Rohan and Phil go through the highlights of 0.84 which is the final Home Assistant release and Podcast for 2018.
Last Episode for 2018
0.84 is the final release for 2018, and so this will also be the final episode for 2018. First release for 2019 will be 0.85 launching Wednesday 9th January 2019.0.84
New Features
- Cloud Webhooks Home Assistant cloud subscribers will now have access to cloud webhooks. With this feature, you’ll be given a unique URL which can be used to send data to your local Home Assistant installation. You don’t need to setup any port forwarding or expose your Home Assistant instance to the internet! https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/18672
- Awair Sensor Platform Adds support for Awair (https://getawair.com) air sensors. Will include temperature, humidity, CO2, and some other device-dependent sensors. https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/18570
- U.S. Geological Survey Earthquake Hazards Program Feed Will add geo_location entities to your Home Assistant when a Earthquake event is tracked by the US Geological Survey. A radius can be defined to only include earthquakes within a certain distance from home. A minimum magnitude can be defined to only include earthquakes with that magnitude or higher. https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/18207
- Wunderlist You can create tasks in Wunderlist from within Home Assistant. https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/18339
- qBittorrent Sensor Allows you to see information from your qBittorrent client in Home Assistant. https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/18618
- Entur departure information sensor Realtime departure information about public transport in Norway. Fetches timing information from the open api of entur once a minute to show how long before next bus, ferry, train or similar is leaving the station. https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/17286
- Integration of LightwaveRF switches and lights with Home Assistant https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/18026
Breaking Changes
- Lutron Light Component State attributes will now all be lowercase, to be consistent with other Home Assistant components. https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/18650
- Systemonitor The “since_last_boot” option has been removed from the Systemmonitor component. https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/18644
- MQTT Lights When defining an MQTT light in your configuration.yaml file, you will now need to specify the new “schema” key, which will tell Home Assistant whether you’re using json or templates. https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/18227
- Camera Push Platform now uses webhooks You’ll need to post your images to a webhook endpoint, as the camera_push endpoints are now removed. https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/18380
- Support for Multiple Rainmachine Controllers You’ll need to slightly update your configuration.yaml file if you intend to use multiple rainmachine controllers. https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/18989
- Instapush Notify Platform has been removed https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/19051
Other Noteworthy Updates
- When setting up Home Assistant, you must now have an authentication provider It was possible to setup Home Assistant without setting up an auth provider. Now you must at least have one. This will make Home Assistant more secure.You can still use settings like trusted networks, if you wish to have a way to bypass the login screen. https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/18854
- MQTT Components will now re-configure if discovery info is updatedIf you use MQTT disovery, and you make changes to your device and re-push it through MQTT discovery, it will now be re-created in Home Assistant. Previously you may have needed to restart Home Assistant to clear out the old entity.
- Xiaomi Vacuums now have a “last cleaned” time WIll allow you to easily see when the last time the vacuum cleaner was run https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/19043