On July 25, the second Home Assistant Community Day meetup took place in Kyiv, Ukraine. 
Thank you to everyone who attended the event in person and to everyone who joined the livestream. The atmosphere was relaxed and friendly, and some of the attendees even treated everyone to pizza 
I would also like to thank all the speakers who shared their knowledge and projects with the community.
Bohdan Sverdlyuk — The Universal Matter Standard
I talked about how Matter allows devices from different manufacturers to work together while providing local control through Wi-Fi, Ethernet, or Thread.
I explained how a Thread network works, the role of a Thread Border Router and Matter Bridge, and the Multi-Admin feature, which allows one device to be connected to several smart home ecosystems at the same time.
I also demonstrated how Matter works with Home Assistant and discussed the standard’s advantages, limitations, and the things to consider when choosing compatible devices.
Leonid Shevtsov — Multi-Layer Lighting Controlled with a Single Button: How I Automated My Bathroom Lighting
Leonid explained how he created a system for controlling several layers of bathroom lighting using a single ordinary wall button.
Home Assistant automatically selects the appropriate brightness, colour temperature, and light sources depending on the time of day.
Special attention was given to reliability. Even when Home Assistant or Wi-Fi is unavailable, the physical light switch continues to work normally.
The presentation is also available as a detailed article.
Yevhen Labunskyi — Autonomous Decision-Making in Smart Home Energy Management Systems
Yevhen presented Edge.Web, a system he developed from scratch to automate energy management in his own home.
The main goal was to create a reliable intelligent algorithm capable of making autonomous energy consumption decisions based on solar power generation and the current load on the electrical grid.
Volodymyr Stelmashchuk — Project Prismo: An Affordable DIY NFC Lock
Volodymyr presented Prismo, an open-source NFC/RFID access controller that can be assembled for about $12 using an ESP32-C3 and a PN532 module.
Using an NFC card or key fob, the device can unlock doors and lockers or control different types of equipment.
The system is completely self-hosted, does not depend on cloud services, supports MQTT, and can be integrated with Home Assistant.
The project is also suitable for beginners. It uses affordable components and a simple single-layer printed circuit board, while the ready-made firmware can be installed directly through a web browser.
The schematics, firmware, web application, and assembly instructions are available in the open-source Prismo repository on GitHub.
Denys Dovhan — How to Create Integrations for Home Assistant
Denys explained how integrations allow Home Assistant to communicate with devices, external APIs, and different protocols, transforming the received data into familiar entities and actions.
He described the structure of an integration, including files such as manifest.json and config_flow.py , platforms for sensors, switches, and lights, and the DataUpdateCoordinator , which provides centralised data updates.
Denys also compared installing integrations manually, through HACS, and adding them to Home Assistant Core. He discussed integration quality requirements and demonstrated how AI agents can assist with writing code and checking the latest documentation.
For the practical example, he used his own HA Aerial Danger integration for monitoring aerial threats in Ukraine.
All the presentations were extremely interesting, and I highly recommend checking them out.
Many thanks to the Open Home Foundation and the Home Assistant community for their support.
I would also like to thank our event partner, SMLIGHT, a Ukrainian manufacturer of smart home controllers, coordinators, and hubs.
