2022.10 – Active Bluetooth, Hacktoberfest and Subviews

• State of the Open Home
  Scheduled for November 13th 11am PST
• Interested in the Xiaomi FP1 Sensor?
  Check out episode 3 of the All Things Smart Home Show
• October is Month of What The Heck?!

2022.10

New Features

• Brand Connections
  We’re not sure what this will be called at release
  For some brands of devices, there are several ways you can link your device with Home Assistant. For example Philips Hue can be linked via ZHA, Zigbee2MQTT or the Philips Hue Hub.For some brands, instead of working out yourself which method to use to integrate into Home Assistant, you can select the brand from within Home Assistant and choose the best integration option that works for you.

• Active Connections for Bluetooth Proxies
  As we discussed in last release episode, this should give you the missing piece for remote bluetooth proxy support in Home Assistant.
• Subviews
  Dashboards can now have “sub-views”. These views do not appear in the side menu, and when displayed will show a back button in the navigation bar.
• YAML Automations can now be viewed in the UI
  Previously trying to view a YAML based automation would display an error telling you this automation can’t be edited.Home Assistant will now render the automation in the automation editor UI, in a read-only state.

New Integrations

• Google SheetsThe Google Sheets integration allows you to connect your Google Drive to Home Assistant. The integration adds a service to allow you to append rows to a Sheets document. The idea is that you can store data on there for further processing. When you set up a config entry, your drive will have a new sheet called Home Assistant. You can then rename this to whatever you like.Note: The integration currently only has access to that one document that is created during setup.
• iBeacon
  iBeacons are Bluetooth-enabled devices that advertise identifiers to announce their location. For example, an iBeacon attached to a trash can be used to determine if the trash can is in the garage or on the street.There are some known devices that work with this integration, from Blue Charm and Feasycom.
• Kegtron
  Bluetooth smart Keg monitor support. The integration only supports Smart Keg Monitor devices of the 1st generation (KT-100 and KT-200), which communicate data with Bluetooth LE.
• Keymitt Microbot Push
  Allows you to locally control a MicroBot Push, small bluetooth button pusher similar to a switchbot
• Switchbee
  SwitchBee, is an innovation company making smart homes more accessible and affordable to any household environment.There is support for the following device types: – Switch – Timed Power Switch (Boiler) – Group Switch – Timed Switch – Light (Dimmer) – Scenario

Breaking Changes

• Bayesian
  The prob_given_false configuration variable, is now a required configuration variable as there was no mathematical rationale for the previous default value.numeric_state, template, and state entries with only one to_state configured will also now update the prior probability accordingly if the observation is false. Those who have used duplicate, mirrored state configurations as a work-around will have their functionality preserved. However for numeric_state and template entries this will cause duplication of the Bayesian updating.

• Workday SensorDue to changes in the upstream library, the following is no longer supported by the Workday integration:
  • UK subdivisions (Wales, Scotland, England…) can no longer be provided as values to country configuration key, they are still available for use as values to the province setting.
  • IsleOfMan if no longer a recognised province of the UK, use the IM code for country instead.
  • The extended Portuguese holiday set (PortugalExt) is no longer available as a separate country, instead you should use the country code PT and the province Ext.

Feedback from previous episodes

• Petrus says thanks!
  

  Hi Phil and Rohan,

  I listened to your entire library of podcasts while moving into my house in Germany last year in May. Since then I moved over completely to Home Assistant and away from the 5 to 10 different apps for all my smart home devices. You really inspired me and now I’m addicted to Home Assistant.

  With the current energy crisis I was also able to massively reduce my gas consumption using smart solar power diversion using a system vir MyEnergi. All controllable and viewable in Home Assistant. I have only been running the full energy monitoring for a month, but it looks as if I will drop my total gas consumption by 4X!!!

• Energy Feedback
  Last episode Phil ranted about the energy item costs not being available for easier access in Home Assistant.Franck mentioned to us:
  its not as easy as most people think
  For example, I have solar
  let say during the day I use solar
  but I don’t got enough solar for powering all my house?
  as in… its not like: $ times the kWh the device used

• James emailed us with his thoughts:
  

  Perhaps an option to switch the graph between a “usage” stacked bar, and “source” stacked bar, then there would be no conflict in trying to display the data. In fact it would improve the current layout when you have electric and gas, as there would be no need for two graphs, just a simple stacked graph (or side by side bar graph).Also, the ability to enter a daily standing charge in addition to the cost per kWh would be really useful.

• Water Shutoff
  In our previous episode with Ryan, we mentioned not being able to turn the house water off because the street shutoff wasn’t a 1/4 turn valve.
  David emailed in to say:

  Just turn off the water with your older style valve and install a 1/4 turn ball valve just after that. You would end up with two shut off valves but would not need to get the city involved in turning off the water.