Rohan and Phil break down the goodies coming in with 2021.7. Phil discusses his experience setting up an ESP32 device for the first time with the ESP web tools.

2021.7

New Features

 
  • New Select Entity Similar to the input_select, the new select entity is an auto-populating dropdown that can be used for services and automations. Integrations will be able to populate the dropdown field, allowing users to select from a dropdown of options. A use case might be something like a light, which has effects which can be created by users (think a Nanoleaf). When a new effect is added on the device, the dropdown in Home Assistant is updated with the new effect for users to choose from.
  • Trigger Conditions and Trigger ID’s Will help those with huge automations that want to take action on what triggered an action.
  • New as_datetime() function for templates If you’ve ever needed to work with dates in Home Assistant templates, this is going to save you a lot of time!
  • Making it possible to use other entity values in conditions You can now reference other entities for the above/below values of numeric state triggers and conditions. Both sensors and number entities can be used. For example, you can now trigger an automation if the outside temperature is higher than the temperature inside.
   

New Integrations

 
  • Ambee A cloud service which provides air quality and pollen information into Home Assistant. Can even report the type of pollen in the air. Requires a free API key which is limited to 100 requests per day.
  • Forecast.solar provides an estimated forecast on how much energy your solar panels are going to produce, allowing you to plan ahead on how you spend your produced energy in most efficiently.
  • Modern Forms Modern Forms has a line of smart Wi-Fi-connected fans that allow for cloud or local control of the fan and light. There is support for individual sleep timers for the fan and light that can be set and cleared independently.
 

Other Noteworthy Changes

 
  • Changes to docker image tags If you are using the Home Assistant Container installation method, Home Assistant is now recommending to use a specific version tag. Major versions and their patches will be patches under their parent tag, for example 2021.7.1 will be added to the 2021.7 tag.
 
  • WLED Websocket Support Allows WLED devices to report instant status updates back to Home Assistant
  • New service to reset smart tub reminders Now when Jeeves comes to replace your filter on your smart tub, you can have the maintenance reminder reset automatically in Home Assistant.
  • Input elements on the login page! Allows password managers to be used with Home Assistant more effectively now!
  • Groups can now be made of media_players Home Assistant has had the capability to calculate group states of similar devices for some time. For example a group only containing device trackers will report its state as “home” if one device tracker is home, or “not_home” if no device tracker is home. This is now expanded to media players as well. There is also support for a new media player type of group, where you can assign multiple media players to a single media_player entity, and have those players stop/play etc at the same time from within Home Assistant.
  • Sony Bravia TV Now exposes a remote component, allowing you to control your sony bravia TV from Home Assistant.
  • Coinbase now can be configured from the UI
   

Breaking Changes

There’s more on the release notes!  
  • Blocking incorrect reverse proxies If you use a reverse proxy like nginx to expose Home Assistant to the outside world, Home Assistant will now block those requests where use_x_forwarded_for and trusted_proxies are not set correctly.
  • Prometheus Prometheus is now converting temperatures in °F to °C. If you are relying on temperature_c being in Fahrenheit, you will need to make adjustments, for example by doing a unit conversion in a PromQL query.
   

Tuya working on a native Home Assistant integration

 

ESPHome Browser Provisioning

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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.

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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.

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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

Spotlight

 

Special episodes focused on various aspects of Home Assistant and Home Automation.