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balloob

Re:I never authorized an integration that scans my secrets on Friday October 16, 2026 @05:04PM (#50124700)
This feature has been around for 5 years... https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant.io/blob/cur...
Re:Big Tech ruined the cloud, so we're renaming ours on Friday October 02, 2026 @01:07PM (#49935912)
That's exactly how it's build. Nabu Casa has never been able to see any user data. You can read more about it here https://support.nabucasa.com/hc/en-us/articles/2650888200758...
Re:Mozilla Thunderbolt on Thursday April 16, 2026 @12:08PM (#47795467)
WebSerial just landed in Firefox nightly! https://bsky.app/profile/paulusschoutsen.nl/post/3mjfdx3ujta...
Kalman filters are great! For people interested of one used in practice, it's used by Sendspin to keep speakers in sync, even works in browsers on phones on 5G etc.

Open the Sendspin live demo in your browser: https://www.sendspin-audio.com/#live-demo

Some more info on Kalman implementation here https://github.com/Sendspin/time-filter/blob/main/docs%2Fthe...

Re:Web Components: The Framework-Free Renaissance on Friday February 20, 2026 @07:28AM (#47087179)
Home Assistant [1] has been written using web components and it has been great. In 13 years that we've been around, we never had to do a full rewrite of the frontend but always have been able to gradually update components as needed. Not being tied to the JavaScript industry upgrade cycle (which is short!), has allowed us to pick our own priorities.

We currently use Lit for the framework on top (you do need one, that's fine). For state management we just pass props around, works great and allows community to easily develop custom cards that can plug into our frontend.

The downside is lack of available components. Although we're not tied to a single framework, and can pick any web component framework, the choices are somewhat limited. We're currently on material components and migrating some to Shoelace.

I talked more about our approach to frontend last year at the Syntax podcast[2].

[1] https://www.home-assistant.io [2] https://syntax.fm/show/880/creator-of-home-assistant-web-com...

Re:Web Components: The Framework-Free Renaissance on Friday February 20, 2026 @07:18AM (#47087096)
This has never been the case. Custom elements are DOM Elements and so are just JavaScript objects. Just like you can do aEl.disabled = true, you can set any prop to any type of value.
Re:Ollama has a native front end chatbot now on Thursday July 31, 2025 @04:57AM (#44743739)
Does the new app make it easier for users to expose the Ollama daemon on the network (and mdns discovery )? It’s still trickier than needed for Home Assistant users to get started with Ollama (which tends to run on a different machine).
Re:Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025) on Sunday June 29, 2025 @11:37PM (#44419087)
Sounds very cool! Also interested in how to follow progress. Is it using ESPHome?
We don't want to come to rely on donations and have to show Wikipedia-style beg banners in our app (I would personally hate to see that myself).

So with the limited resources that we have, we currently only consider bigger donations valued $10k or more. We've had monetary donations from DuckDuckGo and Espressif so far.

Founder Home Assistant here. Want to chime in that I always love to see write ups like these to see the great things what people achieve with Home Assistant.

Not everyone might know, but last year we started the Open Home Foundation as a non-profit in Switzerland and I donated Home Assistant to it[1]. It's fully funded by users. There are no investors involved.

We are fully committed to building out a smart home that focuses on local control and privacy. Yes there are rough edges, but we're actively working on it in the open, with progress being released every month.

~Paulus, Founder Home Assistant & President Open Home Foundation https://github.com/balloob

[1]: https://www.openhomefoundation.org/blog/announcing-the-open-...

Wifi yes. Thread depends on the settings on the Thread Border Router. Ours defaults to no internet access.
Maybe not exactly what you are looking for, but check out the Shelly BLU Button1. It's a BLE button with a long battery life.

It sends out BLE packets when pressed, which can be picked up by Home Assistant via a Bluetooth adapter or using a Bluetooth Proxy. You can make the latter with any ESP32 and https://esphome.io/projects/?type=bluetooth

There is Zigbee, Z-Wave and Matter. These are all smart home standards that are fully local and devices will be able to be set up and used even when the company goes out of business. You are however limited to the things that are standardized.

If you want to go a step further, look for devices made for ESPHome or devices made by Shelly. Both have local APIs and are very hackable.

(disclosure: I am the president of the Open Home Foundation and ESPHome is one of our projects and I am also a board member of the Z-Wave alliance)

Founder Home Assistant here. Want to chime in that I always love to see write ups like these to see the great things what people achieve with Home Assistant.

Not everyone might know, but last year we started the Open Home Foundation[1] as a non-profit in Switzerland and I donated Home Assistant to it[2]. It's fully funded by users. There are no investors involved.

We are fully committed to building out a smart home that focuses on local control and privacy. Yes there are rough edges, but we're actively working on it in the open, with progress being released every month.

~Paulus Founder Home Assistant & President Open Home Foundation https://github.com/balloob

[1]: https://www.openhomefoundation.org [2]: https://www.openhomefoundation.org/blog/announcing-the-open-...

Re:RamaLama on Friday January 31, 2025 @10:36AM (#42888687)
We need to stop chasing compatible API endpoints and work towards an AI standard. I wrote about it here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42887610
Re:How I Use Home Assistant in 2025 on Friday January 24, 2025 @12:09PM (#42815159)
Our launch post covers a lot of the original intentions and a good starting point: https://www.openhomefoundation.org/blog/announcing-the-open-...

The way the world works, you need to be either a company or a non-profit to be able to partner with the industry. Just being an open source project is not enough.

Since the launch of the foundation, we see a large uptick in companies and universities reaching out to partner with Home Assistant. A lot of manufacturers are very happy to see that an independent platform is being established as alternative to the big tech platforms. Universities want to collaborate on energy and privacy research for the smart home. We've also seen some industry donations (ie DuckDuckGo) to support our work.

Re:How I Use Home Assistant in 2025 on Friday January 24, 2025 @11:48AM (#42814920)
Not from our side. You can see our roadmap here; https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2024/11/15/roadmap-2024h2...

Now the community should be able to create such things, as our automation engine is very powerful.

I think the challenge in general with room presence detection is that these systems are not very common/reliable yet for us to aim to standardize.

Re:How I Use Home Assistant in 2025 on Friday January 24, 2025 @11:47AM (#42814907)
You're right. Home Assistant is the best toolbox out there, but people need to build things themselves. That's something we plan to tackle, but no timeline. Leak sensors, smoke detectors, CO2 sensors, garage door openers, they can all have benefit from some built-in automations to warn when a problem is detected.
Re:How I Use Home Assistant in 2025 on Friday January 24, 2025 @11:46AM (#42814889)
We are working on the automations UI as we speak!

(this can also be seen on our roadmap update https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2024/11/15/roadmap-2024h2... )

Re:How I Use Home Assistant in 2025 on Friday January 24, 2025 @11:44AM (#42814874)
We have very good relationships across the industry, especially the bigger companies. I literally just came back from a meeting with Google Home :)

Where we see the most pushback is from industries adjacent to the smart home, as they don't appreciate the openness. Think garage doors, cars, or cloud data providers for info that can be useful in the home.

When someone complains, like Mazda [1], we pull their integration and communicate their stance to our shared users, and people considering buying into their products. We don't fight for access, as a manufacturer with a cloud service will always be able to find a way. If it is a local device though, our community tends to find a way[2]

[1]: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/10/mazdas-dmca-takedown-ki... [2]: https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2023/11/06/removal-of-myq...

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