Hi, I would also like to express in this forum that I’m very disappointed with the deprecation of all the integrations that interface with GPIO directly.
As Home Assistant is an Open Source software we’re in no position to complain, this is a great application and I have to say that I have been very satisfied with it. The developers and the community have put together a great piece of software, and if you want you take it and if not you choose something else.
Nonetheless, Home Assistant is described as being powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. If more and more DIY enthusiast join the community, Home Assistant will keep getting better. I’m afraid this decision can result in a lot of people leaving the Home Assistant project, and turn new users looking for a home automation away from this project because it doesn’t support any more these direct interfaces that were at the core of the solutions that many tinkerers like myself undertook. When I decided to base my home automation solution in Home Assistant an indispensable requirement was the support of GPIO.
I designed and ordered a PCB which interfaces with the Raspberry Pi that runs HASS OS, using 18 different GPIOs, one of them attached to a DHT sensor that provides temperature and humidity readings. In the release notes the use of other HW like ESP devices is recommended, others also suggest using two Raspberry Pis, etc. but they are surely not in any way the best technical solution for setups like mine, making it more complex, costly and less reliable. Many others are in a situation similar to mine, have Raspberry Pi HATS, etc.
Also mentioned in the release notes is the use of custom integrations. A developer has already shared one for GPIO and I am testing one also for the DHT sensor. The problem is that these custom integrations rely on imports from libraries that have to be present in the Home Assistant Operating System distributions (the one that I use). I would like to ask that at least all libraries and other SW dependencies are maintained so we can keep using these custom integrations.
Actually I would like to ask if it is possible to reconsider this decision. I’m sure there are many users that would appreciate that these integrations are kept; and a number of new users will also choose Home Assistant if GPIO is maintained. I don’t believe it’s a huge effort to maintain it, no new functionality is required, just need it to be maintained, it currently works well enough. And the support of the community was really good. Last year there were problems with binary sensors in Raspberry Pi 4, and the problem was resolved. The same with the DHT sensor integration. The GPIO community is very much alive.
But again, if this is not possible, I really hope that you maintain all the necessary requirements and dependencies (e.g. libraries) in the Core SW to keep the Custom Integrations for GPIO, DHT, etc. Otherwise this will not just be a deprecation resolved with custom integrations, it will mean the eventual death of direct GPIO use in Home Assistant, and that would be a shame for many tinkerers and electronics enthusiasts.
In any case, thanks to the developers and the community for all the work that has already been put into this great project!!