Guest Interviews, Release Breakdowns

Home Assistant Podcast 35 – 0.79 and the future of the iOS App with Robbie and Stephen

Published September 30, 2018

Recorded September 30, 2018

Duration 01:07:41

Robbie and Stephen come on to chat about the sweet new features coming soon to the iOS App for Home Assistant.

0.79

New Features

New Device Registry
Integration Quality Scale In an effort to make the quality of an integration more clear, we’ve added an Integration Quality Scale. With this scale we’ll be able to clearly communicate to the user how good an integration is and it gives developers a list on how to improve it. Expect these levels to pop up in the integration list soon.
Multi-Factor Auth Code Support A new multi-factor auth module that will send you a one-time authentication code to finish your login, with a notification service of your choice. PushBullet, Hangouts, iOS app, some obscure custom notification service using a shell script? It’s possible.
Logi Circle component, camera and sensor platform https://www.home-assistant.io/components/sensor.logi_circle/
Starling Bank Sensor Adam emailed us on [email protected] to say Your spotlight episode on developing for Home Assistant inspired me to have a go at creating an integration. As a starting point I have created a new sensor platform to integrate Home Assistant with a UK bank called Starling. The initial functionality allows your account balance to be exposed as a sensor in Home Assistant https://www.home-assistant.io/components/sensor.starlingbank/

New Facebook Group

https://www.facebook.com/groups/HomeAssistant/

Home Assistant iOS App

Links Discussed

Proposed Shower Component: https://github.com/home-assistant/architecture/issues/74
iOS App Beta Program: https://home-assistant.io/ios/beta/

Upcoming releases

1.5 (Stephen’s release)

- Release date TBD
- Last iOS 9 release
  - Very very small group of users still using 9
- Internal overhaul for stability and cleanliness
- Event logging
  - So you can see exactly what the app is doing and when
- Location improvements
  - Use Core Motion so we can determine if you are moving and if so, how (walking, biking, driving, etc)
  - Support Visit updates, useful to identify patterns
  - iBeacons fixed
- Advanced server options
  - HTTP basic authentication
  - Internal/external URLs
- New auth API
  - Still supporting api_password method but not advised

2.0 (Robbie’s release)

- Release date TBD, 1.5 release date + 1-2 weeks
- Notification improvements
  - Critical Alerts
    - Need entitlement still, blame Apple
  - Notification grouping
  - Actionable notifications configurator in app
- Siri Shortcuts
  - Send Location
  - Call Service
  - Fire Event
  - Get Entity State
  - Set Entity State
  - Get image from camera
- Watch Complications
- Today Widget

Hosted By

Phil Hawthorne

Phil is a Melbourne based web developer who lives and breathes technology. When he's not at his day job, he’s in his home office attempting to simplify his life through complicated tech.

Website Smart Home Products Buy a Coffee

Rohan Karamandi

Rohan from Toronto, Canada works in the Technology sector as an architect designing network and datacenter solutions for his customers. His passion for technology stems from there and extends to IoT and home automation

Website Smart Home Products Buy a Coffee

Special Appearances By

Robbie Trencheny

Entrepreneur, advisor, developer, sysadmin, Home Assistant core contributor/iOS project lead, Go/Swift/Python/Node

Home Assistant Config

Stephen Vanterpool

Stephen is a tinkerer who as a kid, imagined having a Smart House he could talk to, and now gets to build it himself. In his non-tinkering time, he's an iOS engineer who's worked on a few apps you might know, like IMDb, Google Photos, and currently Lyft (and a few more you probably don't).