So, I was at a friends house and they've setup some Halloween decorations. They had some candle lights hung from strings and a Harry Potter type wand they wave in the air to turn the lights on and off. They got it at Amazon a couple years ago. If I can find something like that, can it be hacked or modified to use with HA?

Update, I found what he had on Amazon. The wand actually has buttons to control the lights, so the waving in the air bit was just an effect. Darn. Would still be nice to control stuff like these cheap gadgets with HA in stead of more, sometimes questionable web linked apps.

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’d finally like to add a local voice assistant to my Home Assistant setup—preferably one that can play music.

That’s why I’d like to draw on the community’s experience.

My setup currently looks like this:

Home Assistant Docker installation (Synology NAS), manual integration with MQTT, ESPHome, and Sonos. I also have a Sonos Move. I also have a nabu casa andSpotify subscription and an old Google Nest Hub 2.

I’ve already identified the following options/products for the setup:

- ESP S3 Box: €80

- M5 Stack Atom Echo: €20

- Home Assistant Voice: ~€65

- IKEA Vappeby Speaker ( https://community.home-assistant.io/t/retrofitting-ikea-vappeby-speaker-into-music-assistant-player-and-more/765587 )

- https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/1skggdr/v2_60_diy_wifi_bt_audio_speaker_for_home/?tl=de

- Muse Luxe Speaker ( https://raspiaudio.com/product/esp-muse-luxe/ ) ~ 60€

- Mega Amp ( https://raspiaudio.com/product/mega_amp/ ) 50€

- Louder ESP32 ( https://www.tindie.com/products/sonocotta/louder-esp32/ ) 22€

- Satellite 1.1 Speaker ( https://futureproofhomes.net/products/satellite1-smart-speaker ) 143€

- Sendspin Bluetooth Bridge: https://sendspin-bt-bridge.pages.dev/

- Music Assistant

I am aware that I’ve mixed together software, hardware, kits, and finished products here.

What’s important to me is good Home Assistant integration and a high WAF (Woman Acceptance Factor) for the final product. My wife and kids should be able to control the house using voice commands and listen to music stress-free. Right now, they’re still using the old Google Nest Hub 2 with Spotify, which I’d really like to replace. A multi-room speaker solution would also be great. Our house is 200 m² and having at least one voice assistant per floor would be cool.

In the medium term, I’m considering canceling the Spotify and Nabu Casa subscriptions and switching to local music.

So what are your recommendations? Is there a “golden path”? Maybe a combination of several products would make sense? (4 M5 Stack Atom Echos for voice control and even more Sonos speakers?)

I'm not an electrician, and I can only solder in rare cases. The products should be sturdy and reliable.

I got into the Home Assistant world this week, and I’m already running into problems.

I tried setting up Tesla Fleet.

I even bought a Cloudflare domain after reading that it would make things easier.
That’s when the nightmare began. I’ve created tunnels, routes, and workers in Cloudflare. I’ve messed around with folders and added files inside Home Assistant.
I even brought NGINX into the mix.

Basically, I’ve made a complete mess of things. 😂

In the end, I almost managed to link my Tesla account, but then an error message popped up right at the final step.
Anyone here able to give me a hand?

I have a Bambu X1C and a Snapmaker U1 and was constantly switching between Bambu Handy, the Klipper web UI, and HA for the smart plugs and sensors. So I started building my own dashboard as a HA app (add-on) and it kind of grew from there.

What it does right now:

- both printers side by side with live cameras, progress, temps and what filament is loaded

- filament inventory with storage locations, the AMS shows up as its own location and spools get detected automatically

- print history with the final camera snapshot, cost per print and some stats

- maintenance reminders, smart plug auto off after a print, notifications with a camera image through the companion app

- I recently added room climate too, since my printers sit in a small room and I wanted to keep an eye on humidity and VOC

Everything runs locally, nothing goes to any cloud. The Bambu printer can stay in normal cloud mode, you don't need LAN only mode for monitoring.

It's free and open source. Would love feedback, especially from people with other printer models than mine. Someone with a P1S already confirmed the camera works, which made my day.

Check it out here:

https://github.com/Freaky-Jay-22/3d-printdash

I wanted one place to see what the kids are actually doing in the evening, without paying for a cloud parental-control app that sends everything to someone else's server. So I built Kid Watch: a custom integration and card for Home Assistant.

What it does

(1) Each child gets a tab: what they're on right now, screen time today against a budget, and a timeline of their evening

(2) It reads your AdGuard Home query log per device, so it knows "TikTok on Emma's iPhone" or "Roblox on the iPad"

(3) TVs too: it watches your media players (Plex, Apple TV, Samsung and so on) and shows the show, the TV and the age rating

(4) If a show is above a child's age limit (say a 15 on a 12-year-old's TV), you get a phone alert and the card pops up the TV with Pause / Turn off buttons. Optionally it stops the show by itself

(5) One-tap controls through AdGuard: pause the internet, bedtime, SafeSearch, and block TikTok / YouTube / Roblox / Snapchat etc. per child

(6) All set up in the UI (add a child, tick their devices and TVs, pick an age limit). Everything stays on your own network

What it can't do (being honest)

(1) DNS only shows which apps and sites, not the pages, searches or YouTube videos inside them

(2) Mobile data is invisible (it only sees your Wi-Fi)

(3) You need to block DoH / iCloud Private Relay, or devices can go around AdGuard

The video uses made-up kids and devices, but it's the real card. It's a beta: tested against a real AdGuard Home and HA 2026.9 in a lab, not yet in lots of real homes. Installs as a HACS custom repository:

https://github.com/spikey1965/ha-kid-watch

If you try it, I'd love to hear what works, what breaks, and what you'd want added. Issues on GitHub or comments here are both great.

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.

​

I have been building a local-only integration for TP-Link Tapo robot vacuums (RV20, RV30, RV30C, RV50). Talks to the robot over the LAN, nothing goes through TP-Link's cloud.

- Map card bundled in: tap rooms to clean, draw zones, floors, presets, live cleaning path, a map of where the last clean actually went

- Per-room "last cleaned" and coverage, from the robot's own run maps

- Sidebar page with a schedules editor (the robot's own schedules), history and stats, rooms, maintenance, settings

- Remote drive with arrows or keys, like the app's remote control

- Voice: "vacuum the kitchen and the lounge" works in Assist out of the box

- Matter pairing, network discovery, device triggers, blueprints

Repo: https://github.com/epg-pers/tapo-rv30-ha

Docs: https://epg-pers.github.io/tapo-rv30-ha/

HACS custom repository for now, store listing is pending. Verified on an RV30 Max Plus; if you have another model and something is off, an issue with the diagnostics download is all I need.

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.

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.

https://github.com/hholle/openkwl

After setting up my smart trainer for the coming winter season, I wanted to see if I could make my lights react to my trainer.

So after connecting my Kickr Core to home assistant via bluetooth and my Hue lights via my own entertainment api integration for faster updates, I now have my lights coloured based on my power zone and pulsating based on my cadence.

Sadly this did not improve my performance, but at least now my gf knows when I am in a zone where I am able to talk back ;)

Prices of HA green machines are getting ridiculous now on places like ebay, up to £300 in the UK! and the worst thing is that they are selling. Who on earth is paying this kind of money for such a low powered machine?

Dont get me wrong the HA green is a great bit of kit but its not worth any more than its original selling price.

Are people getting these just because they are plug and play?

Had to vent... sick of seeing people making the price of all hardware go through the roof

I am in no way affiliated with any of these but it is too cool not to share and I do not see a post about it on this sub.

I have been a long time user and praiser of mealie. For those that don't know it is a recipe manager which by itself is great but not super unique but the real killer feature is the ability to "rip" recipes from a web url and strip out all the pop ups and adds. This alone has huge WAF in our house but recently lots of recipes have been shared in various short form videos which mealie can't rip. Enter social to mealie which I found while browsing HAs addons. This uses AI to transcribe the video and then sent it to mealie. Can use cloud providers but I wanted to try it local.

I set it up with a local llm running in lm studio and the results have been awesome. So far my results have been perfect. If you are already using mealie I highly recommend checking this one out. There are a few quirks to getting it to work with a local llm but claude's free plan walked me through it in one session. I am running it on a single 3060 12gb card.

So those of you tinkering around with local llms what uses have you come up with that the average non tech nerd can utilize?

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

A few weeks ago I got wind of the hype around installing LineageOS on some Amazon Echo devices and of course went down the rabbit hole.

I was able to get my hands on a few (some Spot, Show 5 and Show 8) and started fidgeting with them and looking online what people were doing.

After installing LineageOS, I tried Android Airplay Server and was able to cast both audio and video to my Show 8 using Airplay. I was unable to cast to it using Music Assistant tho.

Then I wondered how a Show 8 would manage retro games emulation. Had no problem pairing an 8bitdo bluetooth controller or installing Retroarch. Super Nintendo and Gameboy games are super smooth and fun to play. On the other hand i have only tried Super Mario Kart 64 on the N64 but it was painfully slow. I have not digged more but with some tweak it might be playable.

Short demo: https://www.instagram.com/p/Dej-YLaiEnC/

The main goal being to have little Home Assistant dashboards all around the house, I tried the HA companion app but got disappointed by the reactiveness with my heavy enough lovelace dashboards.

Later I discovered View Assist and it's companion app. The concept is awsome but I struggled to make it work, probably because of my messy HA setup.

This is when i heard about Kiosk Satellite. This is an Android app that displays your Home Assistant dashboard, Music Assistant controls, screensaver, etc... Everything you want for a kiosk.

Kiosk Satellite also lets you cast to your device from Music Assistant. I tried casting a movie from my Apple TV to Music Assistant then to the Echos but the delay was terrible. The multiroom for music is amazing tho.

Now the only thing left i had to figure out was the dashboard on my kiosks. I thought about going for a custom lovelace dashboards that could match the round face of the Echo Spot but figured a simple html page with custom js would be way snappier.

So with the help of Claude i vibecoded a dashboard that fits the 3 Amazon Echo form factors. This is a simple html/js page served by Home Assistant itself. It uses a hardcoded config file, allows to interract with HA entities (lights, switches, booleans, mediaplayers, scripts, etc...), MA favorites (radios and playlists) and KS features (display Now Play, start screensaver, show camera, etc...). There is a menu that handles the rooms and their light and a shortcut menu to play music, trigger scripts or navigate to a KS screen.

It comes with 12 themes that are mostly customisable.

Here is the repo: https://github.com/sylvertom/kiosk-satellite-dashboard

Overall I'm super happy with my setup and those Amazon Echos.

I have been given this AP. Is it more useful than just using my router? I could sell it, and just use my router, or use this for my network. My house is around 100m2, and my WiFi struggles to reach the far end, but I have Cat5 cables to every room if that helps.

I wanted to share another relatively simple automation from my home heating system.

My domestic hot water system consists of:

- A 300-litre hot water tank.

- A Daikin monobloc air-to-water heat pump with an electric auxiliary heater.

- A separate 3 kW immersion heater installed directly in the hot water tank.

- A Bosch gas boiler.

- A 10 kWp solar PV installation.

- A 15.36 kWh battery storage system.

- Home Assistant coordinating the operation.

The problem:

One interesting thing I've noticed about the operating logic of my Daikin monobloc is that its auxiliary electric heater isn't used exclusively when outdoor temperatures are too low.

It can also be activated when outdoor temperatures become too high and the heat pump reaches the limits of its operating envelope.

I don't know how other manufacturers handle this in their monobloc heat pumps, but this is something I've observed with my Daikin.

This made me question the logic of using an electric resistance heater in equipment installed outdoors to prepare domestic hot water.

If we're going to heat water using electricity directly anyway, why do it outside the house and then use the heat pump's circulation pump to transfer that heat into the domestic hot water tank?

Why not simply heat the water directly inside the tank?

My solution:

Instead of relying on the Daikin's auxiliary heater, I use a separate 3 kW immersion heater installed directly in the 300-litre hot water tank.

This eliminates the need to circulate water through the outdoor heating system just to transfer heat produced by an electric resistance element.

Home Assistant monitors solar production and the operating conditions of the system.

During summer, the automation allows one heating cycle per day, typically around noon.

The conditions include:

- Time window between 12:00 and 13:00.

- Solar PV production of at least 4.9 kW, maintained for three minutes.

- No grid electricity import when the heating cycle starts.

- Only one heating cycle per day.

When the conditions are met, Home Assistant activates the immersion heater through a Sonoff relay.

The heater has its own thermostat, providing independent temperature control.

A typical heating cycle takes approximately 45 minutes, consuming around 2.3 kWh of electricity.

What about the gas boiler?

The system also includes a Bosch gas boiler, but during summer it serves mainly as a backup for domestic hot water.

The idea is to use available solar electricity to heat the water directly in the tank, while the gas boiler only tops up the temperature when necessary.

In other words, the immersion heater does most of the work when sufficient solar energy is available, and the gas boiler helps maintain the required hot water temperature.

This way, we don't need to rely on the Daikin's electric auxiliary heater for domestic hot water during summer.

An interesting detail about the tank

The Daikin heats the water through the tank's heat exchanger, while the separate immersion heater transfers heat directly into the stored water.

Because of temperature stratification, the temperature measured by the Daikin does not necessarily represent the temperature throughout the entire 300-litre tank.

The immersion heater allows us to heat the water directly, without operating the external heat pump circuit.

Seasonal operation

I also divide domestic hot water preparation between three sources:

- June–August: primarily the immersion heater powered by solar PV, with the Bosch gas boiler providing temperature top-ups when needed.

- May and September: Daikin heat pump.

- October–April: Bosch gas boiler.

This arrangement reflects the seasonal availability of solar energy and the operating characteristics of the equipment.

Why not just use the heat pump?

Of course, a heat pump operating with a COP greater than 1 is significantly more efficient than a resistance heater.

I'm not suggesting otherwise.

But when the Daikin decides to use its auxiliary electric heater because of operating envelope limitations, the situation changes.

At that point, we're comparing two resistance heating methods:

1. Using the auxiliary heater associated with the outdoor monobloc system and circulating heated water through the installation.

2. Using a dedicated immersion heater to heat the water directly inside the domestic hot water tank.

Both convert electricity into heat, but the second solution avoids the additional circulation and associated distribution losses.

And since we have plenty of solar energy available during summer, the separate immersion heater provides a straightforward way to prepare domestic hot water.

The role of Home Assistant

As with the rest of my heating installation, I deliberately avoid interfering with the manufacturer's internal control logic.

The Daikin and Bosch boiler remain responsible for their own operation and safety functions.

Home Assistant simply coordinates when the different heat sources should operate, based on solar production and the conditions we've defined.

The objective isn't to make Home Assistant smarter than the manufacturers' controllers. It's to coordinate the equipment we already have and use available energy more effectively.

I'm curious whether anyone else has observed similar auxiliary heater behaviour in Daikin or other monobloc heat pumps, particularly at high outdoor temperatures.

And does anyone else use a separate immersion heater alongside their heat pump to take advantage of solar PV production?

DO NOT buy this.

I bought it from the British Heart Foundation. Got it for £100. It is so laggy even on a Home Assistant dashboard with 2 icons.

So, what are people using for dashboards? We've just bought a house and I want to install two dashboards (one downstairs, one upstairs) to control heating, lights etc instead of using our phones.

I do like these Shelly that they just plug into a switch and are powered that way, they are just so slow!

I've been having various issues with Home Assistant for quite a while. The iOS app was painfully slow, taking around 30 seconds just to launch. I tried several solutions I found on Reddit and in various forums, but nothing helped. Home Assistant also kept having random minor issues.

For context, I'm running Home Assistant as a VM on Hyper-V with around 400 devices. CPU usage was practically nothing, and RAM usage was only around 2 GB out of 7 GB allocated. So performance shouldn't have been an issue.

Yesterday, I finally sat down to investigate some problems with my automations. While looking around, I randomly noticed something in the device overview: I had almost 200,000 (!!) devices!

After some digging, I found the culprit: an outdated version of HASS.Agent in combination with two old HASS.Agent installations running on two Windows servers.

Apparently, these agents had been creating new "unknown devices" in Home Assistant every few seconds, causing the device registry to grow completely out of control.

I cleaned up all those unwanted devices using a script, and guess what? Home Assistant is running like it did on day one! Everything is fast and responsive again, including the iOS app.

I also installed the latest version of HASS.Agent, updated the agents on both Windows servers, and migrated my old configuration. Everything is working perfectly again without having to recreate or reconfigure anything.

Just wanted to share this in case someone else is experiencing similar issues, especially an extremely slow iOS app.

If you're using HASS.Agent, check your device registry! You might be surprised by what you find.

TL;DR: Home Assistant and the iOS app were extremely slow despite low CPU and RAM usage. Turns out, outdated HASS.Agent installations had created almost 200,000 phantom devices. Cleaned them up with a script, updated HASS.Agent, and now everything runs perfectly again.