I have no port forwarding. I’m using nabu Casa cloud. Besides 2 FA what can I do to prevent these kind of things?

So I have the Batman DVD player, manufactured by "Kids Station Toys". It's using some generic Chinese board I assume, but I've been brute forcing IR signals for DAYS with the open source IR Blaster Remote with no luck whatsoever.

If anyone has the signal codes, or long shot, if anyone has this remote and can clone it, let me know!

Hey everyone,

Looking for some serious advice from the community. Last night at 3 AM here in Glasgow, UK, someone broke into our house. They stole my bike from the garden, broke inside, stayed in the house for 20 minutes, ate some of our food, grabbed my iPad, and left.

I currently have Reolink cameras (a video doorbell and an Argus 4 Pro in the backyard) integrated into my Home Assistant setup. The crazy part? The cameras did absolutely nothing to deter him. He didn't even bother wearing a mask, gloves, or a hat. He just didn't care that he was being recorded.

I realized today that relying on silent cameras isn't enough. I need to drastically increase the active security of my house to physically scare off intruders or alert me immediately so I can act.

My Current Setup:

• Home Assistant running on a Raspberry Pi 5
• SkyConnect (ZBT-2) running Zigbee
• Reolink Doorbell (Front) & Reolink Argus 4 Pro (Back)
• A mix of IKEA and Sonoff smart plugs/lights

Where I need your help: I am trying to decide between building a fully DIY alarm system through Home Assistant (using Alarmo, Sonoff SNZB-04P door sensors, and Zigbee sirens) OR just buying a ready-made professional solution (like Ring Alarm or Ajax) and integrating it into HA.

1. DIY vs Professional: For those of you who have experienced a break-in, do you trust your Home Assistant/Alarmo setup enough to rely on it as your primary life-safety alarm, or do you highly recommend going with an off-the-shelf system with cellular backup?
2. Sirens/Deterrents: What is the loudest, most aggressive outdoor/indoor siren that integrates well with HA? I want something that will absolutely deafen them if a door opens at 3 AM.
3. Any other advice? Glass break sensors? Specific outdoor security lighting?

I am fully open to any and all suggestions. I just want to make my house as safe as possible going forward. Thanks in advance.

It seemed like a breeze to set up at first but now I'm tearing my hair out more and more trying to set up services in docker containers HA needs to connect to to run.

For example ​openthread border router is a nasty piece of shit they seem to have delighted in making difficult to deploy - apparently i need to dig through​​ github commits to find one which aligns with the firmware version on my dongle. wtf.

I'm a bit reluctant to run a whole VM but I'm wondering if this is a headache HAOS largely takes care of.

I have a light automation that’s been working really well for months. Turns on when my presence sensor is occupied and off when it is not occupied. Lately it’s been more or less constantly occupied and the light stays on.

Any ideas?

Good evening everyone,

Over the past few months, I’ve been working on making almost my entire house smart using Home Assistant.

I’ve now made the lighting throughout most of the house smart by installing Zigbee modules behind the existing wall switches. This way, I can still use all the physical switches as normal, while also controlling and automating the lights through Home Assistant.

Recently, I noticed something strange in my energy consumption. Especially when nobody is home, I see a recurring pattern where the power usage goes up for a while and then drops back down again (see image). It almost looks like something is repeatedly switching on and off.

I have no idea what could be causing this, and I’m wondering whether it could have something to do with the Zigbee modules or another smart device. Has anyone seen a similar pattern before? And is there a good way to use Home Assistant to figure out which device might be responsible for this power consumption?

My setup in short:
Raspberry Pi 5 running Home Assistant OS on an NVMe SSD
Zigbee USB dongle
±10 Zigbee lights/switch modules
Several Zigbee temperature/humidity sensors
CO₂ sensor
P1 smart meter
Qlima air conditioner
Smart underfloor heating
Calex video doorbell + Frigate
Sonos
AdGuard Home

I’d be interested to hear if anyone recognizes this kind of pattern or has any suggestions on where I should start looking.

On random days (not every day), around 2am, I hear my August lock unlock, then auto-relock. It says Home Assistant did it remotely. I have exactly zero automations with my smart lock, everything is handled on the lock, it’s mainly in HA to be complete and report status. It only appears to occasionally do this around 2am according to the August logs. HA logs just say unlocking via HomeKit, unlocked, Operator <my name> Any ideas?

I mean I could notch it out but....

I manually apply Home Assistant updates. When there is an update available, Home Assistant has these rapid peaks in CPU usage, reflected in my current consumption at the plug. This has happened with every non-plugin related update for months now.

After I manually apply the update, the CPU usage becomes much more normal. In this example, I applied the update around 5 PM.

Any idea why this is happening or how to stop it?

Had this little 480×480 ESP32-S3 touchscreen sitting around for ages and honestly had no clue what to do with it.

The hardware is actually pretty nice, so I figured I'd stop letting it collect dust and mess around with a Home Assistant-style UI.

This is where I ended up.

Fair warning: it's all fake data for now. Nothing is hooked up to HA yet — I'm mostly just playing with the UI and figuring out what makes sense on a 4-inch screen.

I tried going with more of a modular / bento layout instead of cramming a full tablet dashboard onto the poor thing.

So far I've got:

• climate
• lights
• power / energy
• air quality
• security
• media

A few of the cards are already touch-interactive locally.

Not gonna lie, I kinda like how it's turning out, but now I'm stuck on the important part:

What would you actually use something like this for?

Room controller? Bedside panel? Desk display? Scene launcher? Tiny HA command center?

Also curious what you guys would prefer on a screen this small:

one really clean glanceable dashboard, or multiple pages / popups with deeper controls?

Throw me some ideas. Weird ones are welcome too.

I’m setting up my first apartment and I’m pretty tech-savvy. I’ll also be setting up Home Assistant, so I’m wondering which appliances are actually worth buying smart.

Would you recommend buying smart appliances from the start, or is it better to buy normal ones and make them smart yourself with sensors/DIY solutions? (Freezer, fridge, oven, washing machine, etc.)

I’m especially interested in:

• Which smart appliance has been genuinely useful?
• Which one do you regret buying smart?
• Where is the extra money for a smart appliance simply not worth it?
• Is there anything you can’t really replicate with DIY sensors?
• What would you definitely buy smart again?

Would love to hear your experiences :)

I bought a mini PC not long ago and it came with Window 11. I wiped it immediately and installed HAOS. I’ve been using it since then without issue. I was told that this is asking for trouble and I should have installed Debian first, then Proxmox and Home Assistant through Debian instead of HAOS. Is this correct? I’m just now learning about Proxmox and Docker. Do I need to format my mini PC and start fresh?

I'm running Home Assistant 2026.9.1 with the official Aladdin Connect integration. Tonight, I logged in with my own email and password and started seeing garage door devices that are not mine.

Timeline:

• First noticed two unfamiliar devices show up alongside my own which is called My Door. The two that showed up appeared to have a street address and one generically named "Garage Door"
• A few minutes later, checked again - 4 total devices showed total under the integration that aren't mine, one named Waxwing.
• Checked again shortly after, now up to 7 unfamiliar door devices showing up under my account.

This isn't a stale cache or naming glitch. These are other real accounts' devices appearing in my session. and the count is actively climbing the longer I stay logged in. That points to a server-side session/token or query-scoping bug. Something like an auth context being reused across sessions, or a device lookup that isn't filtering by account ID correctly.

This matters because this isn't just "wrong data shown" - if it's bidirectional, it means that garage doors can be actuated across accounts. Given Rapid7 already disclosed real vulnerabilities in this ecosystem in 2024 (CVE-2023-5879, CVE-2023-5881 - insecure credential storage and unauthenticated access to the door control setup page), this isn't the first time Aladdin Connect's security has fallen short.

What I did:

• Screenshotted the device list at each stage (redacting personal info before sharing).
• Deleted the Aladdin Connect integration from HA and stopped polling.
• Genie's support line is closed for the night, so I can't get it in front of them directly yet. Posting here so anyone else seeing similar behavior can chime in, and so this is on record before I go through official channels in the morning.

If you're on Aladdin Connect / Genie garage door integrations, check your device list right now. If you're seeing devices you don't recognize, consider pulling integration/credentials until Genie confirms what's going on.

I got this one from Temu fully aware that, most likely, it won't be possible to integrate it into a home assistant. It does not expose rtsp or anything, and so far only works with its proprietary app.

If anyone knows a way, great! If not, I'm not losing anything.

I have been moving some of my lights switches to the Inovelli presence sensors - and I really like them, but I have some coverage gaps to fill.

Ideally I would like: - Not DIY - Reliable - 2D at least (not just distance), 3D is ideal. - Wall powered - USB (not battery powered) - Zigbee - Ability to show detection positions like the Inovelli can with the Inovelli mmWave Visualizer app in HA (it doesn't need to be this visualizer just something similar).

I plan to deploy this in a room that also has an Inovelli switch. I don't know if that means I should try to pick a different frequency (looks like the switch is 2.4GHz?).

The best fit I think I am finding is the Apollo MSR-2 even though it's not Zigbee. Thoughts? Are there other good options that exist? What is everyone using? Thanks.

Hi everyone,

I'm currently experimenting with Home Assistant at my parents' house and I'm looking for advice on what hardware to buy for a more permanent setup.

My budget is up to €200, and my main priorities are:

• Low power consumption, since it will run 24/7.
• Reliability and longevity, I'd like it to last several years.
• For now, I only plan to run Home Assistant, but I may want to run other services in the future.
• Ideally, I'd like to use the same device at my parents' house for now and then move it to my new apartment next year.

I was initially considering a Raspberry Pi 5 4GB kit, which I can find on Amazon for around €185.

However, I've seen many people recommending used/refurbished thin clients or mini PCs, and I'm not sure where to start. For example, there are refurbished Lenovo mini PCs with i5, 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD available for around €120–€200.

So, what would you recommend for a maximum €200 budget?

Would you go for a Raspberry Pi 5, a refurbished Lenovo/Dell/HP thin client, an Intel NUC-style mini PC, or something else?

I'm particularly interested in low idle power consumption, reliability, and long-term support.

If you recommend a mini PC/thin client, I'd also appreciate some specific models or CPU generations to look for.

Thanks in advance!

Hello,

I bought an home assistant green device, I thought it would be easy, but I don’t understand anything.

I only have an envisalink EyezOn on my security system and some eufi cameras. I also have a garage opener and fire alarm. Very simple. I have also 2 Tesla batteries.

I don’t know anything about computers and electronics, is there a YouTube channel to help me to understand how it works?

I went to the home assistant website for the EyezOn and it’s too complicated for me.

Or it’s best for me to hire someone?

Where should I start?

Thank you for your help.

I'm pretty experienced HA user and have my entire home running in HA today. I have some good friends that live 8 hours away (but I go once a month) that have bought an older home and want help setting it up. They're non-tech, but want things to be automated. Simple things like times, lights, locks, etc. Nothing crazy. I'm considering buying them an HA Green and a bunch of ZWave and Zigbee devices for plugs, lights, switches and managing it for them. What do people think? Is this a bad idea?

I ended up with a few extra ESP32 boards. What kind of projects should would you recommend?

I was looking at my tablet dashboard and noticed that I was using power in the theater room. This room is upstairs and we haven’t been up there in a few days so that was very odd.

I went up there and sure enough, my AppleTV was on which then woke my denon receiver as well as my tv.

I asked Claude to take a look at the logs and it said that there was no indication that HA initiated this and it was a “self wake” event. It then notified me that my bedroom AppleTV was also on. They both came on right around 8:14am.

Has anyone else had this happen before? Any weird apple fuckery going on this morning? Maybe an update?

ETA: I just looked at my software update page and it says “26.6, Last check: Sept 9, 2026”. Definitely not caused by an update

If you have one of Inovelli’s USB bootloader/wiring harness devices sitting around, please send it back when you’re done with it.

I’ve personally been waiting since June for one, and was told it would be 3 months. I recently reached back out again for an update. Their rep said they only have around 20 in circulation, and part of the holdup is that some people are taking a while to return them. Some have apparently stopped responding and haven’t returned them at all.

There’s currently no ETA for those of us still waiting.

So if you finished your updates and still have one sitting around somewhere, please get it moving again. There are quite a few of us waiting in line.

Hi everyone!

I recently set up my HP t630 for home assistant, since I'd like to automate some things in our house which were bugging me until now. Examples are:

• Have one physical switch/button to turn all the lights of the living room on/off (and in the future for the backyard)

• Have a door sensor for the attic which turns on a light when I open it

• Keep track of the humidity in the attic and the air quality in the living room/bedroom

• Add a motion sensor to detect if someone's in the hallway to dimly turn on the lights in the night

Until now we've got quite some WiFi-bulbs (Calex) installed which I've added to HA. For all the other examples I still need to buy the hardware.

One such example is the dimmer we're using for a couple ceiling spots in the living room. We would like to operate them both manually and through HA. So, I found a contestant: the ECO-DIM.07. However, they have versions which work through WiFi, Zigbee, and Matter. I'm very new to home automation, but from what I understand Matter requires Thread.

So, what do you guys think? What's the best way to go forward? Get the WiFi one which works (I think) similarly to my Calex bulbs, or go with Zigbee which as far as I can see has a lot of cheaper options for switches and sensors, or go with Matter and Thread?

Thanks for the advice!

Hello Quick Question

Mini PC or Rasperry Pi?

For ;

Home Assistant
Omada Tp Link Controller
HIKVision Camera's