šØOn April 12th, weāre going live with this yearās State of the Open Home - our annual recap of the previous year and look ahead to the next. Just like past years, this live stream will be packed with awesome announcements, updates, and cool community highlights. (Got 11 hours to spare? Check out our last 5 State of live streams!)
This marks a full year since the founding of the Open Home Foundation and Home Assistant becoming part of the foundation. Weāll be taking a look back at what has been a very big year, and using this time to give you some big updates. These will include new projects becoming a part of the foundation š, new supporters š, and whatās in store for our Works with Home Assistant program š¤.
Weāll also be highlighting some of the big findings of our 2024 Home Assistant survey, where over 8,500 of you told us about yourself, your homes, and how you use Home Assistant. Weāll also announce Home Assistantās 2025 roadmap, and how your feedback is shaping the future of the Open Home.
š Be sure to click to get notified when it starts (Saturday, April 12 - 18:00 GMT / 20:00 CEST / 14:00 EDT / 11:00 PDT), and we canāt wait to see you in the comments!
Awesome to hear more about Music Assistent and more focus on music playback!
@marcelveldt any thoughts on Music Assistent handling separate music libraries and playlists for multiple users via different media player client? The main use case for that is so families with kids can have different filters and views so not have to share the same playlists and not be forced to see what other family members are playing.
Alsos great to know that Home Assistant and ESPHome media player clients support for audio streaming protocols for syncronized multi-room music playback from Music Assistent is planned even if not listed on the roadmap!
Top of my own wish list is otherwise to be able to convert existing Google Nest / Google Home speaker hardware (and Amazon Eco speakers) into ESPHome based Home Assistant voice assistants by replacing the PCB circuit board, so do not have to fully replace them all.
Thanks for an excellent range of talks on all aspects of HA!
The roadmap concept of adding a community database of metadata to enable better organisation of entities, and more better automatic setup sounds ambitious but worth the effort.
Adding a water leak sensor could suggest adding a āLeak Detected Notificationā as a starting point and also include the battery state in a dedicated dashboard. The issue today is (almost) everything gets added to the GUI regardless how useful it is, and that generates clutter as Madelina said.
This is something Iāve seen beforeā¦
Fibaro Home Centre had predefined actions for stuff like fire/ leak/ intruder. Not great, but Fibaro sensors with Fibaro logic allowed them to infer more.
openHAB added the Semantic Model several releases ago.
On the surface, this is a way to model Home -> Floor 2 but goes deeper to include not just physical geography but also logical structure like Corner Lamp -> Colour Temp tying entities/properties to devices.
You could also argue the community metadata db already exists in several forms. Z-Wave and Zigbee define entities with semantic grouping in both the device discovery process and additional configuration such as āquirks filesā. This allows poor manufacturer choices to be fixed, or kit re-purposed (e.g. IKEA remote).
The openHAB semantic model took me several attempts to configure just the physical geography of my home. Way back in time I created floor plans for MisterHouse, and even with them, tweaks were needed. Is the conservatory in the garden? Is the loft floor 2 or floor 3?
Expanding semantics from physical into logical can require more choices which partly depend on how a device is being used. IKEA 5-button remotes seldom are used in the way IKEA expected - DIM UP on one remote turns on a cycle trainer!
To get this to work, mixing community guides (hereās one way to do itā¦), with semantic data that can be downloaded (e.g. Z-Wave quirks) and local configuration (Iām doing something different but understand YAML) might give a leg-up to beginners but not impede experts.
Iād suggest reading the openHAB docs as an example of how physical and logical can be modelled - the first attempt probably needs lots of caffeine, but thatās where community-contributed data can help.
With so much info spread out across forums, GitHub, videos and other places, you pretty much have to be a dedicated HA user to piece it all together and really understand the bigger picture.
Same with the docs. Itās often tricky to find what you need unless you already know the exact term or where to look.
These days, AI has kind of taken over as an umbrella search tool for me. It actually covers 80 to 90 percent of my use cases and has been very productive, especially when no one has the answer in the forum or when stuff is hard to track down.
Still, having a clear, written roadmap or more structured documentation would make things way more accessible, particularly for those of us who prefer a quick read over watching a long video. It also plays a key role in helping completely new users understand how to get started with HA and where to find the information they need.
In short, it just felt like a long and exhausting hardcore sales pitch.
There were no hard facts about the foundationās revenue streams, annual report, budget or who is actually in charge, meaning the still oddly secretive āthe teamā. Also missing were details about its mission, funding, board members, foundation charter, articles of association, bylaws and deed of foundation. Not a single word about whether Nabu Casa will continue to operate in the US given the current situation.
Maybe I missed some of this buried deep in the video, but I have not found anything similar online either. Normally, a foundation like this would be very open with such information to ensure transparency around its operations.
All in all, you almost get the feeling youāve stumbled into some kind of religious cult with all the hallelujah.
Also, Iāve tried watching some of the release party videos, but as has happened many times before, I stopped after 5ā10 minutes because I just couldnāt get through all the inside jokes, giggles and mutual admiration. Itās honestly just tiring.
IMO, the content doesnāt really suit either beginners or experienced hardcore HA users. Iād suggest shortening the whole thing and focusing more on the actual content, rather than making it feel like an internal conference.
Start by clearly stating who the target audience is and what topics will be covered. Ideally, break it down into chapters or sections to make it easier to navigate.
How do you sell something that has no cost? I watched the whole event and maybe Nabu Casa subscription was mentioned 2-3 times?
Was it at times unpolished? Yes but not unexpected for a non-profit.
Were they genuinely excited? Sure, and I canāt criticize them for that.
They were honest about some of the issues facing Home Assistant as a platform for regular people and not IT people or developers. I think their future plans sound reasonable in solving the issues.
In either case, I canāt agree about it feeling like a ālong and exhausting hardcore sales pitchā.
Maybe I was unclear, but I do not think I mentioned anything about them selling stuff.
My point was more about the overall tone and structure of the presentation. It came across as overly polished in some parts, oddly vague in others, and with a kind of ācheerleadingā vibe that made it feel like a pitch, even if there was nothing for sale.
Also, it is not really about whether the event was polished or not. I understand that you view it as a non-profit with limited resources. But the reality is that it is not. What I am reacting to is the lack of basic transparency you would normally expect from a foundation, the presence of the commercial arm in Nabu Casa, and the secretive āteamā that seems to act as the governing body.
Things like revenue sources, governance structure, mission, legal documents and similar is completely missing, both in the video statement and online.
That is pretty unusual if you want to build trust in a so-called ānon-profitā foundation.
And lastly, genuine excitement is great, but without clear information, transparency and structure behind it, it is hard to fully buy in. At least for me.
Thanks, but I havenāt been able to find any formal documents or other accounting records that, in line with good practice, should be available for non-profit foundations, such as annual reports, audit statements, or info on board composition and grant allocations.
Thanks for the links anyway. And yeah, no sales there eitherā¦
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this post!
