2021.5

New Features

Slow components now highlighted during startup
Home Assistant will now tell you which of your components are taking the longest to start and causing delays with Home Assistant.
Recorder performance and database update
Some more improvements to the database have been made in this release, which should make Home Assistant a bit snappier. The recorder component has also been tweaked so it no longer writes as frequently, which should also give a performance boost
New Look and Feel for Integration Dashboard
The integration dashboard will now show which integrations rely on the cloud, or are a custom component installed locally.

Restarting Home Assistant now displays why it isn’t restarting
If you’ve ever pressed the restart button in Home Assistant and Home Assistant just won’t restart, the button will now give you feedback as to why Home Assistant can’t restart (broken config etc)

Restarts should now be faster, and the top 35 integrations were audited to make sure they restart as quickly as possible.

Docker images now hosted on Github Container Registry
If you’re a docker user you can now choose to pull Home Assistant images from the Github container registry. Docker hub is still supported and no changes are required for existing users.

Integrations

More Google TTS Languages
If you’re using Google TTS as your text engine of choice, all available languages should now be available for Home Assistant to use.
Rituals Perfume Genie
This perfume device we spoke about in 2021.3 has had some improvements, including a binary sensor to indicate when the battery is charging, type of perfume and the amount of perfume available.

Fun fact: 0.1% of Home Assistant installations use this integration
Battery Support for Sonos Speakers
The new Sonos Move speaker which is a portable speaker from Sonos can now track the battery level
MotionEye
The motionEye integration allows you to integrate your motionEye server into Home Assistant.
Deconz
Now has support for alarm control panels. There’s also support for device triggers, including Xiaomi wall switches and Ikea styrbar
Picnic Integration
For those in the Netherlands, you can now see information in Home Assistant about your Picnic delivery orders, including orders, deliveries and cart contents.

Breaking Changes

Integrations moving away from YAML to the UI
- Google Maps Travel Time
- Enphase Envoy
- Waze Travel Time
- Ezviz
- SMA Solar
- AVM FRITZ!Box Tools
Recollect Waste
Recollect Waste pickup dates are now stored as UTC timestamps.
Growl Integration
The GNTP (Growl) integration has been deprecated and is going to be removed in Home Assistant Core 2021.6.
Ecobee
Ecobee climate devices will change the reported temperature precision for their current_temperature attribute from whole degrees to 0.1 degree increments. Automations which rely on whole-number precision may need adjustments.

Phil’s Sensors for Remote Services

sensor:
    # If this sensor returns anything other than 200, there's a problem with Plex!
    # Scans every 10 minutes
  - platform: command_line
    name: Plex HTTP Code
    command: curl -I http://192.168.1.X:32400/web/index.html 2>/dev/null | head -n 1 | cut -d$' ' -f2
    scan_interval: 600

binary_sensor:
    # If the 3003 port is not accepting connections, the command will return "closed" which will mark this sensor as a Problem
    # Scans every 5 minutes
  - platform: command_line
    command: true &>/dev/null </dev/tcp/192.168.1.3/3003 && echo open || echo closed
    name: InfluxDB
    payload_off: "closed"
    payload_on: "open"
    scan_interval: 300
    device_class: 'problem'

Follow @nabucasa

Home Assistant Cloud by Nabu Casa

Easily connect to Google and Amazon voice assistants for a small monthly fee that also supports the Home Assistant project. Configuration is via the User Interface so no fiddling with router settings, dynamic DNS or YAML.

Website

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MoreBeer!

Since 1995, MoreBeer! has offered the largest selection of brewing supplies to home brewers across the country. What started in a 150 square foot shed in a backyard has now expanded to two warehouses, a manufacturing metal shop, and four homebrew stores, all while remaining under the same passionate ownership.

Website

The Hosts

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 Phil a Coffee

Follow @philhawthorne

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 Rohan a Coffee

Follow @rohank9