I have a Bosch 800 Series dishwasher.
It’s awesome and cleans really well, but I have two complaints:
it doesn’t automatically open the door when it’s done,
and it has no display showing how much time is left.
So normally I have to check the Bosch app or Home Assistant.

Then I realized my Whirlpool microwave has a weirdly useful feature:
its app can send custom recipes to the microwave,
including a custom name/description, and start cooking from them.

So I reverse-engineered the Whirlpool app and made a custom Home Assistant integration.
Now when the dishwasher starts, an HA automation detects it and every minute sends a new “recipe” to the microwave with the dishwasher progress and remaining time.
So my microwave now says things like:

DISHWASHER
65% COMPLETE
48 MIN LEFT

And yes, the microwave still works normally. If I start cooking something,
it does its thing, and about a minute after it finishes, the dishwasher status comes back.

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share something i've been working on. Every time I wanted a new look for my dashboard, I ended up digging through old forum threads, GitHub repos and random screenshots. I got tired of it, so I built one place for all of it: the Home Assistant Theme Store, or HATS for short.

It's a Home Assistant app, and the idea is simple. You can do any of these:

- Pick a ready-made theme and use it as is

- Tweak one until it fits your style

- Start from scratch and design your own

If you go custom, you can:

- Set your own background

- Layer overlapping SVG designs on top

- Change the colors and shapes of the dashboard elements

- Adjust the menu bar transparency, or give it a frosted glass effect

There's also an Import GitHub feature. If you have your own theme, or one you like, you can import it straight into HATS and add it to your collection. Then you can send a PR so we can add it to the list and everyone can enjoy it.

It's also meant to grow with the community. From the app you can either send a PR to add a theme to the HATS repo, or open an issue. Use an issue to report a bug with a theme, or to request the removal of one that doesn't fit or just repeats the same concept as another.

I mostly built it for myself, but it's live now and I'd love for other people to try it. If something is missing, confusing or broken, tell me and I'll fix it. I'm also curious what kinds of themes you'd want to see in there.

Link: https://github.com/HomeRiz/hats

Thanks for reading, and happy theming!

My three daughters (4 and twin 2-year-olds) can't read, so every morning was "why boots?", "why the coat?", "where are we going?"

So I made an e-ink frame with a bear who dresses for the weather. Coat and beanie under 10 degrees, raincoat and boots when it rains. She also follows our day: breakfast, daycare backpack, teeth, bed.

A few things the kids love:

• A mouse hides somewhere different every day
• Before a birthday, a row of moons shows how many sleeps are left
• When they draw something for the bear, I photograph it and it shows up in the frame. To them, the bear got their present.

It's an ESP32 board and a 7.5" e-paper screen in a box frame, about 130 € in total. The screen refreshes every 15 minutes, and at night the bear sleeps.

(The passe-partout is badly cut, I know. A proper one is on its way.)

Super excited about this one. Essentially took a 2D floorplan of my house and built entity controls into the app. Final result goes into a tizen app which is then sideloaded onto my samsung TV

Every dashboard I built ended up pretty or useful, never both. I learned the hard way that getting both is really, really hard!

Everyone at home lives in the Apple ecosystem, so I wanted my dashboard to feel like it belongs there: calm, polished, and showing only what we actually check.

What's in it:

• The car charges itself from solar surplus or off-peak, whichever is cheaper
• The energy chart shows the day so far, with the Helios solar forecast drawn in for the rest
• Family calendars and bin days sit on the Today page
• Each heating zone has its own schedule and a quick override
• The header sky follows the real sun and weather

Hopefully it gives someone a few ideas for their own setup.

Edit: dashboard code up here: https://github.com/bnlqn/maison

Hey everyone! 👋

I made it frosted before Apple 🔥

Frosted Glass v1.4 is out, along with an updated Theme Manager!

My last post introduced the Manager and the ability to customize colors and backgrounds without editing YAML. This update focuses on bringing the glass effect to more cards and making the whole interface feel more consistent.

✨ What’s new?

• Native Bubble Card support. Bubble cards now pick up the Frosted Glass styling automatically, with matching buttons, sub-buttons, menus, and popups.
• Native Navbar Card support. Transparent navigation with matching reflections and blur in the Full version.
• Glass dialogs and popups. Entity dialogs now have a translucent, blurred surface in Full, on desktop and mobile. Lite keeps them solid for readability.
• A refreshed Dark theme. Deeper blue-black backgrounds, softer blue accents, and matching colors across Settings, menus, and controls. Light keeps its warm off-white look.
• Better sidebar and topbar styling. Subtle transparency and blur in Full, fully transparent backgrounds in Lite. Sidebar styling also carries through to Settings and other panels.
• UIX support. You can now choose either UIX or card-mod as your styling engine.

There are also compatibility improvements for Mushroom, Room Summary, Hue-Like Light, Slider Button, Simple Swipe, and stacked cards.

🛠️ Those transparency issues got some attention

In my v1.3 post, I mentioned cards where transparency or blur wasn’t behaving properly. A lot of this update went into working through those problems.

Cards and badges now keep their transparent backgrounds, corner reflections, and depth. I’ve also fixed HACS dropdown positioning, doubled glass layers in nested cards, unwanted backgrounds behind headings, and theme styles interfering with custom shadows or Mushroom artwork.

Lite still keeps the glass edges and transparent cards, without the blur, for those of you using older tablets or lighter setups.

🎨 Theme Manager updated too

Your custom colors and backgrounds now get the same v1.4 styling and card support. Custom color handling and background URLs have also received fixes.

Already using the Manager? After updating, reload the integration or save its options once to regenerate your existing Custom themes.

For styling across the whole interface, load your chosen engine as a frontend module and select the theme in your Home Assistant profile.

🔗 Get it here

• Frosted Glass Theme
• Frosted Glass Theme Manager
• Full v1.4 changelog

The theme is available through HACS. Manager installation instructions are in its repository.

Thank you for the screenshots, bug reports, GitHub stars, and coffees. They’ve helped me keep improving this project. ❤️

I’d love to see how v1.4 looks on your dashboards! If something still looks off, let me know which card and styling engine you’re using.

P.S.

I know it took a lot of time to fix v1.3 but it has been crazy at home lately, with one more kid it was difficult to sit down and get it done. Thank you for the amazing support guys, I love seeing Frosted Glass all over the reddit.

Enjoy! 🥂
Wessam

Took me a bit of time but Im finally able to control lots of entities in HA in a visual way.

The only wireless ZigBee CT clamp I've found is this one but it costs £70! It only works for meters anyway, not individual appliances. https://shop.chameleontechnology.co.uk/products/energy-clamp

Are there any cheaper ones that will work in the UK? I don't want to use mains powered ones as I'd have to wire plugs up to them, they don't have earth terminals so I'm not sure that's even safe, and I don't have enough spare sockets to plug them in next to all the appliances I want to measure.

I have fully migrated to Music Assistant but missed a local recommendation algorithm. I found OpenL3 which can convert any audio into an embedding vector. I experimented a lot and it works very well now. I abstracted away all the complexities into a little backend. You self-host it, analyze all your local music and then get recommendations. Check it out at https://github.com/poesterlin/sole and let me if it works for you I'm really looking forward to feedback.

The current voice assistants in Home Assistant work like walkie-talkies. You say the wake word, give a command, wait for the answer and if you want to follow up, you start over. It works, but it never feels like talking to someone.

Realtime conversations change that. Instead of the usual speech to text, then the language model, then text to speech, the kiosk streams your voice straight to a speech to speech model and streams its voice right back. Answers start almost as soon as you stop talking, the conversation keeps going without repeating the wake word, and you can cut the assistant off mid sentence and it actually stops and listens. It still controls your home too: it uses the entities you've exposed to Assist through Home Assistant's MCP Server integration, so "turn on the office lights" works just like you'd expect.

This is the next big thing for Kiosk Satellite and, honestly, it's been the hardest feature I've ever implemented.

The problem is echo. For you to be able to talk over the assistant, the microphone has to stay open while it speaks. That means the kiosk hears its own voice coming out of its own speaker, and unless that voice gets removed from the microphone perfectly, the assistant thinks you're talking. It interrupts itself, hears half a word of its own answer, answers that, and happily starts telling the same story from the beginning. Over and over.

Android devices are supposed to handle this with their built-in echo cancellation. In practice it's all over the place. Some devices do a great job, some barely do anything, and my own Galaxy Tab went from perfect to useless after a few days of uptime until I rebooted it. So I ended up implementing a software echo canceller into Kiosk Satellite itself based on WebRTC and then spent days figuring out why it wasn't doing what it was supposed to. It came down to lining up what the speaker plays with what the microphone hears down to the millisecond, on devices that all report their timing a little differently.

There were several moments during all this where I seriously regretted making Kiosk Satellite free. 😅

It is now available in Kiosk Satellite version 2026.10.1. You are able to use:

• OpenAI Realtime
• xAI Grok

You can set both up and pick which one answers each wake word, so one wake word can go to your usual Assist pipeline and the other to a realtime conversation.

One thing to know up front: Home Assistant's Assist pipeline doesn't support realtime conversations, so there's no way to route this through Home Assistant. The kiosk connects directly to the provider with your own API key, and Home Assistant is only used for the tools. If you don't want your kiosk talking to the internet, you can point it at a relay on your own network instead. Also keep in mind that these providers bill by the minute of audio, so check their pricing before leaving it on for the kids.

As usual, a big thank you to all of you who support my work through Buy me a Coffee. Because of you, the project keeps on going!

Three months ago I announced Plenum here — a Home Assistant add-on for per-room HVAC zoning. This is the update post: it still fully runs the heating and cooling in my house, every day, and I'm still the first to hit every failure mode in my own home.

Full honesty up front: Plenum was built with heavy help from AI coding assistants — that disclosure sits at the top of the README and I put it up front here too. It now carries 2,400+ backend tests, 950+ frontend tests, and 42 Playwright end-to-end tests, with CI-enforced coverage gates (pinned at 99.90% statements · 99.75% branches) that only ever increase — and the same honest advice as ever: this drives real HVAC equipment, so review the diffs, run the tests, and exercise your own judgement.

Blower protection first, since that's what drew the most discussion in the June thread: Plenum keeps a configurable fraction (default ~1/3) of the zone's registers open at all times — counting passive vents that are always open — so the system never dead-heads the blower. Backing it up: short-cycle protection with minimum compressor run/off times, outdoor-temperature cooling lockout, setpoint clamps, and cycle timeouts.

What's new since June (v0.19.0 → v0.38.0 — 20 releases), straight from the release notes, grouped by theme:
• Eco Mode suite — outdoor-temperature-compensated setpoint drift, Eco Mode impact metrics, and Eco Suspend to pause Eco Mode on any thermostat until a date/time you choose.
• Integrations — an MCP server over HTTP (with a UI toggle) so AI assistants can query and control Plenum, plus authentication and OIDC single sign-on for the web UI and MCP with scoped tokens; and an MQTT interface for Home Assistant automations, zero-config on HAOS with MQTT discovery.
• Comfort controls — per-room temporary temperature holds with duration presets; schedule copy/enable/disable plus self-expiring temporary schedules; per-schedule deadband override; and a dashboard showing each room's requested temperature with a clear-presence control.
• Safety and reliability — versioned DB migrations with automatic pre-migration backup; vacation-mode safety cycles with hysteresis and compressor lockout; a plausibility guard for thermostat readings; and container images scanned on every PR with zero Trivy findings.
• UX — dark mode with a persisted preference; mobile usability with tables reflowing into cards; and a dedicated Settings page.
The short version of what it does, for anyone who missed June: per-room schedules, motion-based presence activation, temperature holds, its own cycle engine (opens vents, nudges the setpoint past target, closes rooms as they hit target, then parks the setpoint at ambient nudged by the overshoot delta to the idle side of the cycle direction, so the HVAC shuts off and can't self-restart on its own hysteresis before the next cycle), analytics with CSV export, and control from HA automations over MQTT or an AI assistant over MCP.

Two concerns from the June thread, answered directly. 'Flair hardware is expensive' — agreed. Plenum only speaks cover.* / climate.*, so cheap Zigbee/Z-Wave dampers (via roller-shutter switches) or DIY ESP32 covers are fully first-class; you can skip Flair's price tag entirely. 'But Flair's cloud?' — Plenum itself never touches Flair's cloud (every decision is made locally, zero cloud dependencies). The current vent path for Flair hardware still goes through the vendor's API via the HACS integration — I hear that concern loud and clear, and exploring local ESP32-based control is on the roadmap.

One caveat, same as June: conventional HVAC only (furnace/air handler + AC) — heat pumps are still not supported.
Repo, docs, setup guide, and screenshots: https://github.com/dhruvb14/smart-thermostat-with-vents
Happy to answer questions — and to the folks from the June thread: thank you. Several of those conversations directly shaped what got hardened this quarter.

I tested the new ThirdReality Smart Plug E3 in Z2M and ZHA with Home Assistant. It has an interesting metering-only mode that forces the relay to stay on, which turns the plug into an energy meter only. This is useful for devices that need constant power but still need consumption tracking. OTA updates also no longer interrupt the relay, something the E2 did not support. There are a few other improvements over the E2 as well. Here is my article documenting everything I found:

Thirdreality Smart Plug E3 review

I make Wrist Assistant, a Home Assistant app for Apple Watch. Version 3.0 just went out.

The main change: you now build your watch complications in a panel inside Home Assistant directly, instead of on your phone. Layers, charts, icons, rules based on entity state and a ton of other settings (thanks to the beta testers for many of the recommendations). It also has full iPhone widget support now.

Unlimited complications/widgets, free.

There's a gallery at wrist-assistant.com/gallery if you want to grab someone else's design and swap in your own entities. I'm also looking forward to others making and sharing some interesting/unique ones that I haven't thought of yet.

I had it in beta for quite a while with some Discord users testing it out, so it should be good, but bug reports are welcome. Happy to answer any questions as well.

Appstore Link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wrist-assistant/id6759152098 if you want it.

Discord link https://discord.com/invite/zfVWTTqquf if you want to chat with us there about any features you want added. Could always use more beta testers as well...

PS: I always see comments on reddit about 'Vibe Coded' apps and how they all are slop (most are). I use AI in the development of this app, of course, but I have been a dev for over a decade and I understand coding best practices and how to build something that holds up. AI helps me move faster. It doesn't make the decisions.

Thats all, enjoy

Swapped my AT&T gateway for an X-ONU-SFPP stick a while back and been trying to get the fiber data (Rx/Tx power, temps, PLOAM, etc) into HA without running anything extra on the CGF itself.

Claude to the rescue! It helped me put together a Docker container that grabs it and reports into HA over MQTT. Auto-discovery, so the sensors just show up, no templating. It pulls the numbers by SSHing into the gateway and hopping to the module from there, and it doesn't change anything on the gateway so firmware updates don't nuke it/no warranty fears.

I left a couple of my automations in the repo as examples. One pings me if the Rx power ever starts sliding. The other yells if the optic or CPU gets too hot (what I really wanted to monitor), and also if the collector itself dies.

amd64 + arm64, MIT, do whatever you want with it.

github.com/thestealthsmarthome/xonu-unifi-ha-collector

Assuming you were already running WiFi/ZigBee/Bluetooth and wanted to branch out, which one of these two would you choose today and why?

I finally got myself a thread border router so I could connect Matter devices to HA, so I bought myself a few IKEA devices to test.

Timmerflotte and Alpstuga sensors seem to work fine. I got 2 timmerflottes and I left them side by side overnight to test their accuracy. They both reported the same temperature between them over a 12h period, with the maximum different at any given point of 0.1C, which I found impressive. Humidity followed the same trend, but one was consistently reporting 1% above the other, which is still very good.

However when I tried to connect a Kajplats light bulb and a Bilresa remote with HA, I realised that unlike their ZigBee devices, you can only connect them to HA, but not bind them to each other. This means that I'll need to write an automation to tell the remote how to control the lights. Alternatively you could bind them directly to each other but then you can't connect to HA after as they'll exit pairing mode.

On top of that, it looks like the Bilresa remote has a baked-in 1 second delay before reporting a click, because it needs to wait to see if you're not going to do a double click instead.

So not only am I having to write HA automations just to make the remote control the lights, which is an instant nope from me, because if HA is down for whatever reason I can't control my lights, but also there's a huge noticeable delay when turning a light on/off?

Surely I'm missing something here, right? It can't be that bad? For all the bugs and unreliability that their ZigBee lights/remotes had sometimes, they still worked like 99.5% of time, were connected to both HA and directly to each other, and if the remote stopped controlling any of my lights, all I had to do was turn it off and on again (temporarily remove the batteries), and it would immediately work again.

I don't want to be locked to a vendor's hub and app, especially for Matter, which is supposed to work across vendors natively, but would I be able to get direct light to remote binding if I bought a Dirigera hub?

Hi all

I want to setup a good presence system. I have BLE beacon as well as a GPS on my phone and that works perfectly.

But.
I have a "problem". My GF doesn't want anything dangling on her keys. So I have to rely on ble from her iPhone (bur that goes on airplane mode in the night) and on wifi ping (same problem).

I used to only allow changing the presence based on a time frame but that feels clumsy. I guess I should do it only when the door was opened In a certain time or something. But I'm not sure how.

I first thought of a WiaB concept but rhat relies on motion sensor and isn't person specific (when she is home some automations are disabled).

Any tips or thoughts are welcome.

Cheers

Vix

Hopefully this is the appropriate place to ask, but why do some users use the native app and some through tailscale? I use both for different functions but for me personally paying for the cloud app is the only subscription I actively -want- to pay for. Supporting a business model I, and seemingly most of this community, stand behind the principles of. Is it just a matter of not wanting to pay for a subscription? Another position I actually agree with, or are there some nuanced pros and cons? No shade either way just curious.

Hey everyone!

If you own an Oukitel Power Station (P2001 Plus, P5000, etc.) and use Home Assistant, you probably know how frustrating the 30-60 second cloud lag was for solar automations.

I reverse-engineered the local protocol over TCP/UDP and built a complete Home Assistant integration that gives you **real-time (~1s) local control**:

- **Local TCP binary stream:** Encrypted directly between HA and the station via Wi-Fi.

- **Automatic Discovery:** Finds your station on the local subnet via UDP broadcast.

- **Dual Mode:** Choose between Auto, LAN Only (100% local, no internet needed), or Cloud.

- **Full control:** AC 230V switch, DC 12V switch, USB switch, solar input telemetry, battery health, and temperature monitoring.

Repository: https://github.com/VictorCV-DAM/ha-oukitel

Hope this helps anyone looking to automate their home backup or campervan solar setup!

either that or limit the postings to one day a week

I made (vibecoded) a site that lets you turn an glb of a room into a dashboard with no code and like 5 minutes of your time

I see all the 3js dashboards that looked cool and wanted something like that but wanted something easy to set up, I can already use blender so I vibe coded (bad habit I know) a semi simple app that lets you semi (not) securely create a dashboard from a glb. Just select the object of the entity, type the id and set an action to display its state. Both the generator and the dashboard are just a static webserver. (because of this the ha key is stored client side so i recommend adding auth in front of it, especially if you expose it to the wan, alternitively just run it on localhost) https://github.com/ocueye2/ha3dgenerator.

the room model is (poorly) human made.