2024.12.5

2022.9: Home Assistant Birthday Release!

Zack Barett Zack Barett Comments

Home Assistant Core 2022.9! 🎂

If you don’t know yet, this month is Home Assistant’s birthday! 🎉🎉 On September 17th, 2013 Paulus Schoutsen made the first commit for Home Assistant that started a snowball of Home Automation enthusiasts willing to contribute to the open-source project. 9 Years later, Home Assistant is actively used by more than 500,000 people and growing every day. Nabu Casa also turns 4 this month. Turning 4 years old and gaining a new full-time employee 🍄. This month it seems everyone was in the birthday spirit as we have a jam-packed release!

The automation engine is a big reason why Home Assistant has so many users. So in the spirit of Streamlining Experiences, we thought a revamp was due. You will notice some huge improvements to the look and feel of the Automation Editor that we think will greatly improve its usability. I know I for sure see a huge difference!

Now I know that everyone usually expects @frenck to be writing these release notes, but he took a well deserved vacation! And now you are stuck with me. Zack 😀. I hope you enjoy the release and everything that was packed into it!

– Zack

Don’t forget to join our release party live stream on YouTube today at 12:00 PDT / 21:00 CET!

Paul Bottein joins Nabu Casa

We are excited to announce the newest member of the Nabu Casa team, Paul Bottein.

Paul is most known for his Mushroom cards and a few additions to Home Assistant frontend like the Icon Picker. Paul is an incredible developer and his expertise in dashboard design will bring a lot to the Home Assistant frontend.

Welcome aboard and excited to see what Paul will bring to Home Assistant!

Streamlining automations

We felt that there were quite a few improvements we could do in order to better streamline automation creation. That’s why this release, we really took a long look at some of the main user experience issues. The new automation editor improvements focus on readability and ease of use. This will also make editing automations on your phone much easier!

First, you will notice the biggest change, collapsible cards for triggers, conditions, and actions. This change allows you to really focus on what you are currently working on instead of having everything open all at once. When you first open your automation in the editor, you will see all cards collapsed with an auto-generated explanation of what that section is doing. This allows you to easily choose which section you want to edit and focus in on it.

Screenshot showing the new automation editor with an easier overview

Next, there were a few items and options moved. You can see most of these in the top right overflow menu. For example, if you want to rename or update the description of your automation you can do that via the overflow menu > Rename. Moving these items to the overflow ensures that the main editor page is used for the main functions of your automation.

Screenshot showing the new automation editor overflow menus

Last, but definitely not least, Frenck added some long requested features to the automation forms. State and Attribute value auto-completion! Now if you are adding a state trigger, you can choose from a list of known states for that device type. These are also all translated into your language. Now there is no need to remember or find the states possible or format the state that needs to be entered. Just choose a state from the dropdown and let your worries wisp away!

Screenshot showing the new automation editor state and attribute value selector

New helper: Weekly schedule

Have you ever wanted to run a schedule-based automation for the same time each week or day? Well, you are now in luck! With the addition of the Schedule helper, you are now able to easily create these schedules to build more consistent automations and timings.

A gif showcasing the new schedule helper and how to use the user interface

Bluetooth everywhere

Last release we introduced the Bluetooth integration. This release, it’s on fire 🔥 Not only do we now support multiple Bluetooth adapters, we also support ESPHome devices acting as Bluetooth proxies for your home. Wait what?!

Yes 😎. You can now greatly expand the Bluetooth reach of Home Assistant using ordinary ESP32 devices. No extra hardware needed.

Picture of a home showing how Bluetooth data is proxied via ESPHome devices to Home Assistant

To get a proxy up and running, head over to the Bluetooth proxy installer website and install one straight from your browser.

Bluetooth proxies are currently limited to forwarding passive data. Active connections are coming in a future release. Bluetooth integrations in Home Assistant will transparently use Bluetooth proxies without any extra coding!

Most integrations now support using the adapter with the best signal to connect devices that need an active connection. Extension cables, USB-Ethernet extenders, or USB-IP coupled with an additional Bluetooth adapter can significantly extend your active connection range.

There is more! Besides 9 new supported brands, there is also support for a new open standard: BTHome by @Ernst79. It is automatically discovered by Home Assistant, devices can run over a year on a single battery and it supports data encryption.

Finally, suppose you are using the Home Assistant Operating System. In that case, we recommend upgrading to version 9 or later when it is released, as it comes with a faster D-Bus broker and newer Bluetooth firmware which can significantly enhance Bluetooth performance.

Thanks to @bdraco, @Ernst79, @JesseRockz, @jc2k for all the hard, amazing and epic work 🙏.

Z-Wave Firmware updates now live

Screenshot showing zwave device updates in the settings page

In 2022.7, we added support for updating Z-Wave device firmware, but the catch was that you needed the firmware files from the manufacturer in order to complete the update. @AlCalzone wasn’t satisfied with this approach and began working on a better solution. That better solution is here with the introduction of the Z-Wave JS Firmware Update Service! For supported manufacturers, Z-Wave JS can now automatically detect, download, and install a firmware update if it is available for your device. This will be done the same way you are currently updating Home Assistant. You will see a notification in your settings menu and you can update right from there. Thanks @raman325

For now, only Jasco products are supported. Nabu Casa has been talking to other manufacturers to get more devices supported. To ensure our users can take advantage of this feature, we added update entities for your devices that will check once a day for new firmware updates. Nifty!

Zigbee backup and restore + migration

The Zigbee Home Automation (ZHA) integration now supports network backups and migrating between Zigbee coordinators. Backups are taken automatically but can also be manually created from the configuration page. After restoring a Home Assistant backup, you can re-configure ZHA and migrate to a new Zigbee coordinator without any loss of your settings or devices that were connected. This is helpful if your current radio fails or a new radio comes out that you may want to migrate to.

Screenshot showing the Zigbee Home Automation configuration page and the new backup functionality

Processor and memory usage

The Hardware page just got a lot more interesting. You can go check out live statistics on your Memory and Processor usage when you load the Hardware page in your system menu. These statistics will represent your entire Home Assistant instance, giving you insight in how your hardware is handling your day to day tasks. This will not show any history but will display 5 minutes of live data once you load the page.

Screenshot showing the processor and memory usage on the hardware page

Other noteworthy changes

There is much more juice in this release; here are some of the other noteworthy changes this release:

  • Entity more info dialog merged with entity settings. Thanks @balloob
  • You can now enable local control of your Awair Element device. Thanks @zachberger
  • MiFlora now supports polling of the Battery sensor. Thanks @bdraco
  • August locks are now supported under the Yale Access Bluetooth integration. Thanks @bdraco
  • Many more Bluetooth adapters are now supported for the Bluetooth integration. Thanks @bdraco
  • The SwitchBot integration now supports the Color Bulb and Light strips. Thanks @bdraco
  • Automations, Scripts and Scenes tables received a new overflow menu that will allow for more actions directly from the picker. Thanks @bramkragten and @piitaya
  • You can now reorder automation elements using drag and drop. Thanks @piitaya
  • Icons have been added to more menus throughout the UI. Thanks @frenck
  • Automation triggers can now be aliased. Thanks @frenck

New Integrations

We welcome the following new integrations in this release:

Integrations now available to set up from the UI

The following integrations are now available via the Home Assistant UI:

Release 2022.9.1 - September 8

Release 2022.9.2 - September 11

Release 2022.9.3 - September 13

Release 2022.9.4 - September 14

Release 2022.9.5 - September 18

Release 2022.9.6 - September 22

Release 2022.9.7 - September 26

Need help? Join the community

Home Assistant has a great community of users who are all more than willing to help each other out. So, join us!

Our very active Discord chat server is an excellent place to be at, and don’t forget to join our amazing forums.

Found a bug or issue? Please report it in our issue tracker, to get it fixed! Or, check our help page for guidance for more places you can go.

Are you more into email? Sign-up for our Building the Open Home Newsletter to get the latest news about features, things happening in our community and other news about building an Open Home; straight into your inbox.

Backward-incompatible changes

Below is a listing of the breaking change for this release, per subject or integration. Click on one of those to read more about the breaking change for that specific item.

BMW Connected Drive

Entity sensor.<your_vehicle>_charging_time_label (disabled by default) has been removed as it is not provided by the upstream library/API anymore.

(@rikroe - #76616) (documentation)

The attribute charging_status of binary_sensor.<your_car>_charging_status has been removed. Please use sensor.charging_status instead.

(@rikroe - #74921) (documentation)

HomeKit

The Homekit PM2.5 µg/m3 mappings in the HomeKit integration now use the values based on the US AQI set by the EPA.

HomeKit Previous PM2.5 µg/m3 New PM2.5 µg/m3
Excellent <= 25 <= 12
Good <= 50 <= 35.4
Fair <= 100 <= 55.4
Inferior <= 300 <= 150.4
Poor > 300 > 150.4

(@sarabveer - #76358) (documentation)

International Space Station (ISS)

It will no longer be possible to know if the international space station (ISS) is above you nor the timestamp for the next rise of the station as these features have been removed in the underlying API.

The binary sensor will be removed and all automations relying on this will no longer work. Unfortunately there is no substitute for this. Instead we have introduced a new sensor, that still tells you the location of the ISS, while showing how many people are in space, as main state.

(@DurgNomis-drol - #77218) (documentation)

Litter-Robot

The previously deprecated reset_waste_drawer and set_wait_time services from the litterrobot vacuum entity, have been removed.

(@natekspencer - #77052) (documentation)

MQTT

Support for MQTT climate hold and away modes, which was deprecated in Home Assistant Core 2022.3.0, has been removed. The hold and away modes are replaced by preset_mode.

(@jbouwh - #76299) (documentation)

Open Exchange Rates

The sensor now has a unit of measurement according to the exchange rate quote.

(@MartinHjelmare - #76017) (documentation)

Roku

Roku media player will indicate IDLE instead of HOME when at home screen. You can still detect home screen by looking at app_id attribute.

(@elupus - #77385) (documentation)

SMS notifications via GSM-modem

Setting up the notify platform of the SMS integration by a platform section in YAML configuration is no longer supported. The sms platform section under notify: can be removed from your YAML configuration files.

A recipient can be specified by using the target parameter in the notify service call instead.

(@ocalvo - #76733) (documentation)

Utility Meter

The previously deprecated utility_meter entities, used to change tariffs, have been removed. Please use the provided select entity instead.

(@dgomes - #76480) (documentation)

Z-Wave

You must use zwave-js-server 1.22.1 or greater (schema 22).

With this release, you will need to update your zwave-js-server instance.

  • If you use the zwave_js addon, you need to have at least version 0.1.66.
  • If you use the zwavejs2mqtt addon, you need to have at least version 0.46.0.
  • If you use the zwavejs2mqtt Docker container, you need to have at least version 7.0.0.
  • If you run your own Docker container, or some other installation method, you will need to update your zwave-js-server instance to at least 1.22.1.

(@raman325 - #75795 #76903) (documentation)

If you are a custom integration developer and want to learn about breaking changes and new features available for your integration: Be sure to follow our developer blog. The following are the most notable for this release:

All changes

Of course, there is a lot more in this release. You can find a list of all changes made here: Full changelog for Home Assistant Core 2022.9