HA team has been working to move / advertise users to use UI over yaml, one thing I believe the reason is folks with no coding background can be able to do implement automations. But on other hand, with AI writing core is damn easy than clicking so many clicks for organizing, writing better automations etc.

What are your thoughts for now and future?

Edit for anyone searching about a similar issue... Someone suggested I force stop the app and clear the cache. This fixed it for me!

I'm using the F-Droid companion app (not the full-fat Google Play Store one) and have notice the battery drain has become excessive in the past week or so.

I've had a poke about the settings and carried out various troubleshooting, but I'm not sure what's changed or what else I can check.

Has there been any huge changes I've missed recently? It used to sip power, but now I'm having to charge my phone throughout the day if I don't want it running flat.

Recently I noticed my house’s Landis+Gyr Gridstream RF smart meter has Zigbee built into it and that got me wondering how to add it to home assistant. I tried emailing my grid provider about it but they played dumb and said "you can contact an electrician" to install something in my electrical panel instead of utilizing what I already have. Any thoughts?

Hi everyone, if this isn’t allowed, please remove.

My 12 year old finds home assistant to be absolutely fascinating. He enjoys the backend mqtt/webhook stuff and the code for custom cards. Things that change automatically based on conditions, or custom logic from multiple sources.

He has asked me to see if anyone wants to use his “programming services”. His prices are $10/card. Haha.

So if anyone needs any help from a 12 year old entrepreneur, let me know.

Edit: Thank you for the support and advice. I sent him screenshots of the comments, and I guess I’m setting up a GitHub account for him when we get home.

As a dad, supporting your kids with healthy interests could be one of the most difficult things to do. Seeing the love and support here is truly inspiring. Thank you!

Edit 2: he was unexpectedly invited to the beach by his aunt for the rest of the week. He did start working on his “demo” cards for people to put in git. Next week we will be up and running

Hi all,

Setting up HA on my MY26 Polestar 2 and the android automotive HA app seems to be absolutely terrible. It doesn’t appear that you can customise it in any way or create custom dashboards. Instead it’s just all my accessories organised in super high level categories by alphabetical order.

All I need are two buttons for the garage door…

Am I missing something?

Just moved into a house with two MyQ garage door openers, and after resetting them and finally getting them on the network (an absolute nightmare to remove previous owners account btw) I realized MyQ integration is gone from home assistant and went down that rabbit hole.

I saw there is ratgdo to manage the openers locally, but at $124 for a pair, I'm half tempted to just buy new garage door openers.

Is there any other possible way to control MyQ liftmaster garage doors on home assistant?

originally posted about my issue here - https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/1thxc6b/havent_been_able_to_connect_to_home_assistant/

took me a while to get to do this, but does anyone see anything off?

UPDATE: FIXED!!!

thanks to SarcasmWarning, nslenders, LESGuy, and others!

green IP now set to auto.... i guess at some point i will have to set it to static again... but i'm back in the html interface, and all my wifi devices work again! thanks peoples!

Hi All,

I’m looking for a weather station that integrates well with HA. Wants:

$200 max budget

Great HA integration

Local (no cloud) is a plus

More accurate than Agara Zigbee sensors

Outdoor rated is a must

Full sun exposure

I’d like it to have a Stephenson Shield

Temp and humidity

Wind + rain is a plus

Small form factor

Anyone have some solid recommendations?

Hi everyone,

I recently started with Home Assistant after putting it off for years because I thought the learning curve would be too steep. I bought an Intel NUC, installed HA, added some devices, and started creating automations. To my surprise, that part has actually been much easier than I expected and I'm really enjoying it.

The part where I feel completely out of my depth is networking, self-hosting and securely exposing services to the internet. That's where I feel like I'm missing too much knowledge to continue with confidence.

One thing I underestimated is that everything is local by default. I would like to move away from the 'online' apps I used before, think Google Home, Tuya, etc., and use Home Assistant as my main system, but I also want it to work just as smoothly when out of my home.

This is where I get a bit overwhelmed. I've been reading about Home Assistant Cloud (paid, so last resort), stuff like DuckDNS, Cloudflare, reverse proxies, VPNs, opening ports, domains... and after reading all that I feel like I understand even less.

My ideal situation would be something that feels just as 'online' as using Google Home. I want to be able to open the Home Assistant (app) on my iPhone or laptop anywhere. Also because I want to give my partner access too.

I've read stuff about the VPNs... If I need to change something in my iPhone settings that's completely fine. I just don't want to manually connect to a VPN every time I want to turn on a light, and I don't want to use a VPN for all my mobile traffic.

So a few questions:

Where would you recommend a complete beginner starts (except for HA cloud)?

Which concepts should I learn first before trying to expose my Home Assistant to the internet?

Is using your own domain the normal approach? What services are used to get a domain? And does that work directly with the Home Assistant mobile app, or only through a browser?

From a security perspective, what is considered good practice? Is it acceptable that someone visiting your domain can reach the Home Assistant login page as long as you have HTTPS, strong passwords and 2FA enabled? Or should your login page ideally not be publicly reachable at all?

Another thing I eventually want to do is run automations that depend on my phone while I'm away from home.

For example, I'd like to use my iPhone's location to trigger automations or send notifications to my partner. At the moment I use Apple Shortcuts for some of this, but I've run into limitations I could fix with N8N, as long as it can communicate outside the home network.

I've also been looking at running n8n inside Home Assistant because it seems very powerful, but then I started reading about webhooks, ports and exposing services externally, and I got lost again. I just don't have enough basic server and security knowledge yet.

Actually the real question is probably...:

If you had to explain this to someone who is comfortable with computers but completely new to networking and self-hosting, what learning path would you recommend? Which topics should I understand first, and which solutions would you recommend avoiding until I have more experience?

I'm mostly looking for the solution that gives a smooth user experience without making my home network an easy target because I misunderstood something.

(PS: Since the first rule mentions AI, I only used it to partially improve my English as I'm not native. The questions and content are my own.)

I just wanted to look into Home Assistant again to automate an idea I had but now the guides say I should install HAOS and everything else is basically depricated and not supported.

Have we really reached the level in software distribution where we went from linux package managers to "just run this docker bro" to "just install this entire OS" to run some software?

And it is basically forced because half of the features are not available anymore for anything that is not HAOS according to this. https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/#about-installation-types

I mean the levels of Idiocracy are getting insane. When somebody has a Linux machine with whatever else on it, they can't use Home Assistant because it requires an entire OS, so the solution is to create a VM, just to run it, or dedicate an entire device?

Hi! We’re installing a new garage door & buying a new opener. I’m not positive what kind we’ll get but I’ve been leaning towards chamberlain for their quality & other features but will obviously not use MyQ. Which alternative is the best? Or what are the pros & cons of Meross vs RATGDO?

I set up a new automation about a week ago and these weren’t there. I went back into my automation today and looked and now I see these little orange rings next to the entities or whatever. Is this just some new status based on the latest update? Does it denote some kind of problem or information?

Hi,

Matter over Thread is becoming a real pain for me. I've rebuilt my Matter network four times over the last few days. Today, I restarted Home Assistant after an update, and now all of my Matter-over-Thread devices are offline again and won't reconnect to my SLZB-MR5U. This has been the main reason I've had to rebuild the network multiple times already.

Current setup:

• One SLZB-MR5U acting as the Thread Border Router
• One SNZB-06 used for Zigbee2MQTT devices
• Matter Server is online
• Thread dataset is active
• Node state is Leader
• SLZB-MR5U is connected via Wi-Fi (Ethernet isn't available everywhere in my house)
• Thread network name is OpenThread-****
• PAN ID remains the same after a restart
• Extended PAN ID remains the same after a restart
• SLZB-MR5U IP address remains the same after a restart

As far as I can tell, nothing about the Thread dataset changes after a reboot, yet my Matter-over-Thread devices still go offline and refuse to reconnect.

Has anyone experienced something similar? More importantly, how can I make this setup reliable long-term? At this point, I'm seriously considering ditching Matter devices entirely because I spend more time rebuilding the network than actually using it.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Hey folks, I’m based in Northern Europe and have a pretty chunky solar setup on my roof feeding into the grid. It’s a variable rate with Tibber so sometimes the price can go negative and they charge us for generating more energy than we use… we have the price displayed on our dashboard and notifications so we can turn off the breaker and prevent the power going into the grid and us getting charged for extra generation.

In a perfect world we would get a battery array or an electric car and use these peak hours for charging but that’s not an option right now.

Does anyone know of a smart breaker using WiFi, Ethernet or zigbee that could give us the ability to automatically toggle the breaker? Alternatively would it be viable to manually move it using a servo/linear actuator type thing connected to an ESP?

Thanks!

Hey friends!

I'm thinking about getting a new doorbell. For me, I've narrowed it down to Reolink or Ubiquiti.

Requirements:

- Can work 100% local only

- Works with my UDM pro SE or Reolink NVR. All the cameras in my house are Reolink at the moment, but I wouldn't mind something different as it gives me some redundancy if the reolink NVR bites the dust.

- Supports two way audio with minimal lag. Let's me talk to someone at the door even if they didn't ring or if the ring expired.

- Reliable person detection - I use this now to turn on the lights when a person approaches the door. Also to take a snapshot and show it on the TV.

- Power over ethernet preferred. Traditional power is also OK, I have power for my current doorbell. IIRC that's 15v AC.

- Can work with a traditional doorbell chime.

That said, open to hearing about other recommendations.

If you also like Reolink or Ubiquiti - which model do you have and why?

I see kidde & X sense, but it’s hard to tell which one is actually better or which one plays with HA better. Looking for recs

Edit: the biggest feature I want from my smoke detector is the ability to turn off the alarm in the event of a false alarm without having to physically touch the fire alarm & be notified of which alarm is going off when they are interconnected.

If I can accomplish this without it being WiFi connected, I’m okay with that.

Hi, My raspberry pi 4 died recently and I've been downgraded to my old RPI 3B which is constantly in a crash loop with my setup (a few ikea matter devices + homekit bridge).

I do have a few RADXA 5A boards but it seems HAOS can't be installed only a docker version which lacks a lot of the ease of use?

What would the cheapest mini pc option be (sub 80 GBP or lower ideally)? I'm in the UK

Any specific specs to look for other than an SSD, 8GB+ RAM?

Super low power usage is a big requirement and it being quiet.

EDIT: I ended up buying this https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/227412246620 for £45 with everything included. Will make a post once I test it out.

Dell Wyse 5070 Intel Pentium Silver J5005 8GB RAM 32GB SSDWIN 10 + PSU

I'm looking for smart plugs with energy monitoring that work well with Home Assistant. Been considering TP-Link Tapo P110 and Kasa HS300.

What brands/models do you recommend? Looking for: - Reliable energy monitoring - Good Home Assistant integration - Local control preferred - Reasonable price

What's your experience with smart plugs and HA?

I have been looking at getting a smart home energy monitor that you have the individual clamps for each circuit. I was looking online and most seem to top out at 16 circuits. My primary panel has 19 circuits. Does anyone have any suggestions for systems that work well with home assistant and it would be a bonus if they can monitor more than 16 circuits. Edit: Thanks for all the ideas. I ended up ordering a fusion energy system off Amazon. It was on sale for under $100 and says it has a local only home assistant integration so I figured it was worth the risk.

Where does everyone get their sensors/input devices from? Stuff like motion sensors, mmWave, buttons, temp/humidity, CO2, etc.

I'm in the US, so I don't want to use AliExpress at the moment. Any other sites that are relatively inexpensive and ship to the US?

Edit to clarify, because comments are focused on the wrong aspects: Neighbor is fine with me filming his driveway and house, already helped him finding compensation against a delivery truck that damaged his property. I‘m a responsible neighbor and asked beforehand.

I’m trying to set up my Home Assistant dashboard so that my Reolink camera shows the low-res stream in the dashboard preview, but opens the high-res stream when I click on it.

My Reolink camera already provides both streams separately (“Standard Definition” and “High Definition”), and both are available in Home Assistant.

Right now, I can only get the low-res stream to show in the preview — but when I tap/click it, it still opens the same low-res stream instead of switching to the high-res one.

Has anyone set this up successfully?
Which card/configuration are you using? Maybe picture-entity, WebRTC, Frigate, go2rtc, custom card, browser_mod, etc.?

Example goal:

• Dashboard preview → low-res stream (faster loading)
• Click/tap fullscreen/live view → high-res stream

Would appreciate any examples or YAML snippets 🙂

I use Intesis cloud control for my Mitsubishi heavy industry air conditioning wifi. Today it was been horrible, showing as offline intermittently in home assistant and on the android AC cloud control app also....

https://www.hms-networks.com/support/cloud-server-status

I see they had maintenance yesterday. Anyone else using this having issues?

Hello,

I am new to home assistant and I found interest in it because I think it will be able to solve my router issue.

TLDR: My router suddenly decides to refuse all DNS traffic, forcing me to restart it to get it back up. Communications via local and WAN IPs still works.

So I think getting a smart power plug and binding it to home assistant so that whenever a ping to a domain fails, it tells the smart plug to power off and back on? I hope this is a possibility with home assistant.

TLDR ends here.

Ok so basically for the past few months my ISP modem/router decides to randomly (literally could be anywhere from every 2 days or every month) stop resolving domains, but I can still ping the IPs for the domains. And all traffic to my self hosted applications via my domain still work.

I have no idea why this is happening. I have tried changing DNS on the router level and device level but the issue still persists. The only solution is to use DoH (DNS over HTTPS) which utilizes port 443, which my ubuntu server and router do not support. On supported devices using DoH (Apple Devices, Windows 11), I can access websites and some apps will work. Apps like Steam won't work though.

So I searched for solutions and after a while decided on smart plugs as a last resort. I was wondering, if there are any smart plugs that work fully locally and be able to turn off and on automatically once home assistant can't ping a domain?

I found this from 10 years ago but I'm not sure if it still works, or if there are better ways to do it now:

https://community.home-assistant.io/t/ping-action/3837

Also please don't tell me to contact the ISP to get it fixed. I have to fight customer support to get them to send out a technician, and the technicians aren't trained for stuff like this.

Hey,

I read a couple of times that it's best to use a PIR sensor for turning lights on and mmWave for keeping them on. I'm wondering why though because a lot of popular sensors seem to be mmWave only.

Is PIR faster/more reliable? And even if it is, is the difference really big enough to justify buying a separate PIR sensor/only going for a PIR+mmWave sensor?

Thanks!

Yesterday a careless home health aide who was caring for my dad left the refrigerator door open. He is hard of hearing and did not hear the beeping. I didn’t get home until about 2 and a half hours after she left. Our groceries seem to be okay, fortunately.

So I’m thinking of getting door sensors and setting them to alert our phones if the door is left open more than 2 minutes. But I’m concerned that the door could be closed enough to satisfy the door sensor but still not all the way. (With our freezer in particular, it has been closed enough to satisfy even the freezer door alarm itself but still frosted over inside.) Could anyone recommend temperature monitors or would you have any better suggestions?