Author: websoft9

TL;DR: We have added on-device wake word detection (microWakeWord)! It’s faster and more scalable than processing the wake word in Home Assistant. We will keep supporting wake word processing in Home Assistant. Also new is more customization for sentence triggers, additional intents for controlling more devices, and better error messages and debugging tools.

Watch the full Voice chapter 6 livestream

2023’s Year of the Voice built a solid foundation for letting users control Home Assistant by speaking in their own language.

We continue with improvements to Assist, including:

• More customization options for sentence triggers
• Better error messages and debugging tools
• Additional intents for controlling valves, vacuums, and media players

Oh, and “one more thing”: on-device, open source wake word detection in ESPHome! 🥳🥳🥳

Check out this video of the new microWakeWord system running on an ESP32-S3-BOX-3 alongside one doing wake word detection inside Home Assistant:

On-device vs. streaming wake word

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TL;DR: Home Assistant OS 12 adds support for Raspberry Pi 5 and ODROID-M1S boards, with the Linux kernel updated to 6.6. Additionally, backups have become faster, and add-ons can now signal when they should not be auto-updated. Raspberry Pi 5 With the release of Home Assistant OS 12, we officially…

Home Assistant Core 2024.2! 🥰

Undoubtedly, you’ve heard about last year’s “The Year of the Voice”.
2023 might be over, but we are definitely not done with voice yet! This release
contains some very cool new features for voice.

Not just that, we’ve also launched a voice assistant contest
that you could join, and I’m happy to inform you that we will have another voice-related
live stream on 21 February 2024, at 12:00 PST / 21:00 CET: Chapter 6!

But there is more in this release besides voice! There’s drag ’n drop magic for
our automation editor, and you can now update Zigbee devices directly
from Home Assistant. We also have icons in more places 🤩, and quite a lot of
new functionalities for Matter devices.

In general, contributions to our open-source project have been amazing this
month. I’ve never seen so many contributed bug fixes, improvements, and new
features in a single release. Like… 21 new integrations! This is,
without a doubt, the largest release we’ve ever put out.
A big shout-out to everyone who helped! ❤️

Enjoy the release!

../Frenck

Oh! And don’t forget Valentine’s Day is coming up! 😘

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TL;DR: We have joined the Z-Wave Alliance, thanks to revenue from Home Assistant Cloud subscribers, and will start the certification process for Z-Wave JS.

Z-Wave is a local smart home standard that has been around since 1999. Thanks to operating on sub-Ghz frequencies, it is able to create a reliable mesh network that can span your whole house. Its reliability also made it popular to power brands like Yale locks and Amazon Ring. The Z-Wave standard is developed by a consortium of companies under the Z-Wave Alliance.

With Home Assistant, we have integrated Z-Wave since our early days. We first relied on OpenZWave until we transitioned in 2021 to using Z-Wave JS created by Dominic Griesel. Z-Wave JS is a fully open-source implementation of the Z-Wave protocol. Combined with Home Assistant and a Z-Wave USB stick, it gives our users the best possible Z-Wave experience. Dominic is employed by Nabu Casa and can work full-time on Z-Wave JS thanks to the revenue generated from Home Assistant Cloud subscribers (thank you!).

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Even though our Year of the Voice has ended, that does not mean the development of our voice assistant has stopped! We’re excited to show you what we’ve been working on since Chapter 5 last year during our Chapter 6 livestream on Wednesday, February 21st, at 21:00 CET / 3:00…

Who is Grace? Grace Hopper was a computer scientist, mathematician, and US Navy admiral who had made significant contributions to the field of computer programming and technology, from her pioneering work on and contributions to the Harvard Mark I computer, COBOL, and UNIVAC I. Why is she important to us?…

Home Assistant Core 2024.3! 🎉

Yes, you read the title right! I’m super stoked about this one. It has been
talked about for ages… I promise it is real:

Drag ’n drop for dashboards is finally here! 🎉

A first experimental version of the section dashboard that supports drag ’n drop.
A tremendous step forward and an even bigger milestone for Home Assistant!

But don’t be blinded by these Dungeons ’n Dragons; there is a lot more!

New intents for Assist (I can finally tell my vacuum to start cleaning!), using
script inputs/fields from the dashboard, and a new energy graph for individual
devices. And that is just the tip of the iceberg!

Enjoy the release!

../Frenck

PS: A big thanks and shoutout to @bramkragten & @balloob for organizing
and running the beta and everyone who helped out making these release notes
happen during my absence this beta. 🥰

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Home Assistant Core 2024.5! 🎉

The last two releases were massive! With our new drag ’n drop dashboards
and the tools to organize your Home Assistant instance,
it is hard to top those releases… 😅

So, this release is just a tiny bit smaller than those two, but still epic! 🤘

My personal favorite is the new features added to the data tables, which many
of you requested since the last update.
But the ability to change the names of the devices shown on the energy dashboard
is a close second!

Oh! We’ve held our State of the Open Home 2024 live stream!
In case you’ve missed it, I would definitely recommend watching it back. There are tons of cool things
and spoilers in there!

But more importantly, it launched the Open Home Foundation,
which now governs our beloved Home Assistant project! ❤️ Read more in the State of the Open Home 2024 blog post.

Anyway, I will not hold you any longer. Enjoy the release!

../Frenck

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Art by Clelia Rella

TL;DR: Z-Wave is alive and well, partly due to a strong community that is building new open-source resources. To thrive well into the future, it must take further steps to open its technology.

Last week, Dominic, Uwe, and I (Paulus) attended the Z-Wave Alliance member meeting in Austin, Texas. It was the first meeting since we became a member and we came with a mission: tell Alliance members about the work done by the open-source community for Z-Wave and find new avenues for collaboration.

Three of us attended, each representing different facets of Z-Wave within the Open Home Foundation: Dominic is the founder and maintainer of Z-Wave JS, which powers the Z-Wave integration in Home Assistant. Uwe leads the development of the Home Assistant Z-Wave stick that we’re working on, and I was there to enable collaborations with other Z-Wave members. Big thanks to Home Assistant Cloud subscribers – thanks to you we can do this work full-time at Nabu Casa.

A little background on Z-Wave

To use Z-Wave in Home Assistant, our users buy a Z-Wave certified USB stick and combine it with Z-Wave certified devices. Home Assistant then connects to the stick using Z-Wave JS, developed by Dominic, and we’re off to the races. Z-Wave JS was developed completely outside of the Z-Wave Alliance, and is based on the published version of the Z-Wave specification.

Z-Wave wasn’t always this open – Z-Wave used to be owned by a single company, which was later acquired by Silicon Labs. SiLabs decided it was time for change and turned the Z-Wave Alliance into a Standards Development Organization (SDO) that is controlled by its members and a standard that is open.

As it stands, there are still parts of Z-Wave that are not open yet, including the firmware that is running on Z-Wave sticks. I might have mentioned a couple of times, including in my keynote, that we should open up more. It is a good thing to let everyone help fix bugs, improve code quality, and improve diagnostics.

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Wow! At long last!! The stars have aligned, and our experimental drag-and-drop feature for dashboards is finally here! 🥲

Home Assistant strives to be the best smart home platform, and a smart home allows its residents to automate, control, observe, and anticipate the comfort, security, and various conveniences of their home. Besides voice assistants, dashboards are also a great way to help users do just that!

Therefore, we have been working hard to make customization and organization of dashboards as easy and intuitive as possible, and to create a default dashboard that will be more useful, user-friendly, and relevant right out of the box. Matthias and I teamed up in April last year to tackle this problem together, and we called this series of improvements over our current dashboard “Project Grace”, named after the influential and brilliant late Admiral Grace Hopper.

After months of user research and ideation to ensure that our design is “home-approved” – to be easy and intuitive to use for you, your family, your guests, your roommates, and more – we are happy to share the first fruit of our success in the upcoming release 2024.3, with the help of Paul and of course the wonderful frontend team. We hope that these features will help you take the dream dashboard for you and your home from idea to reality much faster and much more easily.

For those of you who are curious about the features and the design thinking behind them, read on and check out our special livestream last week. You can also try out our updated demo and get involved by joining the Home Assistant User Testing Group! And last of all, thank you for supporting our efforts by subscribing to Home Assistant Cloud!

Enjoy!

~ Madelena 🥳

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