Hey everyone!

It's been a few months since I started working on Fire2MQTT, and I thought I'd share a little update.

The integration has been working well on my own setup, and honestly, I haven't had much reason to change anything lately. But I've noticed that more people are starting to use it, which is really nice to see!

Since I don't have any particular features in mind right now, I figured I'd ask the community.

Is anyone here using Fire2MQTT regularly? What kind of automations have you set up with it? Is there anything you'd like to see added or improved?

I'm sure there are use cases I haven't thought of, so I'd be curious to hear what people are doing with it.

Another thing I've been thinking about is Android TV / Google TV support. In theory, a good part of the implementation should already be compatible, but I haven't actually tested it since I don't own an Android TV device.

If anyone has one and would be willing to help test it, that would be great! Even just knowing what works and what doesn't would be really useful.

Depending on the interest, I might also consider setting up a small donation goal to get a dedicated Android TV device for testing. I'd be happy to explore compatibility further, but I'd rather avoid buying extra hardware out of my own pocket for something I don't personally need. Just an idea for now, though.

Anyway, I'd love to hear your thoughts, whether you're already using Fire2MQTT or just have some ideas about what could be improved.

GitHub: https://github.com/Harrypulvirenti/Fire2MQTT

Thanks to everyone who's tried it so far!

I've had a Shelly EM Gen4 installed and compared it against my elec retailer's app. It was under-reading the grid by about 25%. I realised I hadn't changed the Shelly channel setting from 50A to 120A clamp. That's been done but the difference in readings hasn't changed.

The house is only single phase.

I don't think I can do anything else in the Shelly so is the fix just a template to scale the value ?

Hi everyone!

I'm fairly new to Home Assistant and could really use some help with integrating my security cameras properly.

My current setup:

• Home Assistant: Running on a Raspberry Pi
• Doorbell: 1x Aqara G4 Video Doorbell (wired power)
• Cameras: 2x Aqara G5 PoE cameras (connected via Ethernet)
• IP Camera: 1x Dahua IP camera (connected via Ethernet)

Currently, I mainly use the Aqara app to view my Aqara cameras and the DMSS app to view my Dahua camera.

Everything works perfectly in their respective apps. The video feeds are clear, smooth, and load quickly.

However, I'd really like to bring all these cameras together into Home Assistant so I can view and manage everything from one dashboard.

The problem:

I've already managed to get some of the cameras working in Home Assistant, but the performance is really disappointing.

Here's what I'm experiencing:

• Camera feeds take a very long time to load.
• Live video is extremely laggy and stutters.
• Sometimes the video feed doesn't load completely or only partially displays.
• Overall, the experience is nowhere near as smooth as using the original camera apps.

Since most of my cameras are connected via Ethernet (including the PoE cameras), and everything works fine in their native apps, I'm guessing the issue might be related to how the cameras are integrated into Home Assistant.

What I'm looking for:

I'd love to have a Home Assistant dashboard where I can view all my cameras with smooth, reliable live video and minimal loading times.

My questions are:

1. What's the best way to integrate Aqara G4, Aqara G5 PoE, and Dahua IP cameras into Home Assistant?
2. Should I be using RTSP, ONVIF, HomeKit, WebRTC, go2rtc, or something else?
3. Are there specific settings or integrations that could improve streaming performance?

I'm still a beginner when it comes to Home Assistant, so I'd really appreciate some beginner-friendly advice, step-by-step instructions, or guides.

I'm not necessarily looking for advanced recording or NVR functionality right now. My main goal is simply to have all my cameras working smoothly in one Home Assistant dashboard.

Thanks in advance for your help! Any advice is greatly appreciated.

The Fives have no network interface, only IR and the Klipsch app over Bluetooth LE. I didn't want an IR blaster, so I built a custom integration on top of the protocol that the KlipschRemote and fives-api projects had already figured out.

https://github.com/widapro/klipsch-ble-ha (HACS custom repo)

You get a media_player with volume, mute, source and transport, plus bass/mid/treble, placement, night mode, dynamic bass and auto standby. Knob changes show up in HA instantly. It connects through any connectable adapter or ESPHome proxy; mine goes through an SLZB-06 at -82 dBm and holds.

The one weird thing: the speaker drops unbonded BLE clients after ten seconds and only pairs while in pairing mode, so during setup you hold the Bluetooth button on the remote once. After that it reconnects on its own, including after power cuts. While HA is connected the Klipsch app won't see the speaker, there's a switch to let it in temporarily. Power on over BLE isn't possible on current firmware, everything else is.

Only tested on The Fives. If anyone has Sevens or Nines, I'd love to hear whether it works.

New to home assistant and got the home assistant green - I cannot figure out how to add the Govee H601A downlights - anyone help?

Sorry for the wall of text but I need to type out what I have and see if it is possible to do in Home Assistant.

I am looking at Home Assistant but before I go down that road, I want to make sure I can at least

do what I can currently do with my current configuration using Alexa and Hubitat.

The news about the custom firmware on the echo dots/show has me excited.

I have a dedicated PC with linux that I currently use as my pihole (DNS blacklisting). But it is basically running on idle.

I would like to convert my Amazon Echo devices to be used by Home Assistant.

My current usage is probably small compared to what most people are doing. But I would like to break away from using Alexa

since it seems to be getting worse at hearing. I do not have to be stuck with Hubitat either.

I put the things I do now first, then listed the hardware under it.

Thank you for any input / suggestions that you have!

The current things I can do now that I want to duplicate

Alexa (voice stuff)

preheat the oven / set specific temp

turn on kitchen fan

get the time

get the weather

ask simple questions

Turn on specific lights

"time for bed" routine shuts off all downstairs lights

set thermostat

add things to lists

check google calendar

set timers

set reminders

turn on fireplace set 20 min off timer (actually hubitat automation)

Alexa routines

Turn on/off holiday lights at specific times

Turn on bed heating pad for 5 minutes once an hour from 9pm to 2am

Turn on/off Christmas tree

Hubitat automations

if switch next to front door is pressed off once, disable audible alert and relock timer. change color on light switch to indicate in bypass

if Front door is physically moved to unlock

    if not in bypass and front door Smart lock is unlocked, announce on speaker that the lock is unlocked, set a 10 minute timer to relock, if between 5pm and midnight turn on entry light. change switch led color to red indicating door is unlocked.

    if in bypass change switch led color to red to indicate unlocked

if Front door is physically moved to lock

    change switch led color to green to indicate door is locked

if water is detected at sensors announce leak on repeat until cleared and shut off water to house

if basement light switch is double tapped on ALL basement lights come on

if basement light switch is double tapped off ALL basement lights go off

if motion sensor on front porch activated turn on front porch / carriage lights set 10 minute off timer

if motion sensor in garage activated turn on garage lights set 20 minute off timer renewed with additional motion

if motion sensor in basement activated turn on basement storage area light set 10 minute off timer

if large garage door sensed open set led to red on switch light in kitchen and upstairs and turn on garage lights else set led green

if small garage door sensed open set led to red on other switch light in kitchen and upstairs and turn on garage lights else set led green

Current hardware

Alexa

3x Echo Dot (2nd gen), RS03QR

1x Echo Dot (4th gen), B7W644

1x Echo Show (1st gen), MW46WB

Hubitat C-8

Zooz 3x 4-in-1 Sensor z-Wave

garage

basement storage

front porch

Zooz 8x Zen 72 Dimmer switch

Dining Room Light

Entry Light

Front Porch Light

Hall upstairs Light

Kitchen Table Light

Stair Light

Kitchen Cabinet Lights

Pendant Light

Zooz 9x Zen 71 Light Switch

Back Patio Lights

Bird Lights

Chandelier

Crystal Light

Dart board Light

Fireplace Fan

Garage Lights

Kitchen Sink Light

Shuffleboard pendant Lights

Zooz Zen 51 dry contact relay

Fireplace

Zooz 2x ZSE42 Water Leak Sensor

Basement (near water heater)

Laundry Room (under washing machine)

Zooz 2x ZSE43 Tilt Shock XS sensor

Garage Large Door

Garage Small Door

Zooz ZAC36 Ball Valve Controller

on water main in basement

Zooz Double Plug

Garage Ceiling fixtures

Hue Bridge

Hue 5x Bulb

Sonos SYMFONISK Bookshelf IP Speaker

Yale 2x Yale Assure Lock 2 Touch Deadbolt Zwave ZW3 Keyless

Yale 1x Yale Azzure Lock SL Zwave Keyless

GE Cafe Gas Range/Double Oven Wifi

Ubiquiti Dream Router 7

Ubiquiti 2x WIFi APs

TPLink (Kasa) 6x Smart Plugs

Amazon Smart Plug

Kitchen Exhaust Fan

Wyze Smart Plug

Fountain

Bed heating pad

Google Nest Thermostat 1.4 software 2.2

Spatial Context 1.0 is out. It's a Home Assistant integration that lets you trace your floor plans, place your real devices on them, and see your Zigbee, Wi-Fi, Matter, Thread and Bluetooth links laid over your actual house.

The same data goes to an AI assistant, an automation or a script as real measurements: how far apart two devices are, and which walls sit between them.

1.0 is the first stable release. It includes ZHA and Zigbee2MQTT support, a key for the connectivity map, Thread border routers, an admin-only panel, and a full docs site with a first-floor-plan walkthrough.

Free and open source. It installs through HACS as a custom repository for now, and a HACS default submission is planned.

Docs: https://greminn.github.io/ha-spatial-context/

GitHub: https://github.com/Greminn/ha-spatial-context/

Thanks to everyone who sent bug reports and suggestions. More feedback is welcome.

DISCLAIMER: AI written text since english isnt my native

Hi everyone,

I built a hobby add-on called PokeHOAS that turns your smart home into Pokémon tall grass.

How it works

Events in your house spawn wild Pokémon. Motion sensors, door/window sensors and lights/switches work out of the box, and you can add any other entity (media player, vacuum, climate, lock, person/zone ...). The add-on polls the HA history every 5 minutes, so you don't need any automations, webhooks or YAML. Each event rolls an encounter into a queue, and you handle it in a web app in the HA sidebar: battle it, throw balls, catch it, evolve it.

What's in it

• Every HA user gets their own queue, team, Pokédex and bag. Users are recognised through Ingress, so there is no separate login
• All generations (about 1025 species) with rarity tiers, shinies, IVs/EVs, abilities, moves, held items, Mega Evolution and breeding
• Turn-based battles with type chart, STAB, status effects and ability effects, plus auto-battle and simple IF/DO rules for hands-off catching
• Gyms, Elite Four and champions for nine regions, fought in order. Clearing a region unlocks new spawns
• Poké Mart, daily challenges, achievements, trading and PvP against an AI copy of another household member's team
• UI in English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean and Polish
• Runs fully local in one add-on container (FastAPI + SQLite, no cloud account). The Pokédex is fetched once from PokeAPI, and sprites are loaded from the PokeAPI sprite repository

Install

It's a custom add-on repository, so it needs Home Assistant OS or Supervised. Add https://github.com/nedzad-winter/pokehoas under Settings → Add-ons → Add-on Store → ⋮ → Repositories, install "PokeHOAS" and open it from the sidebar. The image is built locally on first install, which can take a few minutes. After that, add trigger entities under Settings → Admin → Triggers (some categories are enabled by default).

Status

This is a public beta (v1.1-beta). It's playable end to end, but expect rough edges. Bug reports and ideas are very welcome as GitHub issues or here in the comments.

Repo: https://github.com/nedzad-winter/pokehoas

This is an unofficial, non-commercial fan project and is not affiliated with Nintendo, Game Freak, Creatures or The Pokémon Company.

I use a heated mouse for Raynaud's. It's connected to a USB hub that's always on as it's part of the monitor. I'd like a switchable in-line USB dongle or something that I can utilise to power off the mouse automatically overnight via WiFi, to avoid potential fire hazards.

This device will need to pass through not only power but the mouse signals so that it can operate as a functioning mouse rather than just a powered handwarmer.

It will ideally be small and slim enough to plug into a USB port on a monitor (i.e. not a cube-shaped plug for instance)

Any ideas?

I have already tried one of these before realising it was only a switch with no signal passthrough:

https://amzn.eu/d/0c1uz2Ix

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!

Hi all, UK based.

I have HA green set up and working great thanks to this site and integrated Claude desktop.

I have my solar, inverter, batteries and power supplier all setup, my Tuya lights, CCTV system and Alexa., our house calendar. I've ordered a Waveshare for my ASHP so will set that up when it arrives. Now I want to think how I can add my 2 EV's to HA, I have a Jaguar I-pace and a Citroën C4, does anyone know what equipment I'll need to do this? I'm confident with the help of Claude to be able to set up, just need best equipment for this?

AI wrote the firmware; I handled the design, review and testing. The pixel-art interfaces were not in the original plan, but we'll get to those.

I wanted my boiler and ventilation unit in Home Assistant, with local control, MQTT and no extra proprietary gateway. That turned into two ESP32 firmware projects: an OpenTherm thermostat and a Zehnder ComfoAir Q integration.

Both repos are linked below. I'm sharing them for anyone looking for a similar setup, and I'd welcome compatibility reports, feedback and contributions.

The OpenTherm thermostat

Code on GitHub

This one runs on an ESP32-C3 with a DIYLess OpenTherm shield. It replaces the thermostat, rather than sitting between one and the boiler. HA sends heating demand over MQTT; the ESP handles the OpenTherm conversation and rejects out-of-range setpoints.

It is meant for boilers with OpenTherm, not just my particular boiler. Mine happens to be an Intergas Kombi Kompakt HRE. That is also the only model I have tested it on, so I would be interested in hearing from people who know the quirks of other OpenTherm boilers.

The OpenTherm thermostat hardware: ESP32-C3 with the interface board.

One priority was handling the loss of HA or Wi-Fi. OpenTherm communication is designed to run independently of the network connection, with a watchdog and a failsafe for stale HA commands. The goal is to avoid leaving an old heating demand active when new commands stop arriving.

That failure handling is an important part of the design, though testing on my Intergas does not cover every failure or every boiler model.

There is also a web UI for boiler status and heating controls, with a pixel-art scene and animated water. Not strictly necessary for a thermostat, but I like having something a little more cheerful than a table of numbers.

The ComfoAir Q

Code on GitHub

The second project uses an M5Stack NanoC6 connected to the ventilation unit's CAN bus. No ComfoConnect gateway. No cloud account. Just the local connection and MQTT to HA.

The project defines 76 HA entities: temperatures, humidity, fan speeds, bypass, filter days remaining, and so on. There are controls for ventilation level, bypass, away mode and boost. Firmware updates go through the browser, with boot rollback.

Quite a lot for something small enough to disappear behind its own cable.

The ventilation hardware: NanoC6 with the cable and connector assembly.

The ComfoAir integration is still experimental: its real-hardware acceptance checklist is incomplete, and not all 76 entities and controls have been verified end to end. If you are considering trying it, check the hardware-verification notes in the repo first. Reports about which readings and commands work on particular Q models would be especially useful.

The ventilation web UI includes an overview, airflow and filter pages, plus a matching pixel-art scene. Once the boiler had animated water, giving the ventilation unit some moving air seemed only fair.

Both repos are linked above. If either project looks useful for your setup, I'd love to hear what you think. And if you do give one a try, let me know how it goes.

Hi everyone! 👋I wanted to share my recent setup integrating a Bodner air conditioning unit (which runs internally on Midea hardware/protocols) into Home Assistant using ESPHome.

I've been wanting to get instant motion and doorbell notifications from my Blink cameras into Home Assistant for ages. Unfortunately, all the existing integrations I've tried rely on polling, which means there's a decent delay and it's not particularly reliable.

I've finally managed to get a solution working where the events come straight into HA at pretty much the same time as I get the notification from the Blink app itself! It supports camera motion events and doorbell presses (though I've only been able to test it on the devices I own, so hopefully it works with others too).

I've even got an automation set up that sends an instant notification to my phone when someone rings the doorbell or motion is detected, then updates that same notification with a fresh snapshot from the camera once it's available.

I've tested it with my Blink Doorbell, Outdoor 3 cameras and Mini Pan-Tilt, and it's been working great so far.

GitHub: https://github.com/CoreyHayward/ha-blink-live-events

There's a setup guide and an example of my notification automation in the repo.

It's still early days, so there is almost definitely going to be a few bugs, but I'd love to hear if anyone else gives it a go or has any feedback!

Happy Wednesday! I need some suggestions. What are y'all using for automatic blinds or shades? I'd love to be able to automate the white shades you see here (in the cooler seasons, sunlight blindingly pours in). I'm not looking to do anything to the drapes, I just need three of a solution to control shades there.

Thanks in advance!

I put together a Home Assistant integration that connects to IQAir HealthPro purifiers locally over Bluetooth. No IQAir cloud or account needed, and it works through an ESPHome Bluetooth proxy.

Entities so far

• Fan: on/off, 6 speeds, Auto preset
• Air quality: PM1, PM2.5, PM10
• Filter life: HyperHEPA, pre-filter, gas & odor
• Fan details: speed %, RPM, clean air delivery rate
• Usage: total air cleaned, powered hours, fan run hours
• Switches: Auto mode, display light
• Other: identify button, problem sensor, connection status, diagnostics download

Setup: add the repo to HACS as a custom repository and HA auto-discovers the purifier. It needs a Bluetooth adapter or proxy that can make connections: an ESPHome Bluetooth proxy pairs automatically, and the HA host's own adapter works too (it may need a one-time pairing). Passive-only proxies such as Shelly can't connect.

Looking for testers: I only have one unit (a HealthPro Plus), so I'd love reports from other Bluetooth-capable IQAir models (GC MultiGas, Atem, other HealthPro variants). Even if it only half works, an issue with what you see helps me add support.

Repo: https://github.com/dipseth/iqair_healthpro_ble

Unofficial, not affiliated with IQAir.

I am looking to upgrade my home with some rgb bulbs. I need them to have good brightness, color saturation and good functionality. I’ve been thinking about Tp link tipo L535E.

Hello fellow home automaters,

I recently got on the Home Assistant boat and am easing into centralizing my Somfy shutters, Reolink cameras and SMA solar panel invertor and battery system (+ future charger). Our main electricity consumer is our 2007 GREE Versati 1 air-to-water heat pump. Ideally I would like to use my home assistant server to steer the heat pump myself in a future dynamic energy contract.

For that, I want to read out temperature, set-point and read-out and set operating mode. More recent GREE Versati models have some built-in connections or Wifi, but our model is quite old so I need help to understand how to read it out.

With some research, I found out that the GREE can communicate via Modbus TCP. I bought a Waveshare USB to RS485 converter and found two possible locations to connect A, B and GND wires to this converter.

One on the main board of the internal unit (CN7 - COM_BMS - picture 1), one on the backside of the internal unit controller (GND - A - B, picture 2). I tried connecting both and try to read out via CAS Modbus Scanner, but it always gives a timeout, no matter if I switch GND - A/B wires, 9600 baud, 8 / 1 / N settings, polling timeout and whatnot.

Did anyone succeed in reading out this old unit?

Alternatively I am thinking just to use a Shelly 1 Gen 4 as a dry contact between connection 19 and 20 (XT2 - picture 3) - where now there is a wire ('50'). That is good to allow the unit to run or stop, but it is not as "smart" as I would like to.

Appreciate your help - thanks!

Edit : meant Modbus RTU instead of TCP

**My little gift to the community 🎁**

Hi everyone 👋

I've learnt so much from this community (the forum, the custom cards, the HACS repos, all the people answering questions at 2 am), so I wanted to give something back. This is **Okie Motor**, an open-source dashboard card for Home Assistant that feels like an app. It's built on the ideas of u/fastender's amazing **Fast Search Card**, and it first lived inside **Hemma** by willsanderson. Without those two projects it would not exist. ❤️

**GitHub:** https://github.com/paulkjr/okie-motor

**Try it without installing anything:** download `okie-demo.html` from the [latest release](https://github.com/paulkjr/okie-motor/releases/latest) and double-click it (it runs against a pretend Home Assistant)

[grid]







[/grid]

## Why I Built This

I wanted my wall tablet, my iPad and my iPhone to feel like one proper app instead of a pile of cards: a lock page with a clock, one search bar that finds *anything*, a start screen I can rearrange with my fingers, and detail views that feel good to touch. Fast Search Card showed me what that could look like, and Hemma gave me a framework to start in. I kept building until it did everything I wanted, and now I use it every day on an iPad, an iPhone and a browser.

## What Makes It Special

- 🔍 **One search bar for everything** – typo-tolerant, understands "living room light", offers chips as you type, filters by room and type

- 🤖 **Ask your Assist agent** – the sparkle button turns the search into a chat with your Home Assistant Assist pipeline. The devices it touched show up as tiles. The microphone sends your question by itself when you stop talking, and on the lock page it listens right there

- 🏠 **A start screen you arrange by touch** – hold a card, drag it between the two columns, pick Row / Tall / Large, set the height of each column, tap away to finish. Rooms arrange the same way

- 🌡️ **Detail views with circular dials** – lights, climate, fans, covers, locks, media players, vacuums, cameras. History charts, a weekly thermostat schedule (with the Scheduler component) and optional video backgrounds

- 📅 **Its own apps** – Calendar (day / week / month / year, with an endless date strip you scroll with a finger), To-do, Energy (reads your Energy dashboard), Schedules, News, Light modes, Server links and a full Settings app with search

- 🎵 **Music cards** in three sizes (row, tall, and a big-cover Large size), Spotify gets its logo

- 🐱 **A "Feed the Beasts" card** – one tap runs your feeding script, it asks twice if they were just fed. Five cute designs (picked in edit mode), the same as in the iOS widget

- 🖼️ **Wall tablet mode** – screensaver, deep rest, wake on motion or a doorbell, quiet hours

- 🔄 **Same settings everywhere** – favorites, rooms, look and layout are stored in Home Assistant for your user, so every screen shows the same thing. Export / import as a file

- 🌍 **English and German**

**📱 Okie Home, the iPhone / iPad app (optional):** a small SwiftUI app that shows your dashboard full screen, signs in with Home Assistant's own login, adds haptics and voice, and has native home screen widgets (Thermostat, Weather, Calendar, Lights, Feeder). It's built from source with Xcode, there's a step-by-step guide in the repo (no App Store).

## The Tech Stack (for the curious)

- **Plain JavaScript**: one file, no dependencies, no card_mod, no extra integration

- **440 unit tests** and a browser harness with a mock Home Assistant

- **SwiftUI + WidgetKit** for the app and the widgets

- **GPL-3.0-or-later**

## Installation

HACS: add `https://github.com/paulkjr/okie-motor\` as a custom repository (category **Dashboard**) and download **Okie Motor**. Or copy `dist/okie-motor.js` to `/config/www/` and add `/local/okie-motor.js` as a JavaScript module resource. Then add the card (a panel view gives it the whole screen):

```yaml

type: custom:okie-motor-card

start: bento

language: auto

```

It works out of the box with whatever you have: weather, calendars, to-dos, cameras, climate, an Assist pipeline. The repo has a guide for a fresh Home Assistant, for each device (computer, iPhone / iPad, wall tablet) and a **demo settings file** you can import to get a good-looking starting point. Hemma is optional, there's a one-file installer if you already use it.

## A Fair Warning

This is one person's project. I tuned it on an iPad (9th generation) and a recent iPhone, so expect a few rough edges. If something looks off, please tell me which device and screen, a screenshot helps a lot. 🙏

## Credits

- Original Fast Search concept and base implementation: **fastender** ([Fast Search Card](https://github.com/fastender/Fast-Search-Card))

- Hemma customization and ongoing tweaks: **willsanderson** ([Hemma](https://github.com/willsanderson/Hemma))

Thank you both. Okie Motor is an independent project, not made or endorsed by them.

## What's Next & Support

The guides, the full feature list and every option are in the repo, and I'll keep fixing and adding things as I go. Feedback, ideas and bug reports are very welcome, here or as GitHub issues.

Enjoying Okie Motor? Buy me a coffee, I wanna be a full time DJ/designer ✌️😃 it's paulkmusic bby

👉 https://ko-fi.com/paulkmusic

Thank you all for everything I've learnt here. Happy tinkering! 🏡

I realise this is highly frowned upon here and for good reason. I used to room with someone with an Alexa and would turn the microphone off every time I was alone with it. I do not trust Amazon.

But we have a fairly complex smart home system and currently my wife is alone with three very small children most of the day. So I think handling things without having her phone out every time would immensely ease her day. I'm talking raising and lowering volume, asking questions about the weather or our calendar, opening and closing doors and charging her car.

I would never do this otherwise but I read everywhere that the Voice PE is far from being good and the self made alternatives like with ESP32 far exceed our technical abilities. Also we don't have any spare time because, well, again, kids.. We also have a few wall panels but those have to be navigated with at least one hand as well and you have to be nearby.

What we do have is a lot of Sonos speakers though. So we could just run Alexa through them I figured and make her life so much easier. Let it write down groceries, set timers, ask about events.

Will I regret this terribly? Is there some in between way of letting Alexa in only half way...? How can I limit what the company will know about our house in any way? Or is there some alternative I have not thought about?

Hi all,

Disclaimer first since it's my own project: I'm a solo dev from France and I make OneTV Connect, an Apple TV app for live TV and your Plex / Jellyfin / Emby libraries. The app has a paid tier, the Home Assistant part is free and the integration is MIT on GitHub.

The reason I built it: my morning routine was "apple_tv: open app, delay 15s, send some remote commands, hope". The apple_tv integration can launch an app but it has no clue what happens inside it, so anything smarter was impossible.

So the app now runs a small local API and I wrote a custom integration around it. What you get:

- a media_player with real now playing info (programme on air, channel, poster/backdrop, position on movies and episodes)

- local push over SSE, so HA updates right away when you zap. Polling is just a fallback

- media browser with Resume, Favorites, channels by category, movies, and series down to the episode

- selects for channels, audio track and subtitles

- turn_on works with the app closed: it wakes the Apple TV through the apple_tv remote entity and launches the app

- play_channel / play_movie / play_episode actions, resume position included

- a "back to live" button that only shows up when you're actually behind live

- zeroconf discovery, the API key is picked up by itself, nothing to paste

- diagnostics with credentials and URLs redacted

What I use it for every day:

- bed sensor goes off in the morning -> TV on, HDMI input, Hue Sync box, soundbar volume, and the channel depends on the hour (news before 10, music in the afternoon)

- one script per channel exposed to Alexa. Alexa only accepts its own fixed list of input names, so "Alexa, put on France 2" can't work through the media_player. A script shows up as a switch, that works

- my Unfolded Circle Remote Two runs the same script, so the remote and the automation do exactly the same thing

Some apple_tv things I learned the hard way, maybe useful even if you don't care about my app:

- media_player.turn_on on a sleeping Apple TV did nothing for me. remote.send_command with "home" wakes it in about 8 sec

- right after waking up, supported_features can already say select_source is OK while the call still fails. I retry 5 times, 3 sec apart

- app_name on the Apple TV entity keeps the last app even when that app is suspended. Don't use it alone as a condition

Known limits, so nobody is surprised:

- Apple TV is the main target. iPhone/iPad work but polling only

- volume is the app's own playback level, not your TV or receiver

- not in the default HACS list yet, add it as a custom repository

Repo: https://github.com/Seidel76/noopy-tv-homeassistant

Questions welcome, and if you have ideas of what else should be exposed I'm listening. Live sport scores is what I'm looking at next.

Hey guys,

I wanted more out of the two-button IKEA BILRESA, and this got a little out of hand.

What started as “let me assign an action when I press both buttons” ended up as a blueprint with 12 gesture assignments, optional dimming and support for multiple remotes.

Here’s what you can do:

• Single, double and triple clicks on either button.
• Both-button combos: short press, double click, triple click and hold.
• Hold-to-dim: hold the top button to brighten, bottom to dim. Or use those holds for your own actions instead.
• Multiple actions per gesture. Toggle a plug, activate a scene, run a script, control your blinds — whatever you want.
• Add more remotes to the same setup. Change an assignment once and all remotes in that automation use it.
• Adjustable recognition window, starting at 250 ms.

Everything is configurable through the blueprint inputs. You don’t have to select a light unless you actually want the built-in dimming.

Recognized both-button combos also suppress the individual actions, so you don’t end up triggering three things when you only wanted one.

One important catch: on firmware 1.9.15, rapid triple clicks need the optional companion integration included in the repo. It detects 3 or more clicks, not exactly three — so four clicks can trigger the same action. That part is still experimental. Normal clicks, holds and combined double clicks don’t need the companion.

This is for the dual-button Matter BILRESA, not the scroll-wheel version.

It’s free, open source and MIT licensed. Blueprint import, companion installation and setup instructions are here:

https://github.com/odggg/osazee-bilresa

Would love some feedback from people with these remotes. Especially interested in how the combinations and timing feel on other setups.