Jon joins Rohan and Phil to discuss the 0.96 release, and shares his cool e-ink weather display integrated with Home Assistant.
Home Assistant Cast
Easily cast a Lovelace style interface to a Google Chromecast capable display!This is really awesome. Some automation ideas from the top of my head:
— Phil Hawthorne (@philhawthorne) July 9, 2019
? Display your commute time on your TV when your alarm ⏰ wakes you up
? When your security panel is about to arm, display a countdown timer on the screen, when the timer completes the system is armed
0.96
Climate Platform Overhaul
0.96 brings a huge overhaul to the Climate Platform thanks to a few developers. To ensure we got details of this update right, we made a quick call with Paulus and Pascal for the low down…New Sidebar
Started as a mockup by Juan, there is now a new sidebar in Home Assistant!- Notifications are now at the bottom of the sidebar
- Developer tools have been moved into a new section
- If you’re looking for services, templates, events etc these are now hidden under developer tools as tabs.
- Things like reloading automations and configuration from the interface now require a new YAML setting.
New Features
- World Wide Lightning Location Network Using the Geolocation platform in Home Assistant, you can now have Home Assistant alert you when lightning is nearby!Another quality integration from Aaron Bach https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/25001
- Zigbee Device Trackers with the ZHA Component If you’re using the ZHA component with Home Assistant, there is now support for device trackers that are zigbee based.The first one tested is the Smartthings Arrival Sensor, which can now be used as a device tracker in Home Assistant to mark someone as home or away when the device is no longer detected.https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/24584
- Notion Home Monitoring Component From the Notion website: Notion is an Oreo-sized sensor you can place around your home to get alerts for opening doors, water leaks, and temperature changes.These sensors are now supported in Home Assistant. New sensors are currently not automatically discovered however. Requires a cloud connection.Another quality integration from Aaron Bach https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/24634
- Vallox Ventilation Units If you’ve got a compatible Vallox Ventilation Unit, you can now control it with Home Assistant vis their local websockets API.The fan platform of this integration allows you to either turn on/off the complete unit via the toggle switch or select a ventilation profile via a service call. https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/24660
- Template Vacuum Platform If you have a vacuum cleaner that can be automated but doesn’t exist as a Component, there is now support for Template Vacuum cleaners.This allows you to create an instance of a Vacuum in Home Assistant, than then define Home Assistant templates and scripts for Home Assistant to know how to start the Vacuum, stop and read its current status. https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/22904
Breaking Changes
- Temperature attribute from SimpliSafe alarm control panels removed With the Simplisafe Private API, its a bit tricky to get this information reliably, so for now its been removed. https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/24833
- Some Zigbee entities for the ZHA component are being removed From this release, additional parameters for some Zigbee devices from the ZHA component will be moved to their new device entity.Things like link quality and last seen sensors will now exist in their device object, whilst new sensors will be added for battery devices. https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/24909
- Ambient solar radiation sensor now measures its values in lx If you’re using the values in automations, time to update!
- Netatmo The configuration of individual monitored conditions has been removed.Additionally if the type of device you’re linking cannot be determined, it will default to a “valve” in Home Assistant, which inherits the thermostat component. https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/25029 https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/24944
- New South Wales Rural Fire Service The JSON feed powering this has been updated to use HTTPS. If you’re using templates or automation based on the external ID from this sensor, you may need to adjust them to account for the new URL. https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/25039
Other Noteworthy Updates
- Sonos Play Queue Service A new service sonos.play_queue that makes it possible to force start playing the queue instead of the last-played source. This makes it possible to switch from radio streaming to playlist playing. https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/24974
- Templates can now be used in the “for” of state triggers If you have an automation that fires when a state has been true for a period of time, you can now have the time based on a Home Assistant template.Some example uses might be having an automation delayed for the time of day. So the temperature inside must be higher than x for 1 minute during the day, or higher than x for 10 minutes at night. Or during the day, wait for no motion to be detected for 5 minutes, but at night increase this to 20 minutes.Before this change, you would need seperate automations or timers to do this https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/24955
Jon’s E-ink Display
