My friend Ezra and I made a board that goes inside a Wiimote and runs ESPHome, so Home Assistant sees every button, the LEDs, the rumble and the tilt.

In the video, A turns on a different lamp depending on how you hold it: tilted up for the tall one, level for the small one. It's just a regular automation reading the tilt.
The TV at the end is the remote's own IR. We copied the codes from the TV's remote with the IR receiver, and the emitter sends them. It also supports bluetooth so you can control smart tv's etc.

Config's on GitHub: https://github.com/openmote/openmote-homeassistant

We're funding the first production run on Crowd Supply, if you're interested: openmote.io

Details in the comments.

For those of you who have not gotten the news yet: The eMudhra intermediate CAs private key was leaked (they literally used the number "4"). As a consequence, everyone can issue certificates for websites and servers that appear to be valid to unpatched devices.

I was wondering whether we can use this to our advantage. Imagine you have a cheap WiFi light bulb that receives its command from some proprietary app through some server.

We redirect the domain of the server, i.e. random-company.com to a local server through DNS.

Before, the light bulb would not connect to our local server, because no one would issue a valid certificate for random-company.com for us. But now, we could in theory use the leaked private key of eMudhra to issue such a certificate ourselves. Of course, this only works if the light bulbs firmware is not updated to reject certificates issued by the untrustworthy CA.

I suspect that we could use this to turn many cloud only integrations into fully local ones, as long as the devices are not updated (or implement proper certificate revocation lists).

What are your thoughts on this? Any device you have in mind for which this could work out?

I've got an S8 Ultra and the thing that always drove me nuts about the Home Assistant integration was that everything went through the cloud. Didn't really matter since the app does too but I was lurking the other day and found a project that runs the whole Roborock server locally

https://github.com/Python-roborock/local_roborock_server

I was super skeptical but an hour later I had it fully hooked into Home Assistant and cut the vacuums internet in unifi so it's local only now. Setup was a bit of a pain but you can get it and the native Roborock app working which I thought was pretty cool. I haven’t noticed any loss of features or settings yet either and just mapped a new floor without issue. Huge kudos to the dev who reversed the protocol!

https://github.com/Python-roborock/local_roborock_server/blob/main/docs/home_assistant.md

Hey guys!

I was a bit bored last weekend and I recently also got a Claude Pro subscription. What started as a joke is now a full theme for HomeAssistant. It brings the window look, a custom start menu, a windows clock, different colorways (you can also make your own) and styles (Win 3.11/95/98) and of course custom icons.

You can install it thru HACS as an integration from here https://github.com/Schumey/HomeAssistant95

Please let me know if you have any ideas or find some bugs!

I wanted to share how I'm using my Google Nest Hub and Nest Mini with Home Assistant.

Instead of using them only for music, weather updates or displaying photos, I decided to give them a few additional jobs around the house.

And the best part? No custom firmware, hardware modifications or additional devices were necessary.

1. Google Nest Hub – my home energy dashboard

The photo shows my actual Home Assistant Lovelace dashboard running on a Google Nest Hub through Home Assistant Cast. It's not a static image or screenshot.

The dashboard combines information from several different systems:

- 10 kWp solar PV installation.

- GoodWe hybrid inverter.

- 15.36 kWh battery storage system.

- Real-time household electricity consumption.

- Daily solar energy production.

- Battery state of charge.

- Three-phase grid voltage.

- Domestic hot water temperatures from my Daikin heat pump and Bosch gas boiler.

- Outdoor temperature and heating system parameters.

All this information comes from different Home Assistant integrations and is presented on a single screen.

How does it work?

I'm using the standard Google Cast integration in Home Assistant.

The dashboard is sent directly to the Nest Hub using "cast.show_lovelace_view".

I also created an automation that sends the dashboard again every 10 minutes to keep it displayed.

Initially, I experienced some problems with device discovery. Adding the Nest Hub's IP address to the Known Hosts configuration in the Google Cast integration solved that issue.

Now I can simply glance at the display and immediately see how much electricity the house is consuming, how much solar energy we're producing, and what's happening with the battery and heating systems.

2. Google Nest Mini – my automated evening home report

This is where things get a little more interesting.

Every evening, Home Assistant prepares a summary of the day and reads it aloud through the Google Nest Mini.

Instead of checking several applications, I get a spoken report covering:

- Solar production: How much electricity my PV installation generated during the day.

- Household consumption: How much electricity the house used.

- Weather forecast: What weather conditions to expect.

- Dog activity: A summary of my dog's daily movement, collected through the Tractive GPS tracker.

Yes, even the dog has become part of my Home Assistant ecosystem. 😄

Home Assistant collects information from these completely different systems, combines it into a daily report and delivers it using text-to-speech.

I find this particularly useful because it turns the Nest Mini from a simple smart speaker into something closer to a personal home reporting assistant.

And there's something amusing about hearing a summary of the day's solar energy production followed immediately by a report on how active the dog has been.

Apparently, everyone in the household has performance statistics now. 😂

3. Why I like this setup

Both Google Nest devices retain their original functionality.

The Nest Hub serves as a visual dashboard, while the Nest Mini provides spoken information.

I don't need to open the GoodWe application to check solar production, another application for the weather, and Tractive to review the dog's activity.

Home Assistant brings everything together.

What I particularly appreciate is that I don't need to interfere with the original control systems. Each device continues doing its own job, while Home Assistant collects the information and decides how to present it.

The Nest Hub shows me what's happening around the house right now.

The Nest Mini tells me what happened throughout the day.

It's a relatively simple concept, but it has made both devices considerably more useful.

And this is exactly what I enjoy most about Home Assistant: connecting devices and systems that were never originally designed to work together.

I'm curious how others are using their Google Nest devices with Home Assistant.

Does anyone else use automated spoken daily reports, custom dashboards, or unusual integrations combining completely different systems?

I'd love to hear about your setups!

Your Bluetooth proxies forward everything they hear, and most of it is the neighbours' phones and Apple Continuity noise that Home Assistant throws away after your Wi-Fi and the API have carried it. ESPHome 2026.10.0 added a hook in bluetooth_proxy (esphome#19220) so an external component can veto an advert before it's queued. ble_advert_filter is that component: https://github.com/davidcoulson/esphome-ble-advert-filter

It drops weak signals, every phone except the ones whose IRKs you list, and any manufacturer or name you block. It keeps HomeKit, iBeacons, AirTags and AirPods, Tile, Matter and Improv pairing, and any MAC you list. Everything is off by default.

The numbers, from about 70 proxies feeding Bermuda and BPS/Sextant: Apple's manufacturer data is 69 percent of what a proxy hears. IRKs alone drop 56 to 66 percent of adverts. IRKs plus the Apple blocklist drop about 80 percent at the median proxy, 60 to 98 depending on what's nearby.

Why bother: less Wi-Fi and API traffic per proxy, which on a busy C3 or C6 is the difference between a node that stays connected and one that drops off. HA's Bluetooth integration gets only adverts it can use. And once the filtering is in the proxy, it works for every integration downstream, not just one.

Caveats: ESPHome 2026.10.0 or newer, ESP32 only (S3, C3, C5, C6, Ethernet tested). Blocking Apple blocks every iBeacon, so allow yours by UUID if the HA app's BLE transmitter is how you track a phone. A phone's IRK changes when it's erased or restored.

Config

Just the RSSI cut:

external_components:
  - source:
      type: git
      url: https://github.com/davidcoulson/esphome-ble-advert-filter
      ref: v2.0.3
    components: [ble_advert_filter]


bluetooth_proxy:
  active: true


ble_advert_filter:
  rssi_threshold: -80

Room tracking with your own phones (Bermuda, Private BLE Device):

ble_advert_filter:
  rssi_threshold: -80
  rssi_floor: -90
  drop_non_resolvable: true
  irks:
    - !secret irk_my_phone
    - !secret irk_my_watch
  manufacturer_blocklist:
    - 0x004C                 # Apple; your IRK-matched devices still pass
  allow_findmy: true         # AirTags and AirPods
  service_uuid_allowlist:
    - 0xFFF6                                   # Matter
    - "00467768-6228-2272-4663-277478268000"   # Improv Wi-Fi

Tracking a phone through the HA app's BLE transmitter? Add its beacon:

  allow_ibeacon:
    - uuid: "your-beacon-uuid"

The component also exposes forwarded, dropped and drop-rate sensors and a number entity for the threshold, so you can tune it from HA without reflashing. My fleet configs and a browser flasher: https://github.com/davidcoulson/esphome-ble-proxy

When I listen to music in the living room, I often have some nature image slideshows or one of those campfire videos running on the TV for a nicer vibe. At some point I thought, what if the TV showed what's playing, but with the main focus on it working as some kind of elegant room decoration? The available options did not look nice and "decorative" enough for my taste, so I started Klangbild, a now playing screen for Android TV.

Klangbild

It works with any media player in Home Assistant and can color smart lights to match the album cover. With Music Assistant there are some extras like a cover flow of the queue, showing qr code in party mode, and synced lyrics. It's also possible to add sensors or actions from HA, like a temperature sensor or speaker grouping actions.

I posted an earlier version a while ago and spent the time since then tidying it up and making it work with more setups. It's now in english and german.

I'm running it on a Google TV Streamer, so if you try it on a different device or Android version, I'd love to hear how it goes. It requires Android 9 or newer, so it may not work on older Fire Sticks, for example. And if anyone wants to port it to another platform, I'm happy to collaborate.

AI helped with this.

I posted about my PoE version of this a while back. I decided to make a real board to replace the wireless units at my house. One of the ratgdos had a nasty habit of dropping off the WiFi with some frequency. Despite trying to lock it to the closest AP -- no luck. Anyway, wires don't suffer from these issues. I'm running a customized version of this ESPHOME config. It works pretty great. I'm sure I could have tried harder to get the wifi working, maybe an external antenna, but whatever, the attic was right above the garage so it was easy to run the wires. I ordered extra of these so if you're interested in one DM me. USA only please.

Yesterday I went to my local IKEA shop with the mission to acquire some insider information about the IKEA Liljebagge. The colleague at the kitchen planning section was as equally excited as me about IKEA releasing this smart thermostat. So she looked up the release date in their internal booking system.

Turns out IKEA Liljebagge is coming to the German IKEA stores on 1st January 2027 🇩🇪🎉

My Barista Express already makes coffee before I reach the kitchen, thanks to two Zigbee relays I put inside it last month. The one remaining problem: the Sage grinds for a set time, and the grams you get in that time drift with the beans, the grind setting, and the hopper's mood. 18g on Monday, 17g by Friday. Unacceptable.

So I sawed my dosing ring in half and put a load cell between the halves. The portafilter now hangs from a scale, an ESP32 reads it 84 times a second, and when the weight gets close to 18 g it presses the grinder button again to stop it.

Home Assistant is deliberately not in the loop. It’s far too slow: a third to two-thirds of a second, which is most of a gram. The scale talks straight to the relay over a Zigbee binding. HA’s job is to set the target and admire the results on a dashboard.

Things that went wrong, for your entertainment:

• The first grind stopped perfectly, then started again by itself 3 s later. The relay’s confirmation got lost, so the scale politely resent “stop”, which on a grinder means “start”. It now says everything once.
• On battery, it took 5.5 s to rejoin the network from the kitchen. The culprit was my Tuya mmWave sensor, which offers to take sleepy devices and then ignores them. It’s now ignored back.

The results so far: 18.0 g the first morning and 18.1 g the next. A sample size of two, so obviously proven beyond doubt.

Full write-up: https://marcuslab.uk/projects/sage-barista-grind-by-weight/

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My entire house uses Zooz switches. But with the shortages at the Smartest House only getting worse, I've decided to switch to a more reliable source for Z-Wave smart switches. Zooz doesn't have the best longeviry, either, Mine seem to die after about three years.

So what's out there that isn't $75 per switch and doesn't suck?

I have noticed all of a sudden HACs submissions are being reviewed. I bet there are now many new packages in HACS this week!

I have a split-level house with 4 heat pumps (Wi-Fi ACs), gas radiators with smart valves, 4.3 kWp of solar and a 5 kWh battery. Most autumn afternoons the battery is full by 14:00 and I export to the grid for almost nothing, then at night the boiler burns gas to heat the same rooms. So I built something to connect the two.

**What it is**

A digital twin of the house that runs in the browser (plain HTML + three.js, nothing to install):

- A 3D diorama of the house built from one JSON file: rooms, stairs, doors, radiators, heat pumps, solar panels, the real sun position and a big compass on the ground (orientation taken from the solar panel azimuth).

- A small thermal zone model: each room heats, cools and passes warm air up the staircase depending on which doors are open. The air is drawn as thousands of dots, blue to red.

- It compares "heat pumps on surplus" vs "no heat pumps" for every room until 07:00, and how much radiator heat it saves.

- Live mode: connect it to Home Assistant with a token and it shows real temperatures, which units are running, PV power and battery level.

**How it coordinates heating and AC with the solar and the battery**

A Home Assistant package plus 3 blueprints:

1. **Dynamic battery floor**: from the solar forecast still to come today (Forecast.Solar, corrected because it is optimistic), minus the house base load until sunset, it computes the lowest battery level the sun can still refill. Battery minus that floor = margin.

2. **Heat with solar surplus**: when the battery is full and the house is exporting, it starts the heat pumps one at a time in my priority order (kids' room first, the hungry attic last). It adds units while there is margin and removes them in reverse order when the battery drops below the floor. It only spends energy that will come back before sunset, never switches off a unit someone else switched on, and waits 10 min between steps and 45 min before restarting a unit. In hot weather the same logic cools instead.

3. **Bed-level setpoint**: my attic has a high concrete ceiling, so the AC's own sensor reads warm air near the ceiling and stops early. The blueprint raises the AC setpoint by the difference between its sensor and the radiator valve at bed height.

4. **A/B test**: a toggle that alternates days with and without pre-heating while away, so you can measure if it's actually worth it instead of trusting the model.

The radiators don't need any automation: when the house is already warm, their thermostats simply do less.

**Solar sizing calculator**

Also included: describe your roof faces, consumption and prices and it fits panels on each face, simulates every hour of a typical year with and without a battery, and recommends panels, inverter and battery size with self-consumption and payback. It can use PVGIS data for your exact location (there's a script for that).

**What the model says (my house, a 20 °C autumn day)**

About +2 °C per room when we get home at 20:00, and around 30% less radiator heat overnight, using only surplus. That's the model, not a measurement yet: I'm running the A/B test now and will post the real numbers.

**Build your own**

The repo has a step-by-step guide: photos and measurements → house.json (there's a prompt to have an AI assistant draft it from your photos), orientation, solar sizing, hosting the twin in /config/www, the automations, and calibrating the thermal model from your own history.

GitHub: https://github.com/dvalledor/home-digital-twin

MIT licensed. Feedback welcome, especially from people with different heat pumps or inverters. I'd love to know whether the bed-level setpoint and the dynamic floor work in other houses.

This may be obvious to some, but I can imagine that a lot of people don’t know about this: Matter-over-Thread devices can access the internet through your Thread Border Router (HomePod, Apple TV, etc.), even if they don’t require an internet connection to function.

And you can’t block their internet access through your router or via VLAN unless you block internet access for those Apple devices too.

I am using Home Assistant OS on a Raspberry Pi (Pi 2 I believe)

Core: 2026.9.0

Supervisor: 2026.10.3

Operating System: 18.2

No new ZigBee devices will pair to my coordinator which is a Sonoff/Texas Instruments model. I have 32 devices currently paired (I did have 33 previously, which I disconnected during the process of troubleshooting this). The devices I am trying to pair are the same models of devices that I currently have that are working fine. I am hesitant to unpair anything because I don't think I will be able to repair. I have copied logs into ChatGPT, looked at every forum, etc. and cannot find anything that helps. I have done full reboots several times, I think I did a database reset or something similar but that also did not help. I do not have access to the logs right now, but what I do remember is that there were no lines in the logs about failing joins. I am at a complete loss on what to do short of a complete wipe, any help is appreciated.

Critical: shut down your nextcloud until a security patch can be issued. Home Assistant OS and most smart home servers should be unaffected, and other cloud-based services like OneDrive seem to be unaffected.

I wanted a clean wall-mounted touch panel for Home Assistant without a USB cable sticking out of the side. It turns out the CrowPanel Advance 7.0 has a 5V power input on the back of the board, so I ran it over PoE.

Parts

• Elecrow CrowPanel Advance 7" HMI (ESP32-S3, 800×480 IPS)
• ANVISION PoE splitter, 802.3af → 5V 2.4A (5.5×2.1 mm barrel version)
• 5.5×2.1 mm female DC pigtail
• JST XH 2.54 mm 4-pin cable
• Any PoE switch

The connector labelled UART0-IN (bigger than the other ports, JST XH 2.54 4-pin) isn’t only a serial port. Elecrow’s wiki lists it as “power supply input and communication” (5V ±5%, 2A max). The pinout is printed on the PCB next to the connector:

GND | 5V_IN | IO43-TX0 | IO44-RX0

Wiring

• Splitter barrel → female DC pigtail
• Pigtail red → 5V_IN, pigtail black → GND
• TX/RX: cut short and insulate them separately

Don’t trust the wire colours on generic XH cables. On mine, yellow was GND and white was 5V, while red and black were the data lines. Go by pin position or measure first.

Keep in mind:

• you need some room in the wall. This is mounted to a plasterboard wall, which was easy, I have another board waiting to be mounted, but on a brick wall
• the wires from the JST connector will require some spacing between the panel and the wall

Total cost: around 40 euro (excluding the PoE switch)

Happy to answer questions!

PS: the dash itself, is like any other dash, a WIP.

Moin. I have a Helios KWL EC 300 ventilation at home. The original web interface is s***. Home Assistant integration only works through an extra plugin, also not really a highlight.

I built my own firmware for it, with a lot of help from AI (Claude). Runs on the original controller, the Helios bootloader stays, so going back to the original firmware is always possible.

What it has:

• Web UI (React), works fine on the phone
• Native MQTT for Home Assistant, devices show up by themselves (autodiscovery)
• Weekly schedule, party/quiet, holiday, filter reminder
• Written in Rust

Status: runs on my unit since a few days, so still experimental.

If there is interest, I will put the code on GitHub. Screenshots attached.

HA now mutes my TV during Disney+ ads!

I wanted to mute the TV when ads come on, but I couldn't find anything that specifically identified that an ad is playing. What I did notice is the media_position state has different behavior during a show vs during an ad.

• During a show the Cast integration reports a new position about twice a second, each one half a second further along.
• During an ad it sits at nearly the same number for the whole break, only changing by a few thousandths of a second
• When the show comes back it starts counting again.

The automation fires on every position report, compares it to the last one, and mutes if they're within 0.25s. Otherwise it unmutes. It only sends the command when the state would change, so it's one mute at the start and one unmute at the end, and it's been working really well so far.

This is on a TCL Google TV through the Cast integration. The signal comes from the app, not the TV, so any Cast device running Disney+ should behave the same, although I haven't tested other services yet.

Below is the automation YAML, you can use it by swapping in your own entity ID. Hope this helps and that others might test it with other services.

alias: Disney+ ad mute
mode: single
max_exceeded: silent
triggers:
  - trigger: state
    entity_id: media_player.smart_tv
    attribute: media_position_updated_at
conditions:
  - condition: state
    entity_id: media_player.smart_tv
    state: playing
  - condition: state
    entity_id: media_player.smart_tv
    attribute: app_name
    state: Disney+
actions:
  - if:
      - condition: template
        value_template: >-
          {% set delta = (trigger.to_state.attributes.media_position | float(0))
                       - (trigger.from_state.attributes.media_position | float(0)) %}
          {{ (delta | abs) < 0.25 }}
    then:
      - if:
          - condition: state
            entity_id: media_player.smart_tv
            attribute: is_volume_muted
            state: false
        then:
          - action: media_player.volume_mute
            target:
              entity_id: media_player.smart_tv
            data:
              is_volume_muted: true
    else:
      - if:
          - condition: state
            entity_id: media_player.smart_tv
            attribute: is_volume_muted
            state: true
        then:
          - action: media_player.volume_mute
            target:
              entity_id: media_player.smart_tv
            data:
              is_volume_muted: false

Went through all the set up steps pretty meticulously. Got all the way to the end and was hit with a “ERROR 403: ACCESS_DENIED OR ACCESS BLOCKED: HOME-ASSISTANT.IO HAS NOT COMPLETED GOOGLE’S VERIFICATION PROCESS”

Pretty easy fix — I hadn’t added myself as a test user for the project.

Added that, and went through the set up steps again. Approved everything with Google.

Seemingly done, but the integration doesn’t show in home assistant. When I go to set up the best integration in HA again, I get “This is already being configured. Finish the existing configuration before starting again.”

I’m unsure where to go from here.

Any assistance is greatly appreciated!

Beyond that and on another note — I’m a pretty technical person, but HA seems to be a bit more complex than I had anticipated. Any recommendations for learning resources would be greatly appreciated!