the commercial part of my assistant. [SPEAKER_02]: So that is going to be an infrared and RF proxy. [SPEAKER_02]: So that'll be, which makes sense. [SPEAKER_02]: Like now the last two months we've seen, you know, infrared being added in 2026.4.

11:29 [SPEAKER_02]: Now, in this release we're about to talk about, we've got RF support in 2026.5. [SPEAKER_02]: So, yeah, now we'll have some hardware from the open home foundation. [SPEAKER_02]: That's like never-casso to support that. [SPEAKER_02]: They've also officially released the Open Home Foundation merchandise store.

11:47 [SPEAKER_02]: So if you don't have an overcast subscription or you want to support the Open Home Foundation in some way, you can go on to the Open Home Foundation website click on the links through the merchandise store. [SPEAKER_02]: They've got some nice t-shirts. [SPEAKER_02]: So it took banks, apps, apps, there you go.

12:02 [SPEAKER_02]: There you go, runs on the right now. [SPEAKER_02]: Walk on the merch, get cool hats, get cool trucker hat. [SPEAKER_02]: And yet, support the foundation that way. [SPEAKER_02]: Every contribution to the open-time foundation helps build home assistant and all the open-source projects that are around the open-time foundation.

12:18 [SPEAKER_00]: All right. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, following all of those, UBCs has joined works with home assistant. [SPEAKER_00]: That's it. [SPEAKER_00]: It's a, it's a journey company that's dedicated to doing a lot of smart home automation stuff for over 20 years. [SPEAKER_00]: They've got a range of Zigbee devices that are kind of meant for retrofit.

12:41 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm just like most other things there. [SPEAKER_02]: Now, 126.4 had the infrared proxy support, David on YouTube mentioned that now we need someone to shoehorn a Logitech's Harmony Repository into Hacks to code the IR Blasters with. [SPEAKER_02]: Actually, I don't think Logitech's infrared database is open source, they would put it at the underlocking key.

13:08 [SPEAKER_02]: But it does, like, I was thinking about this in the show, I'm like, how a miss is going to need some form of, [SPEAKER_02]: by our code database. [SPEAKER_02]: So maybe there is some already out on GitHub that our misses will be able to absorb. [SPEAKER_02]: But I remember like when I had a harmony remote, it was you were basically typing what TV brand or what VCR brand you had and they had the codes for it.

13:35 [SPEAKER_02]: So yes, I would love to see our misses and to have that debate database. [SPEAKER_00]: And what's cool, what was cool with Hermione is sometimes there is just these most obscure [SPEAKER_00]: things and they would have it right like as much as many issues as I have with Logitech that part they did really well yeah um like for example i had this old NEC TV it was one of those like commercial industrial TVs right like some stuff you'd see in like like signage like many boards or whatever those digital yeah i think and [SPEAKER_00]: Again, the IR, pretty much, was like, you couldn't find it for that model.

14:16 [SPEAKER_00]: And then, and Harmony, I just went in and I was like, yep, and you see, and I couldn't find that model. [SPEAKER_00]: I just picked up an exclusive model. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Right? [SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, that was cool, despite hours of search, because I never got a remote with that TV either.

14:30 [SPEAKER_00]: So, and this is way back when when I actually used Harmony, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Now, now I don't, but, uh, [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, some of them you could even do, like, there would determine what the remote codes were. [SPEAKER_02]: It would basically ask you to grab the original remote from the TV and say, OK, now press the power button.

14:48 [SPEAKER_02]: Yep, I see that's power button. [SPEAKER_02]: Press the play button. [SPEAKER_02]: Yep, OK, I've confirmed that's the remote. [SPEAKER_02]: You've got, so I need to use this library of IR codes to control that device. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, problem is when you don't have the old remote and it's an obscured TV, that's the tough combination, right?

15:05 [SPEAKER_02]: This is what the device started based on home, Mrs. and Open Home Foundation are working on, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Hopefully the device database will be able to see things like, okay, this device, this is very obscure device. [SPEAKER_02]: That's maybe quite old. [SPEAKER_02]: It's being used by X-Mata people.

15:21 [SPEAKER_02]: Let's try and get IR codes for that device. [SPEAKER_02]: RF code or whatever else. [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I think this is all, I'm starting to see the bigger picture here. [SPEAKER_02]: What we need to do is to add a base so we can actually know what devices are being used in the home.

15:35 [SPEAKER_02]: We need potentially now out on that with IR codes for that device. [SPEAKER_00]: I can see the big picture. [SPEAKER_00]: something that was that was in her show notes or anything but I I wanted to bring it up but I just randomly thought of this as well um feels like I don't know where you're going with this.

15:54 [SPEAKER_00]: No, no, but one of the things and we've heard about it a little bit um feeling like when when we were a sea yes or a little bit of talk around this but is it becoming more real becoming more um of an issue? [SPEAKER_00]: That's around Z-wave, around a spectrum that Z-wave uses, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So one of the things that's happening in the US is there's a proposal to take the same spectrum that [SPEAKER_00]: that's UABU, which is in the 900 megahertz IS-7 band, and privatized that for I think it's a company called next on next nav, that's what it is.

16:35 [SPEAKER_00]: And essentially, it's kind of going to act as a secondary GPS, like a backup kind of thing. [SPEAKER_00]: Problem here is that this is an open spectrum. [SPEAKER_00]: So if that does happen, [SPEAKER_00]: They want the FCC to change the rules around that spectrum, essentially, so that they can run their services.

16:56 [SPEAKER_00]: This will affect pretty much most if not all the way to plants in the U.S. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think for the rest of us, it's as much of an issue, but that is something you should be aware of. [SPEAKER_00]: There's quite a few articles around this. [SPEAKER_00]: on whether or not to receive a reliance site or just around the internet.

17:22 [SPEAKER_00]: I know this is a big deal when when we were at CES they this was kind of briefly just us like a little bullet point right and it's stuck in the back of my mind but it was never like a oh maybe this will become real maybe this won't but right now it's it sounds like it's closer to reality that it was not to say that it's it's approved or it's going to happen or anything like that.

17:47 [SPEAKER_00]: I think the Z-Wave Alliance is trying to get ahead of this, as well, and say, hey, FYI, this will affect your smart home deployments, and pretty much whatever other else, 900, megahertz deployments that you might have, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Like, for example, like Edset, so are those old school decked phones, those kind of things of all you, 900 megahertz, right?

18:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, there's a lot of industrial use cases too, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Like, trains and, [SPEAKER_00]: other like headsets. [SPEAKER_00]: I read somewhere that the secret services like headsets run on 900 megahertz. [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, essentially now what happens is it's going to start to introduce a lot of noise and stuff.

18:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Again, I don't know if it'll completely disable the Z-Wift devices. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think it's going to become get to a point where it's like, hey, it's now illegal for you to operate on the 900 megahertz spectrum because again, there's, I think there's just too many devices there.

18:45 [SPEAKER_02]: What if it's illegal for you to sell on that spectrum that would then take out a whole bunch of manufacturers and then create like a two tier system that way you've got devices running on the old frequency that then have to move over to and then use devices running on a new frequency. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah it would be very disruptive if that was the case.

19:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah so so you're right I think the core issue though is that [SPEAKER_00]: It's basically allows this company to get around interference tools, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And how 900 megahertz spectrum operates. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because at that point, then they can start to go quite a bit louder.

19:27 [SPEAKER_00]: So. [SPEAKER_00]: And in the Wi-Fi world, when I was doing a lot of that work, I always explained it to my customers as like, hey, your little mobile phone is like, you know, talking at a normal volume or, you know, at a quieter volume. [SPEAKER_00]: And then if I have somebody around me, that's just screaming.

19:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Right? [SPEAKER_00]: Nobody else can really hear me. [SPEAKER_00]: Right? [SPEAKER_00]: That's the same kind of analogy here. [SPEAKER_00]: That's no different. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's just going to be, it's not like overnight all your devices are going to turn off and not work or whatever, but it'll start to get a lot worse.

20:02 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's the fear. [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, something to keep in mind, especially free in the U.S. Just, you know, have a look at, you know, what the FCC is doing and what somebody's companies are doing. [SPEAKER_00]: Have a look at the proposal. [SPEAKER_00]: If you've cared a little more about that, let us know in the comments.

20:21 [SPEAKER_00]: I can try and dig up a little more resources or even reach out to folks to the Zebra Alliance. [SPEAKER_00]: And, and, [SPEAKER_00]: You know, potentially get a little more information on that. [SPEAKER_02]: So I believe there's a petition that you can sign on the at the next nav. [SPEAKER_02]: So if you get a separate alliance, there should be links on their website to sign a petition.

20:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Perfect. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's back to our regular digital program. [SPEAKER_02]: Back to the regular digital program, 26.5. [SPEAKER_02]: Home Assistant Land. [SPEAKER_02]: Merkin on YouTube said, I still have a 4K Blu-ray player and an old TV in a bedroom that I'd like to integrate using infrared.

21:05 [SPEAKER_02]: By the way, older LG TVs can have a discrete volume control via the RS232 port. [SPEAKER_02]: But I don't think via infrared. [SPEAKER_02]: You would send a set volume command followed by a value. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, that's actually a good to know because in 2026 dot 5, you can now add supported devices using those serial connections.

21:28 [SPEAKER_02]: So RS232. [SPEAKER_02]: currently a DENEN receiver can be added with RS332. [SPEAKER_02]: So in the add integrations page, you would find DENEN and then select RS332 or serial as your connection type. [SPEAKER_02]: When you select the RS332 as the type of connection, our immune system will list all the USB devices that are connected to our immune system.

21:54 [SPEAKER_02]: or I believe, SP home devices that are acting as a proxy, and then you can select, okay, this device that my tenant receiver is connected to, and then home misses will know the tenant commands to send over to that device. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm missing when you're being requested to select the USB device that, or the serial port, it's smart enough to prompt you not to select the ZW2 or the ZAPT2 devices because they obviously [SPEAKER_02]: Um, but yeah, so that's actually coming and because it's a serial connection, it's quite fast.

22:38 [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, we saw a poll as we had a dinner receiver. [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, on the creative call, he was giving me the demo. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm just changing the volume on the receiver. [SPEAKER_02]: And it was instantly updating in the home. [SPEAKER_02]: This is UI with what the value was as it went up and down.

22:52 [SPEAKER_00]: So that's really me. [SPEAKER_00]: It's also, I was talking about those obscure TVs, like industrial commercial TVs, those kind of things. [SPEAKER_00]: Same thing, those almost always have a serial port back. [SPEAKER_00]: Nice. [UNKNOWN]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: And Tempdom on YouTube says, I have a broad link which integrates well with my Denon AVR, LG OLED, ACIR emotes.

23:17 [SPEAKER_02]: The process of integration of these emotes in, like infrared, into home assistant is a painful process. [SPEAKER_02]: It would the new infrared capability in the home assistant create the necessary integration of broad link and the various remotes defined their [SPEAKER_02]: So I don't believe so, and so this is a very interesting sticking point in home, which is very, so far on the credit school, so I've been very clear in this.

23:46 [SPEAKER_02]: And this is what's to be in control of what I are is being sent. [SPEAKER_02]: So they're not going to rely on any third party libraries to know what the correct codes are to send. [SPEAKER_02]: Home assistant wants to know those codes and send them directly on the third proxies, or I bless as attached to home assistant, the point here being that we don't want to rely on integrating with like a broad link device over here that has this bunch of codes and then having to integrate with another manufacturer brand that only has other subset of codes and then codes varying slightly.

24:21 [SPEAKER_02]: And the end, home assistant, if it's got the code, as home assistant gets updates, it doesn't need to rely on, you know, broadly updating their code base or another manufacturer updating their IR code library. [SPEAKER_02]: Home assistant could just use those as dumb IR blasters, essentially.

24:38 [SPEAKER_02]: As of 2026.5, the broad link RM4 Pro is now supported for RF and infrared proxies. [SPEAKER_02]: So if you have the libraries that will be ignored, it's only the libraries that home business has, which arguably is not much as of 2026.5, we saw this with Bluetooth, when the Bluetooth integration came out, there wasn't many Bluetooth devices.

25:04 [SPEAKER_02]: Now, they are just resilient, if I'm not saying literally, but there's a many of integration in home assistant that have Bluetooth capabilities, right? [SPEAKER_02]: They've come like, we've got truthbrushes, we've got some more interventions from this release that are purely based on Bluetooth devices being added to home assistant.

25:22 [SPEAKER_02]: I expect that over the next 18, 24 months we're going to be talking a lot about new devices, new integrations coming into homes that are going to be purely RF and infrared based. [SPEAKER_02]: So it's going to open up a whole new world. [SPEAKER_02]: Any port link, RN4 Pro, you may already own, can be reused as an RF transmitter for the new integrations.

25:43 [SPEAKER_02]: The RM4 Pro is the only model in the RM4 line with RF support, and it's limited to the 433 mega hit megahertz band. [SPEAKER_02]: I think I've got the RM4 Pro, which I'm going to talk about in a minute, because I have to look some blinds on it control. [SPEAKER_02]: There's also support for any ESP home device with compatible sub-gigahertz transmitter, and that can act as your home's RF bridge.

26:09 [SPEAKER_02]: Most modules cover all common sub-gigahertz bands, which includes a 315, 433, 868, and 915 megahertz. [SPEAKER_02]: So a single transmitter can talk to a wide range of devices if you're on the ESP home side. [SPEAKER_02]: In 2026.5, which is this release, we've got two new integrations, which can be controlled by RF, which is the Honeywell's string lights, and the Navi Cookahood, they can both be controlled using RF.

26:34 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think this is what I originally saw by our blasting coming in the last release and now I remember saying, they've got to let my project like this is way forward link is really being useful, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Like everyone's making using an RM, a forward link device to control those RF devices.

26:53 [SPEAKER_02]: I'm glad to see that the project can be used as a proxy. [SPEAKER_02]: I hope it doesn't get looked out in the future, [SPEAKER_02]: I think I don't like about that 433 makers band, so all RF devices in general is, so I have some zamysmart roller blinds, they are Zigbee, they've got a Zigbee radio to wake communications Zigbee, it can be a bit hit in me sometimes, that was before upgraded to the ZBT2, before there was on ZBT1, okay, sky connect and I would have the blinds just randomly drop off the Zigbee network.

27:27 [SPEAKER_02]: I would then try I bought a RM4 pro to then integrate those blinds with, I'm just as I could just send the up-down RF commands, so it sounds pretty simple, but I think they use rolling codes because after a while, those up-down buttons that stop working, yep. [SPEAKER_02]: And that's what, yep, I hope homemissant can account for those.

27:52 [SPEAKER_02]: And that was also a learning curve that you have to go into the broad link app. [SPEAKER_02]: Say, okay, I'm going to teach you the down button now. [SPEAKER_02]: And then you have to press the down button on the arrow for remote. [SPEAKER_02]: Look a few times for it to recognize it. [SPEAKER_02]: It's a whole mess.

28:04 [SPEAKER_02]: If homemissant has those codes pre-configured in a library. [SPEAKER_02]: you don't have to do that random pairing dance every time you need to at a remote. [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, that's why I ran. [SPEAKER_02]: But good to see our support here, I can't wait to try it out. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think that that's going to, that's going to be a pretty, pretty helpful.

28:27 [SPEAKER_00]: What's cool is if you've got like, I mean, I'm looking forward to supporting like a software-defined radio, it's like this little guy here, but I'm [SPEAKER_00]: Um, where again, it works in a sub-gigger-herds band, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So you can start to use it for whatever, uh, from an RF perspective.

28:44 [SPEAKER_00]: So that would be pretty neat. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, I do have that there is a support to add, um, very obscure devices. [SPEAKER_02]: Like, I bought a, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh [SPEAKER_02]: picture-framed light, or wireless picture-framed light, that has an RF remote on it, no one, like a random purchase on Amazon US, like many moons ago.

29:04 [SPEAKER_02]: No one is gonna have like that device in a database anywhere to control. [SPEAKER_02]: I would like to be able to have probably similar to what I can do with broad link is close to the button on the remote and then teach that to home assistant so home assistant can know, okay, turn this on and off.

29:20 [SPEAKER_02]: That's probably down the line, but I do have that. [SPEAKER_02]: And then I can give it back. [SPEAKER_02]: into home business as well, like, add it to a device database or something. [SPEAKER_02]: Right, so this is the command you need to send to turn this device on and off. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, let's meet dashboard strategies.

29:33 [SPEAKER_00]: All right, so it's all a simulation man on YouTube. [SPEAKER_00]: I love, I love, honestly, I love all of your names. [SPEAKER_00]: This is, that one really should be which I was looking for. [SPEAKER_02]: Like, just like, it's all a simulation man. [SPEAKER_02]: Like, that's how you do it.

29:49 [SPEAKER_00]: I know, right? [SPEAKER_00]: I love it. [SPEAKER_00]: All right, they said I recently added a card to my main dashboard that displays devices with low batteries. [SPEAKER_00]: When the battery status returns to normal, which is above 20%, then they're no longer displayed. [SPEAKER_00]: It's very effective.

30:07 [SPEAKER_00]: So what's cool about this is, hey, that's a really neat thing. [SPEAKER_00]: You say, hey, you know what? [SPEAKER_00]: I want to do that. [SPEAKER_00]: So dashboard strategies, which is a future here, allows people to share dashboard layouts, which will be called community dashboards. [SPEAKER_00]: And then now these can be implemented with hacks integration.

30:24 [SPEAKER_00]: So what that means is if you have a dashboard that you created or you're doing this cool thing, like it's all simulation, man. [SPEAKER_00]: Then you can share that easily and say, hey, here it is, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Kind of like Blueprints, but for dashboard. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, so there's a new dashboard called the maintenance dashboard which allows you to show you all your battery levels and group by rooms and areas and so on and so forth.

30:45 [SPEAKER_00]: So, it's, uh, yeah, that's a pretty neat, uh, feature there. [SPEAKER_02]: While we're on dashboards to, um, you can now change what's included in the summaries in the dashboard, you can also add shortcuts to anything you want and there's a new shortcuts. [SPEAKER_02]: card type that's been added.

31:04 [SPEAKER_02]: As part of this release, you can even add a shortcut to the developers. [SPEAKER_02]: If you want, you can add a shortcut to speaking to the assist assistant there. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's good. [SPEAKER_02]: There's also been some love done to the security dashboards as well. [SPEAKER_02]: and also on another related note, the toggles, like one of the first things I noticed when I upgraded was all the toggle buttons, the on-off little toggles, they've now been replaced on Thrak most of the UI with a new modern style, but it's really good about the style though, is that they are keyboard friendly so you can tab over to them.

31:40 [SPEAKER_02]: use the arrow buttons so you can potentially script them. [SPEAKER_02]: If you want to automate your browser somewhere, maybe you've got a comment which is the Pipplexity browser. [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe Pipplex would be able to, you know, tell across to those buttons and toggle them on and off with keyboard.

31:53 [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, that's cool. [SPEAKER_02]: And also from accessibility point of view. [SPEAKER_02]: It's nice as well. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's me. [SPEAKER_00]: weather tile cards. [SPEAKER_00]: So you can now show things like forecast with things like grass for temperatures and rain for hourly forecast and stuff.

32:09 [SPEAKER_00]: So that's actually pretty nice because that's I think that's been missing for a while. [SPEAKER_00]: I know people kind of build your own things around it. [SPEAKER_00]: So that's yeah like that. [SPEAKER_02]: Now, the one I've been really, like, that's what it's just buried in the release, and it sounds like, yes, finally, like it's the dashboard visibility options here.

32:27 [SPEAKER_02]: So if you use conditions to hide or show cards on your dashboards, this is gonna be good for you. [SPEAKER_02]: So there's state and inumeric state visibility conditions, get a new current entity option, that automatically follows whichever entity the card is bound to. [SPEAKER_02]: This is fantastic, particularly when you'd like to choose a duplicate card and change the entity behind it, but then I've got all these other conditions that I then have to go in and manually put back to that original entity.

32:57 [SPEAKER_02]: So now in one place I can go, okay, this card relates to this blind or this shade and then all the other options are related to that. [SPEAKER_02]: the state and numeric state visibility conditions on the cards can now also check an entity's attribute instead of just the state. [SPEAKER_02]: So if I want to say only show this card when a blind is less than 50% open, I can do that previously.

33:24 [SPEAKER_02]: I guess you have to expose the template to do that. [SPEAKER_02]: Use it in a condition elsewhere. [SPEAKER_02]: It was a template entity. [SPEAKER_02]: Now, you can do that within the cod definition itself, which, yeah, I really appreciate it. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, some love given to vacuums as well.

33:43 [SPEAKER_00]: So now, vacuums have more info panels, nice little automations around when vacuums are cleaning or returning to the dock. [SPEAKER_00]: So, and lawnmowers have that too. [SPEAKER_00]: If you have a robotic lawnmower, which I would really love to have one to do. [SPEAKER_02]: I will say at the design on those is very nice.

34:00 [SPEAKER_02]: So a flat design, little animations that it does when it's going back to the dock and cleaning. [SPEAKER_02]: It's just the tiny little details that I'm really appreciating now. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I don't really do like that. [SPEAKER_00]: It's, I'm so sad my robot vacuum has.

34:17 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think it's fully, like, out of permission, but it is definitely struggling, like, uh, yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Some of them mock, mock functions no longer, like it mobs, but it doesn't clean. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, it just kind of pools the bottom of my thing. [SPEAKER_00]: And then my vacuum just vacuums one area and then just gives up, um, so it's, uh, [SPEAKER_00]: RAP to that one.

34:43 [SPEAKER_00]: So now I'm also robot vacuumless. [SPEAKER_00]: So now I don't have it. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, no. [SPEAKER_00]: It's going to happen. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's a nut. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm just, it's fine. [SPEAKER_00]: We, we talked to everybody knows that I have an equalbacks.

34:54 [SPEAKER_00]: It was, it was an X one. [SPEAKER_00]: Omni I think it was. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: And when we talked to equalbacks. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's the old. [UNKNOWN]: That's it. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I know, but I don't, I don't, like, throw things out, right? [SPEAKER_00]: It, we talked about it all the time in terms of waste and all that stuff.

35:09 [SPEAKER_00]: I, I don't know, practice what you preach, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And it's, uh, I don't love creating eways for these kind of things, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And, uh, and, and again, that was when I bought out of my own money. [SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't given to me here. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, I didn't feel I believe yours is the same, too, with your, over-awken.

35:25 [SPEAKER_00]: you know, it's just, it's too bad. [SPEAKER_00]: Actually, yeah, I liked it. [SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't matter or anything. [SPEAKER_00]: So it was little, you know, I'm sure it didn't work as great as the matter ones do, but, uh, I don't know. [SPEAKER_00]: I thought it was, it was decent still, right?

35:39 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think it was pretty, back it was being the standard in matter so. [SPEAKER_00]: But, uh, yeah, it was not about that. [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm not jealous for anybody who has a robot vacuum [SPEAKER_02]: I'm just trying to avoid the yearly update cycle of like I don't need to update my vacuum clean every year right to me like that's an appliance.

35:59 [SPEAKER_02]: It should be every five years or something and I think my rubber rock is probably getting on in age. [SPEAKER_02]: I think it's four years or something now, but yet mine is walking or like cleaning the house still, but it's got an orange ring light to say that something. [SPEAKER_02]: is wrong.

36:12 [SPEAKER_02]: I think there's a brush in the unit in the cleaning doctor has never worked. [SPEAKER_02]: I've replaced that cleaning brush so many times. [SPEAKER_02]: It just doesn't work. [SPEAKER_02]: It's jammed. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, like I would love a new and I've got the max V7 or something with Brian to order the mobile number is, but it doesn't have the gets hair stuck in the road at all the time.

36:35 [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I would like a great [SPEAKER_02]: Um, yeah, I can't get a couple more years out of it first though, because they're not cheap. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, that's it. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, at least the ones I want to hold mopping and vacuuming. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you can get cheaper ones.

36:53 [SPEAKER_00]: You can get them. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_00]: I wanted a cheap, I did a cheaper one. [SPEAKER_02]: I like it. [SPEAKER_02]: I already have them in their special buys. [SPEAKER_02]: Call them all the time, right? [SPEAKER_02]: No, no, no. [SPEAKER_00]: I've seen some of Costco too.

37:04 [SPEAKER_00]: I think I've seen Rob Rocks at Costco, actually. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: not that they're cheap, so I think we're still reasonably expensive. [SPEAKER_02]: Now, if you're looking to upgrade your smartphone, you really can't surpass the Zeus. [SPEAKER_02]: They've got their 800 series Z wave long range power strip, the Zen 2800LR, so you can turn a single outlet into multiple, individually controllable smart sockets.

37:27 [SPEAKER_02]: Drop it under a desk, behind your TV, unit, or in your server rack to tame all those always on gadgets. [SPEAKER_02]: and still monitor and automate each outlet separately. [SPEAKER_02]: It's perfect for things like network gear, charges, lamps, game consoles, anywhere you want more smart control without adding a bunch of separate plugs.

37:48 [SPEAKER_02]: Zeus are also an official works with home misses and partner, and they've been helping Nebuchadnezzar by providing long-range devices to test the home misses connect ZWE2 radio. [SPEAKER_02]: So you know you're in friendly hands. [SPEAKER_02]: Beyond their power strip, Zeus offers a full range of affordable, innovative gear, water licences, motorised water valve controllers, smart plugs, and sync controllers.

38:10 [SPEAKER_02]: Plus there's N78, high power relay, for loads up to 40 amps, including pool pumps and air compressors. [SPEAKER_02]: for the best prices on all zoos products head over to thesmartesthouse.com that's thesmartesthouse.com. [SPEAKER_00]: All right. [SPEAKER_00]: Purpose specific triggers have also gotten a little bit of love.

38:30 [SPEAKER_00]: It still allows an able to feature. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's still working progress. [SPEAKER_00]: You got to go into settings, turn it on. [SPEAKER_00]: There's more updates, including the ability for triggers to have the four case added. [SPEAKER_00]: So for example, when motion has not been detected four, five minutes, then do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

38:52 [SPEAKER_00]: For conditions, this has been added to motion and cover entity. [SPEAKER_00]: There's also the ability to automate when something starts playing, pauses, turns on, turns off like for movie mode, for example, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So a little bit more love giving to those purpose specific triggers.

39:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Again, like Frank mentioned in our December episode, it's something that they're going to be building over time. [SPEAKER_00]: And once it's fully ready, it will be pulled out of the labs and put it into the main home assistant options, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Like it'll double take over essentially.

39:28 [SPEAKER_00]: So I think you've played around with this. [SPEAKER_00]: I've still been too anxious to play around with it. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't have the time to fix any automations of their breaks. [SPEAKER_00]: What are your, you turned it off, I thought again. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I turned it off time.

39:39 [SPEAKER_02]: I haven't turned it back on. [SPEAKER_02]: I do need to spend some time turning it back on and going. [SPEAKER_02]: Because now it's got to a point. [SPEAKER_02]: When I first turned it on, it was like the very first thing. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Let the very first release that came out.

39:49 [SPEAKER_02]: I was excited to do things like, you know, when motion is detected in this room. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm turning on the light. [SPEAKER_02]: I couldn't do that at that point in times. [SPEAKER_02]: I was like, oh, I'm going to undo this. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: I think it's now getting to a point where I'm going to, particularly with this four update.

40:03 [SPEAKER_02]: This is one that I've been holding back on right. [SPEAKER_02]: I do have some dumb IR sensors, not no matter where it senses. [SPEAKER_02]: So having those delays, if you know, like when motion hasn't been detected for five minutes, [SPEAKER_02]: then turn off the lights and that is the sort of stuff I need and I think it's going to be the trigger on intended there to move over to bear with specific triggers.

40:26 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, that's cool. [SPEAKER_02]: MQTT, there's now three new platforms that can be integrated using MQTT. [SPEAKER_02]: That's the date, date time, and date entities. [SPEAKER_02]: So if you have a device that exposes those sort of dates and times, they can now be pushed over into home using MQTT.

40:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Nice. [SPEAKER_00]: Matter, now supports rate on sensors. [SPEAKER_00]: Selfier. [SPEAKER_00]: monitoring those and have a matter of device that does it, I don't know if any, but I'm sure they exist. [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, that definitely exists. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: And if they do, they'll be in home.

40:58 [SPEAKER_02]: This is now natively. [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, behind now has support for water heater entities. [SPEAKER_02]: They can now support a way mode, matching what physical and smart waterheaders in your home offer. [SPEAKER_02]: So, they've got a water heater, and you're going around holidays. [SPEAKER_02]: You can set it into a way mode.

41:13 [SPEAKER_02]: Or if you're using home misses, I'm going to automate that. [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe we're going to alarm panel from alarm mode, goes into vacation mode. [SPEAKER_02]: You can set your water heater into a way mode, so it doesn't need to heat the water for you. [SPEAKER_00]: Tilton, for Shelley, Tilton rotation binary sensors for the Shelley Curry and the Shelley Wall display are now exposed via a media player entity so that they can provide built-in audio feedback or audio playback rather.

41:37 [SPEAKER_02]: So it also gets a couple of nice updates. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm still in the Sinal Saker system, my no Sinal S has been getting a lot of love recently, but there are two new switches for TV auto play and ungroup on auto play. [SPEAKER_02]: So you can actually have some fine grain control in your home theater.

41:53 [SPEAKER_02]: I've always found [SPEAKER_02]: I'm listening to maybe, sorry, so I'm not going to be a hit miss when the TV turns on as on groups, whatever's playing in that group or movement out of a group, now you have the ability and I don't, I haven't seen that in the so-called app before, maybe this is like an API or anything or you know, since app upgrades just move somewhere, I can't find it, but you're having the ability for home business to say, okay, when the TV turns on, don't move out of the group or don't, [SPEAKER_02]: switch over to that automatically.

42:24 [SPEAKER_02]: That's, I do like that. [SPEAKER_02]: There's, I've also seen there's a, I think it was on the verge, or if someone else was on my newsfeed, the AI Armageddon is coming for the so-and-all sap, like there's so many people creating AI written apps to be better than the so-and-all sap itself, like I was actually, yeah, coming under fire, like there's too many apps, like all these apps are coming out, doing better [SPEAKER_02]: But in terms of how this isn't, there's also a much better group and ungroup interface in the UI.

42:57 [SPEAKER_02]: It's got those new toggle buttons that we mentioned before. [SPEAKER_02]: It's a lot easier now to say, yep. [SPEAKER_02]: Put this in a group, put this in a group, and yeah, you're done. [SPEAKER_00]: That's interesting because there is, again, ever. [SPEAKER_00]: friend of mine who also watches a show and one of the things he's struggling with is he's got one of those like early early as soon as devices that don't work with the new generation of the app, right?

43:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yep. [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, maybe that that is something where you know, just vibe code something to control and right? [SPEAKER_00]: Right now it's like he, it's kind of stuck in this way and which is fine. [SPEAKER_00]: It's good enough for what he's trying to do, but he can't make any adjustments [SPEAKER_02]: I said, I want a music system.

43:39 [SPEAKER_02]: I, um, I've got, so the problem with that particular situation is if you've got one device that is to old upgrade to S2, which is the version two of the sonos app ecosystem. [SPEAKER_02]: If you migrate over to S2, that device stays on its own thing. [SPEAKER_02]: It can't join other sonos.

43:58 [SPEAKER_02]: Right. [SPEAKER_02]: So therefore, you're either restricted having all of your devices on S1 or everything except that one device on S2. [SPEAKER_02]: But if you buy a new device, [SPEAKER_02]: They're not, they're not necessarily backwards compatible with this one, all right. [SPEAKER_02]: So then you start, I think IKEA is in this situation like I bought some, but IKEA had the sonos speedeners.

44:20 [SPEAKER_02]: If I, by sonos, though, the IKEA speakers were only compatible with sonos S2, I couldn't have S1. [SPEAKER_02]: So I had to upgrade everything. [SPEAKER_02]: I was fortunate enough that [SPEAKER_02]: all my sonos of us as I had were capable of being on that same app. [SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, I actually got my sonos bigger here right next to me on this desk.

44:42 [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, in a office, it's, you know, detached office from the house, it's a brick wall, sort of thing between the house. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm running a sonos via anything that cable in a couple of this speakers in the house. [SPEAKER_02]: When you plug an Ethernet cable into a Sennel speaker, Sennel's Chris' own Wi-Fi network called SennelSnet I believe, and that allows Sennel's to use its own dedicated Wi-Fi network for the surround sound for the speakers that are plugged in via Ethernet.

45:08 [SPEAKER_02]: So it's then not choking up your Wi-Fi or being restricted by your own internal Wi-Fi. [SPEAKER_02]: The problem I'm having here is that I haven't plugged this particular speaker in via Ethernet, so it's trying to connect its Wi-Fi to a speaker inside the house, and it's not working correctly.

45:25 [SPEAKER_02]: Now, the soundhouse app is struggling, saying it can't play music to this device. [SPEAKER_02]: I've seen it out. [SPEAKER_02]: I tried it on music assistant, and [SPEAKER_02]: It's still struggling with music assistance, but I'm getting a lot better play back through music assistance than what I am using the Sonos app for whatever reason I don't understand why I think maybe music assistance is streaming in a different quality and what the Sonos app's doing or something maybe.

45:51 [SPEAKER_02]: The solution I have to do is plug in an ethernet cable into this speaker or just maybe unplug the ethernet cable from all of me. [SPEAKER_02]: Put it back on my Wi-Fi that has the [SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, that I would say, get your friend to check out and music assistant and see if they can do something there.

46:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's perfect. [SPEAKER_02]: In theory, music assistant would should be able to have two sonos networks, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Connected to the old network for that older device. [SPEAKER_02]: Connected to the new network and then bridge them using Sandspend or the internal stuff with music assistant to sync them up that way.

46:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that would be really neat. [SPEAKER_00]: I'll tell him to check it out. [SPEAKER_02]: All right, Apple TV can now send text input to Apple TV devices. [SPEAKER_02]: So this one's cool. [SPEAKER_02]: I hope this is available for an automation like a service call. [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe you want to do like a place something on Apple TV get an automation, like movie time, maybe you've got a special movie you want to play, get an Apple TV to search for that movie, find the streaming device and click into it.

46:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, let's go. [SPEAKER_00]: So I don't actually type out like, hey, I'm searching for the home. [SPEAKER_00]: This isn't about gas. [SPEAKER_00]: We'll go in and type it out. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I don't know if Apple TV supports like deep linking the TV shows. [SPEAKER_02]: Like if you give it a Netflix URL or a YouTube, you know, video, when you send it to Apple TV, look, ask it to Apple TV.

47:15 [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_02]: But at least this way, you can get it to search for what if you're looking for? [SPEAKER_00]: I want to [SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, WLED now supports per segment freezing letting you pause effects on individual light segments. [SPEAKER_00]: If you want to get really advanced with your LED stuff.

47:38 [SPEAKER_02]: I'm cool. [SPEAKER_02]: I do. [SPEAKER_02]: I want to get into WLED. [SPEAKER_02]: Looks fascinating. [SPEAKER_02]: HTML push notifications has a new event platform, the HTML5.sand underscore message entity. [SPEAKER_02]: The integration also correctly is classified as an notification service now.

47:55 [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, it'll shop as an notification in the UI. [SPEAKER_02]: This is, I don't use HTML push notifications. [SPEAKER_02]: I've always found them a bit. [SPEAKER_02]: depending on the if you're looking in file, local IP, or whatever, if it gets you've got the debit cost subscription, you can use that.

48:15 [SPEAKER_02]: I do a pretty like, yeah, I think this is just a, I just love all the notification types. [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, this is called a day. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and kind of on that same vein mobile app notifications, it's got a little bit of love too. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, it exposes a notification entity for each of your devices on top of the existing notify action.

48:33 [SPEAKER_00]: So that means you can group your phones and tablets together using a group helper, right from the user. [SPEAKER_00]: That's something I struggle with as well. [SPEAKER_00]: So, and if you're used to mobile app, you probably do too if you have more than one user. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: image is really, really tempting me now to start using image.

48:54 [SPEAKER_02]: So, image is the self-hosted Google photos replacement. [SPEAKER_02]: I never, and I think you've used it. [SPEAKER_02]: You've had good things to say. [SPEAKER_02]: Great. [SPEAKER_02]: Photos from Image can now be sent to an eink display. [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks to Open Display, so that's one reason.

49:13 [SPEAKER_02]: And the media source now exposes your favorite collections, making it easy to pull-start photos straight into your dashboards. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I've [SPEAKER_02]: But I am starting to get worried like what if I Google account one day just goes away. [SPEAKER_02]: I lose all those photos, all right?

49:29 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Which is becoming very popular. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I have this great. [SPEAKER_00]: It is, if you don't use it, you absolutely should get off of Google photos. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm still on iCloud, but it sinks with my iCloud photos, and then I'm just my plan is eventually just turn off iCloud, sinking of my photo.

49:50 [SPEAKER_00]: And then just live off of like images, my archive, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: If you have a Subaru and you have a vehicle that supports this, you can now support the remote start using a dedicated start stop button entity. [SPEAKER_00]: So [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: And if you're in New Zealand or how you're talking about Subarru vehicles there, I don't know.

50:14 [SPEAKER_02]: London Underground is now reporting the status for Trams and the IFS cloud cable car as well. [SPEAKER_02]: So they can get what details out of that integration. [SPEAKER_00]: Unif I protect if you're on that ecosystem, you can now expose an alarm control pin. [SPEAKER_02]: And there's also, they've got some new unified project devices in there too, so when they release notes.

50:37 [SPEAKER_02]: One of them is on Laura, and it has like a two kilometer range, or something, so they've got a POE, smart siren, and then another smart siren, as well, that has a very long range. [SPEAKER_02]: So, yeah, good five done a great work. [SPEAKER_02]: They're opening up the API, making it more publicly friendly, as well, so yeah, good to see that being able to be brought back into the home ecosystem.

50:58 [SPEAKER_02]: The new integrations in 2026.5 JuCo. [SPEAKER_02]: You can now monitor and control your JuCo demand control the ventilation system locally from home assistant. [SPEAKER_02]: You can track CO2, humidity, and other sensor data. [SPEAKER_02]: And of course, adjust ventilation per zone. [SPEAKER_00]: Nice.

51:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Euro-tronic. [SPEAKER_00]: If I guess a radiator thermostat, if you use this, you can integrate your electronic comet blue and similar, blue-tooth radiator thermostats. [SPEAKER_02]: Now, I am not an iOS user. [SPEAKER_02]: I am purely Android, and I had no idea this is this, but I'm very familiar with the Flickios for Android, but if you're in the iOS world, there is a similar app called Kioska, and you can now integrate that with home business, so Kioska allows you to put an iOS phone or tablet basically into Kiosk mode.

51:52 [SPEAKER_02]: So now you can integrate that with home visits so you can see things including battery levels, charging state when the last motion was detected, ambient light, screen savers on and the black out state. [SPEAKER_02]: You do need to have some permissions enabled for some of those sensors.

52:10 [SPEAKER_02]: Apple is a [SPEAKER_02]: thought way of there, you can't control, like turning on off the screen, or the sleep state so you can't wake up a iPad or an iPhone when motion is detected, for example, just because of the rules around iOS devices and apps. [SPEAKER_02]: But otherwise yet, very good iOS replacement tool counterpart to Flikiosk for Android.

52:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, let's go. [SPEAKER_00]: I had an idea to go through here. [SPEAKER_00]: If you have a famous based pellet stove, you can bring that in 3-door cloud integration into home assistant. [SPEAKER_00]: And then you go monitor your room temperature, set its comfortable target temperature and turn yourself on or off.

52:56 [SPEAKER_02]: And if you're in France, you've tele-info, you can read electricity consumption data from French, Linky, smart meters, and older electronic meters. [SPEAKER_02]: That's through tele-info, let's go. [SPEAKER_00]: And last but not least, Victron. [SPEAKER_00]: If you can connect your, you can connect your Victron energy GX devices like the Cerbo GX, Venus GX, and color control GX.

53:19 [SPEAKER_00]: to home assist an over MQTT so you can get real-time monitoring and control of your VickTron system including inverters solar chargers battery system grid meters and EV chargers. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know why I read that out like an ad but there you go. [SPEAKER_00]: There definitely that's why I read the show.

53:37 [SPEAKER_02]: backwards incompatible changes. [SPEAKER_02]: This is my favorite one that we've had so far, what we've got, uh, ring has lost its ding essentially. [SPEAKER_02]: So ring bill, uh, the ring it doorbell event entity now emits the standard ring event. [SPEAKER_02]: instead of the legacy ding event, this change will align ring with the new doorbell event standard, which I've required, for things in the UI to be all consistent, right?

54:04 [SPEAKER_02]: So when a doorbell is dinged or ringed, you know, in the UI, you can use that with ring as well. [SPEAKER_02]: The entity can only, sorry. [SPEAKER_00]: The 13-year-old in me is chuckling at the ring as last as dinged, so. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Webhooks in YAML, so the local only option on Webhooks now must be a proper Boolean, so it has a mature false.

54:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Before that, other true values like one, or yes, were accepted, which now, again, just now brings it into line with the rest of the home assistant. [SPEAKER_00]: So if you have Webhooks configured in YAML with non Boolean local on the values, please update them to use your false, otherwise it will [SPEAKER_02]: Now, I use templates a lot in, oh, Mrs. and I'm a big fan of templates that allows me scratch my coding itch when I'm there for it.

55:00 [SPEAKER_02]: There's been a whole bunch of updates for documentation around templates now. [SPEAKER_02]: They've had a massive overall, there's every function basically now has its own dedicated page. [SPEAKER_02]: There's examples, there's reasons what it does, what it can do, some examples. [SPEAKER_02]: It's fantastic.

55:18 [SPEAKER_02]: There's also been some updates in the UI so that when you typing out a function in the UI, it can show you, like some hints on what the returns date of this function is expected to do. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Also for the AI era, this is great now that [SPEAKER_02]: I will be able to scrape all these documentation pages and actually get some more context around what those template functions are designed to do that just means that AI can then generate more accurate templates moving forward.

55:48 [SPEAKER_02]: So I am a big fan for that. [SPEAKER_02]: That's awesome. [SPEAKER_02]: little rant about HTTP, I guess. [SPEAKER_02]: So I was away this week on family for holiday and we were overseas just before I flew out, I got an alert saying that my Mrs. [SPEAKER_02]: Instance was down and I'm at the airport like in the international labs, like there's no way I'm going back home to see what's going on in my car.

56:25 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's annoying. [SPEAKER_02]: So I check the cameras, the cameras on line. [SPEAKER_02]: I was able to see everything. [SPEAKER_02]: All right, internet access. [SPEAKER_02]: Like, okay, great. [SPEAKER_02]: Um, and I was just about to get on the flight. [SPEAKER_02]: And then I got another record.

56:36 [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, home business is back online. [SPEAKER_02]: So, okay, cool. [SPEAKER_02]: Don't know what happened there. [SPEAKER_02]: Um, [SPEAKER_02]: maybe CPU just sparked and I miss it wasn't responsive for a few hours, okay? [SPEAKER_02]: It's back online at least. [SPEAKER_02]: That was okay for a few days.

56:51 [SPEAKER_02]: I was able to, you know, home, it was still sending me my daily reminders. [SPEAKER_02]: I was getting, you know, the alerts that I needed. [SPEAKER_02]: And then, like first day, overseas, I get another, you know, home assistant is offline. [SPEAKER_02]: And I couldn't access my mobile app.

57:10 [SPEAKER_02]: Um, I just like, okay, right, this is annoying. [SPEAKER_02]: Like now I have no idea like I had, um, the cleaner coming over. [SPEAKER_02]: So I miss, I wasn't sure if home this was going to, um, enable the cleaners access code for the day that they were coming over, um, [SPEAKER_02]: I just had no visibility right.

57:30 [SPEAKER_02]: I had tail scale, tail scale was reporting that the whole server was offline, like the host was down. [SPEAKER_02]: I couldn't access it into it. [SPEAKER_02]: It's like, okay, great. [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe tail scales offline. [SPEAKER_02]: I was able to access it into my nest at home and then just ping the local IP address of the host.

57:51 [SPEAKER_02]: The no response was like request time gap. [SPEAKER_02]: Most time reachable, I'm like, oh. [SPEAKER_02]: Great, but there's home, it's down, all right. [SPEAKER_02]: Nothing I could do, so I just enjoyed the holiday. [SPEAKER_02]: No, I wasn't gonna get my daily reminders or anything like that.

58:06 [SPEAKER_02]: Came back home, we came home at night, we've got home about 10pm at night, so it's a sunset and my garden lights were on. [SPEAKER_02]: Like I could see the garden lights coming down my street. [SPEAKER_02]: I might have some uplights pointing into the tree and stuff like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, [SPEAKER_02]: So I mean, like, the garden lights have been on like the entire week, if I miss this down, like there must have been, right?

58:27 [SPEAKER_02]: There's nothing else to control the lights and look okay, cool. [SPEAKER_02]: Get out of the car, get into the house and uh... [SPEAKER_02]: up and up the door and I'm bringing in the suitcase and then I notice, oh hang on, that light by the door just turned off. [SPEAKER_02]: That could only be controlled by Zigbee and Zwave.

58:46 [SPEAKER_02]: Homemises must be online. [SPEAKER_02]: So quickly like now on the local network, I open up the app, cannot access homemises it's down. [SPEAKER_02]: Moving to some other rooms, lights are turning on, automations are running right homemises is alive, but I just can't [SPEAKER_02]: Get into it.

59:01 [SPEAKER_02]: Fire up the laptop, SSH, no, cannot SSH, that device checked ubiquity, not the server is off, like there's nothing plugged in on that port, like cool. [SPEAKER_02]: that's weird. [SPEAKER_02]: So I had rebooted the server, logged in, then I was able to get into home assistant and I could see through the activity history that the garden lights weren't on for the whole week.

59:22 [SPEAKER_02]: It actually came on a few hours before we got home. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, the internet hadn't been. [SPEAKER_02]: And then also when I was away, my ambient router decided to disconnect itself, which randomly happens and then I lost my camera feed access. [SPEAKER_02]: So there's no external network [SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, what turns out, I've, I've juiced is that [SPEAKER_02]: my host machine, which is an old PC, must for whatever reason when I was in the lounge on the way out of Australia, decided to lose on network capability.

59:54 [SPEAKER_02]: So internal external network just gone, right? [SPEAKER_02]: So homelessness couldn't communicate with anything over HTTP, but I have my zipiti2 and zwi2 radios plugged into the USB on that host machine. [SPEAKER_02]: which means it was able to communicate with, yeah, communicate with subway advisors, communicate with ZIGB fine.

1:00:20 [SPEAKER_02]: So when I walked in and my motion sensor, which is on ZIGB, was able to turn on and off and I said, we have lights because they were plugged in directly to USB. [SPEAKER_02]: So anything on that HDP layer was a fairly familiar for me. [SPEAKER_02]: And I was thinking like, how could I prevent this from happening in the future?

1:00:34 [SPEAKER_02]: My initial thought was, oh, I'll just move ZBT2 and ZBT2 to network. [SPEAKER_02]: But like, I'm pretty sure I think you've done for yours, where I'm like, do you have them on the network randomly around the house? [SPEAKER_02]: But now I've realized in this situation, I don't know if that would have helped or been hit or it's like, guess I could have had a backup.

1:00:57 [SPEAKER_02]: Like, maybe on my home, this is green. [SPEAKER_02]: Could have spun up, okay, primary home instances down. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to take over controlling those radios. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to have to get AI to help me come up with a backup plan, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Do I? [SPEAKER_00]: So check, check your drivers, update your drivers, and potentially couple of settings on the PC, like a low power mode, or like sleep mode, like those kind of things, where it could do that.

1:01:20 [SPEAKER_00]: So in my entire lab, essentially, at some point, [SPEAKER_00]: I just started having a ton of instability. [SPEAKER_00]: So I've got three nodes. [SPEAKER_00]: That's where a lot of stuff runs on that I host, like image and all those things. [SPEAKER_00]: Yep. [SPEAKER_00]: Homelessness and use to be on there, I moved it off into my yellow.

1:01:38 [SPEAKER_00]: So that's on its own dedicated box. [SPEAKER_00]: But... [SPEAKER_00]: And essentially, like, I had updated, it's all running on proxmox, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So we'll put it to one of the covers, I had updated everything, and it was all the latest, whatever. [SPEAKER_00]: And it still wasn't working.

1:01:53 [SPEAKER_00]: So I actually had to go through a sequence of things. [SPEAKER_00]: to eventually fix it, things including potentially M to U stuff, there was like five or six things that I had and I had it written down somewhere and obviously I'll never be able to find it again. [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, so, you know, as I went to the sequence of things, I think the main thing was there's a bug in the Intel driver that I was using, where essentially I had to manually install another a newer driver and then get that to update.

1:02:33 [SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't part of any of the repose or anything like that. [SPEAKER_00]: So again, it could be something similar [SPEAKER_00]: It's a sequence of things, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Like, it's this plus this, plus this, gave it a really bad time. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I help me solve that a thing's odd, that I use, or maybe you'll charge a video, but yeah.

1:02:54 [SPEAKER_02]: This is the problem I have, like, it's such a random address. [SPEAKER_02]: I think it's just unfortunate that it was while I was out of the country, that this happened, I don't think the scene has happened before. [SPEAKER_02]: May I never see it happen again? [SPEAKER_02]: I've got codecs now writing me an automation that I'm going to implement, which is it will check if it can ping some local servers that it knows will always be online.

1:03:15 [SPEAKER_02]: So it will try and ping my access points and my gateway. [SPEAKER_02]: If it can't ping those, then it knows the local network is down. [SPEAKER_02]: And if it can't also get a ping to the outside world and it knows the internet is down because I had the situation where I made only if the local networks down I don't want to reboot, I just want to reboot the five books, right?

1:03:39 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: So, yeah, I need to know, I need to differentiate between just this host box being unable to access the all network, or if it's just the way it's gone down and we boot the way and router. [SPEAKER_02]: So, you've got home misses doing it by challenges that I'm running home misses in a container.

1:03:57 [SPEAKER_02]: Codex has suggested that I can add some mounts to the container, to expose [SPEAKER_02]: path to send the reboot command. [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm going to experiment with that. [SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, my plan is to create an automation if the if home misses can't ping those network devices and the internet stand for four minutes or something, reboot home assistant when it comes back up, I will then check those connections again.

1:04:25 [SPEAKER_02]: It should solve the network connectivity issue, [SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, that's my little story of me being away for a week. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, again, could happen to anything or anyone, right, so it's it's like [SPEAKER_02]: It's made me feel so vulnerable being away. [SPEAKER_02]: Not having her missing there.

1:04:51 [SPEAKER_02]: Like, I know, no one's in my house. [SPEAKER_02]: I know what's happening in the house. [SPEAKER_02]: It's like a security blanket, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Like, someone just took that away from me when I couldn't access home. [SPEAKER_02]: This is, I was like, oh, it's my house, okay. [SPEAKER_02]: It's, am I being robbed?

1:05:03 [SPEAKER_02]: Like, what am I gonna go? [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, obviously what I want to do when I'm overseas, but it's nice to know that I'm being robbed and then I could potentially, you know, like call someone to hate, can you call the police, all right? [SPEAKER_02]: But no, I had zero visibility into the home.

1:05:17 [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, it was, I lost my security blanket for my overseas holiday. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, that's unfortunate, but on that summer note, [SPEAKER_00]: That is our episode. [SPEAKER_02]: At 26.5, enjoy it. [SPEAKER_02]: I'll see you in the next one. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, cheers.

1:05:36 [SPEAKER_02]: Cheers.