My mom was an accountant, she became Excel expert after she turned into her 50s; my mother-in-law was programming on punched card and Fortan. I bet both of my moms can master yaml edit in half hour.
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Started with BASIC on punched cards and/or a teletype https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleprinter at school, then FORTRAN at University. I do still struggle with YAML, but RTFM helps https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/configuration/yaml/
Fortan is also my first language in university. Due some unspeakable reason, I was few students of my class who was in CS major but had learnt Fortan rather than PASCAL as first language.
Zigbee (zha) native integration should also be made into a āfirst-class citizenā together with Z-Wave I think.
@balloob if you can please prioritize the Zigbee (zha) native integration, via zigpy improvements or other.
I have many devices of each today but while I connect all my Z-Wave natively to HA I have gone back to using third-party gateways/bridges/hubs for Zigbee devices since in my experience the native Zigbee (zha) integration is not yet stable enough for day-to-day use. What if the preferred way for users could become to use the Zigbee (zha) native integration via a USB dongle instead of having to use any gateway/bridge/hub like the Ikea TrƄdfri Gateway and Philips Hue Hub to control and maintain/upgrade all your Zigbee devices.
My hope is that while the native Zigbee (zha) integration must be harder to develop because APIs and libraries are not standardized, developers working on its implementation will grow soon since Zigbee devices are so much cheaper thus should gain more users and higher popularity. Therefor I hope HA core team till prioritize its improvement too.
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Just want to let everyone know that weāve just launched PayPal support. We didnāt make it in time before the end of the trial for annual plans but are working on it.
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Just as an FYI, I tried to enter in my payment details yesterday on the Nabu Casa site and I kept getting a āyou postal code is incompleteā error.
I started a new thread about it yesterday but I havenāt had any traction on it.
See here for the details:
I was on my PC using Chrome as my browser.
However, I tried on my Android phone a few hours later last night and I found the āzipā field was all the way to the right of the card info entry line and I finally successfully updated my subscription.
And I went in again now just to see if it was there on my PC and again I didnāt have any way of seeing the āzipā field. I couldnāt scroll or tab over to it.
Something is screwy with the way the site displays on different devices.
Iām good now but others might have the same problem.
EDIT:
Also I tried to submit a new support ticket on the Nabu Casa site and I couldnāt because nothing happened when I clicked the āSubmitā button.
@balloob What is the status of this mentioned remote connection with end-to-end encryption provided by Home Assistant Cloud?
I just posted the same feature request in this other forum thread with a few suggestions on interface implementation from an end-user perspective:
Now that Home Assistant Cloud is a paid service there is at least one ābasicā cloud service feature I as a paying subscription customer had expected from it as a cloud service but I have not seen mentioned in your blog.
That is; for the Home Assistant Cloud service to also provide some type of (optional) SSL Proxy Server and Dynamic DNS (DDNS / DynDNS) services for remote access to each Home Assistant installation that paying subscribers can use.
A very user-friendly out-of-the-box solution for secure remote connection via Home Assistant Cloud to put it simply.
It should at a minimum provide SSL Proxy + DynDNS access for the Home Assistant web interface and the Home Assistant app on iOS and Android, without users have to use third-party services like and Duck DNS with Letās Encrypt or Tor Onion Service, and without users having to open firewall ports or set-up port-forwarding in their routers.
I think that from the perspective end-users we should get a trivial ātick-boxā (option) configuration of this during activation of Home Assistant Cloud service in a HASS installation. Practically from my end-user point-of-view, I would also like it if I during activation of Home Assistant Cloud in the Home Assistant configuration in an easy way got to pick a location alias (name) for that HASS installation, and that I got to pick a unique alias for each of my HASS installations to get all of those aliases listed under my user in Home Assistant Cloud.
You would then hopefully like most other cloud services provide a login site via subdomain such as for example https://cloud.home-assistant.io
If you do this then please also provide users with their own user-page on that site, again like most other cloud services.
That way as an end-user you could also go directly to your user page, such as for example https://cloud.home-assistant.io/userid
Home Assistant Cloud should with that provide secure cloud login service (HTTPS/ SSL with valid certificate) and list all the alias for each of his/her installations and redirect the user when clicking on the alias of a HASS installation.
As such an end-user could in addition even go directly to a specific installation via its alias, such as for example https://cloud.home-assistant.io/userid/installation-alias
For the login service, I would also expect some basic hacker-proofing features such as maybe 15-minute timeout if fail login three times and maybe some type of challenge-response test like CAPTCHA/reCAPTCHA on next login.
Please note that as mentioned I request this as I have not need read anything about such SSL Proxy Server + DynDNS services or similar concept provided by Home Assistant Cloud in the introduction blog post or the website.
Still on the developerās roadmap.
Because, as above, itās still on their roadmap 
As the docs say, all it currently supports is easy setup for Alexa and Google Assistant. Other features are coming, but theyāre not there yet.
I hear what you are saying but then as an end-user I have to question what is currently the value-add with the paid Home Assistant Cloud service today? ā¦I mean no offense, I am (or at have been) a self-proclaimed open source evangelist, but using most other free and open source home automation software or commercial hubs today they already feature relatively easy setup for Alexa and Google Assistant without you having to pay a monthly fee just for that feature.
If HASS had been a commercial company that sold a hub/gateway as hardware product with professional support (email/phone helpdesk, etc.) then I could see myself paying $100-200(US) for that product as a whole, (I have done so before with other product such as example the Samsung SmartThings Hub), but as the Home Assistant Cloud service is presented today you are expected to pay $5(US) a month just for the feature to connect to Alexa and Google Assistant? $5(US) a month is $180(US) for three years and then you do not get any hardware that runs the hub/gateway, (that is much more than I paid for the Samsung SmartThings Hub).
I do not mind donating to open source software or paying for a premium commercial products I like but I honestly think it today not justified to charge $5(US) a month just to connect Home Assistant to Alexa and Google Assistant. Home Assistant Clouds really needs to offer more value-add than that if it is to charge $180(US) for three years of service.
What are the real value-added with Home Assistant today? How do you today justify a cost of $180(US) for three years of service? ā¦and I do not believe that it is fair to charge today for future features thatr might or might not be added later
At the moment thatās all the feature does, i think most people have signed up based on this, on this premise that other features will follow.
If you read the post, they outline what the subscription will be used for including paying for full time employees to build the items on the roadmap.
So yes as of today, very little value add, but then again you will be supporting HA and its goals for the future.
As mentioned in lots of posts if your not keen on paying the subscription, there is the roll your own solutions.
Still it is your own decision if you want to pay the subscription or not. Everything will work the same without it. You just have to work a little more.
Then you list a number of features you want to be implemented in the cloud. Well I doubt that that is something you will get for 60 usd per year anywhere else.
I gladely pay the fee, not because I use the cloud, that will never happen, but because I like the product and cant understand why the developers has to take all the costs so you and me can use if for free. Nothing is free in this world
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Easy integration of Alexa and Google Assistant. The google_assistant component particularly is a non-trivial setup for most folks (based on the volume of posts about it here and in Discord), and requires that you update it every few months when Google disables it.
Itās to make it easier to connect these things, and support the development, and the forums, and ā¦
Then donāt pay. Nobodyās making you.
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Indeed. In fairness, I too am waiting for the remote access before I subscribe, but there is no need to moan about it in the meantime.
I already have remote access, and I use emulated_hue for Alexa integration, so I donāt āneedā to subscribe, but when remote access is available I will subscribe and take advantage of that service and the better intertwined Alexa integration.
Itās all about personal choice 
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It should be 3$
So many times I have written about this subject. I just dont understand people. If you dont want to subscribe, just dont subscribe. Its easy. Nothing will change. You just have to work a little extra. I will not use the HA cloud because my home automation/security does not and will not use any Alexa or Home Assistant. I use some tts from Amazon but I create the speech outside of my HA and the use the files local.
But I will gladely pay the subscription to support the project.
I have access to the system via Internet using Cloudflare Access, the most secure system I can think of. It cost me about the same as the HA cloud so I will keep it
In my opinion if you want to automate your home. using Alexa or Google assistant, have a secure remote connection etc, then 5$ is cheap and a very small part of what the hardware will cost you.
There is no connection between Open Source and being free, its a myth.
I can compare with another system. Prestashop that we use for a webshop. Its open source and the base shop script is free. But to have a working shop that follow all legal rules you will have to buy a lot of costly components. These compnents come with 6 months email support included. After 6 months you have to pay again. All components in HA is free because the developers has choosen that model.
As I understand it the subscription fee will be used to pay for running costs. Perhaps if enough people subscribe, a developer can be employed to help make the platform even better and take some load of the developers that spend a lot of free time on HA. Perhaps there will even be time to upgrade the documentation.
So for me there is no doubt about the 5 $. Just hope that enough people subscribe to keep the project alive. To many very good projects have died because the users dont want to support it financially. Please dont let that happen with HA, its too good for that
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Very well put and I couldnāt agree more. Thank you for putting into words what so many of us, I am sure, are feeling.
Kinda contrary to labelling it āopen-sourceā though donāt ya think? Unless you adhere to āwell, other people do itā.
I mean, the cloud service is still optionalā¦ so itās all a moot point.
You have to explain what you mean??
And as I understand it not all of the software running it is open source. It all comes down to what licence it is created under