2024.6: Dipping our toes in the world of AI using LLMs 🤖

Home Assistant Core 2024.6! 🎉
Welcome to another loaded release of Home Assistant! Packed with many exciting
new features, this month is most definitely one to remember.
Let’s talk about AI. AI might just as well be the talk of the century. These
so-called LLMs most certainly open up a whole new world of possibilities.
When we first introduced the OpenAI and Google AI conversation agents for Assist,
one of the most requested features was the ability to control your home with it.
Now for the big news:
Well, as of today, you can control your home with an AI! 🤖
But there is a lot more to this release. Super simple media player commands,
more data table improvements, tag entities, collapsible blueprint sections,
and so much more!
I’m personally most excited about the new features in the dashboarding area.
Being able to conditionally show sections and cards is definitely a game-changer
for my dashboards.
Enjoy the release!
../Frenck

Don’t forget to join our release party live stream on YouTube
5 June 2024, at 20:00 GMT / 12:00 PST / 21:00 CEST!

Voice & Assist
This month, we are continuing our work on improving Assist’s out-of-the-box
capabilities: Not only are we adding features that you would expect from a
voice assistant, such as media control, but we are leap-frogging ahead with
some new exciting developments and experimenting with AI! 🤖
We will have more to announce during a soon-to-be-announced Voice – Chapter 7
livestream on June the 26th! Keep an eye out for that! 🎙️

Dipping our toes in the world of AI using LLMs
Our voice assistant’s brain is called a conversation agent.
It is responsible for understanding the intention behind the spoken command,
performing an action, and generating a response.
Since the beginning of our voice journey, we allowed you to switch your
conversation agent for an LLM-based one. This led to some very funny experiments,
such as our infamous interview with Mario.
Until now, these two worlds (our own Home Assistant conversation agent
controlling your home and LLM-based conversation agents) did not overlap;
it was impossible to control your home from an LLM-based conversation agent.
Today, we’re happy to announce that we are closing this gap!

When setting up an LLM-based conversation agent, you can decide to let
your conversation agent control your home with a flick of a switch.

With this new setting, LLM-based conversation agents can tap into our
intentIntent is a term used with voice assistants. The intent is what Home Assistant thinks you want it to do when it extracts a command from your voice or text utterance.
[Learn more] system, which powers Assist. They also get access to every
entityAn entity represents a sensor, actor, or function in Home Assistant. Entities are used to monitor physical properties or to control other entities. An entity is usually part of a device or a service.
[Learn more] exposed to Assist. That way, you control what your agents
have access to.
Tapping into our intent system is great because it works out of the box.
LLM-based conversation agents can do everything that Assist can do.
The added benefit is that they are capable of reasoning beyond words,
which Assist was incapable of doing.
For example, if you have a light called “Webcam light” exposed in your
“office” area, you can give direct commands such as:

Turn on the office webcam light.

That was also working with Assist previously, but you can also give more
complex commands, such as:

I’m going to a meeting, can you please make sure people see my face?

The agent will figure out the intention behind the words
and call the correct intent on the matching exposed entities.

What about custom intents?

Our intent system has been built from the start to be extensible.
Custom integrations and even users can register their own intents.
This allows you to guide the agent beyond what’s capable out of the box.
Here is an example of a custom intent that explains to the agent what
to do when I leave my home.
conversation:
intents:
LeaveHome:
– “Leave home”

intent_script:
LeaveHome:
description: “Launch the leave home script. To be used when I am about to leave my home.”
action:
– service: script.leave_home
data: {}
speech:
text: “Done”

With this YAML snippet added to my configuration.yamlThe configuration.yaml file is the main configuration file for Home Assistant. It lists the integrations to be loaded and their specific configurations. In some cases, the configuration needs to be edited manually directly in the configuration.yaml file. Most integrations can be configured in the UI.[Learn more], if the
agent understands that I am leaving home, it will not turn off what it thinks
I want, it will run my leave_home script, which is precisely what
I want it to do.

This release makes it available for our OpenAI and Google AI
integrationsIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more.
[Learn more]. To make it easier to get started with LLMs,
we have updated them with recommended model settings that strike the right
balance between accuracy, speed, and cost. If you had them set up previously,
we recommend enabling the recommended settings and emptying the instructions.
Our recommended model settings perform equally well for voice assistant tasks.
Google is 14x cheaper than OpenAI, but OpenAI is better at answering non-smart
home questions. We are preparing a blog post with a deep dive into the research
that went into this feature, coming soon™!
Thanks to everyone who contributed to this feature! @shulyaka, @tronikos,
@allenporter, @synesthesiam, @jlpouffier, and @balloob!

Improved media player commands
We have introduced new media player intentsIntent is a term used with voice assistants. The intent is what Home Assistant thinks you want it to do when it extracts a command from your voice or text utterance.
[Learn more] that allow you to do
more while saying less. You can say the following voice commands to control
media players in the same area as your Assist device:

“Pause”
“Resume”
“Next”
“Set the volume to 50%”

Up until now, we have only proposed sentences targeting a specific entity by
its name. Due to this limitation, these intents were not the most user-friendly,
as the sentences were too long to say: “Skip to the next song on the TV”.
We added two features to get to the smallest sentences possible. Context
awareness makes our voice assistant aware of the devices in the same area as
the satellite. We have also created a smart matching strategy that finds the
right media player to target.
For example, if you say “pause”, the voice assistant will automatically
target the media player that is playing.

Just ensure your voice assistant device is assigned to an area with an exposed
media player, and you are good to go.

Dashboards
Work has continued, making the dashboard customization and organization easier
and more intuitive. This month, we are adding a new feature for our new sections
and customization for backgrounds, which everyone in your home will enjoy.

Show sections conditionally
We added a visibility option to the new sections dashboard feature. This
amazing new feature allows you to hide or show a section based on certain
conditions.
For example, you may want to display only a section on mobile when you’re at
home. Or, only show the switch to turn off kitchen lights when the kitchen lights
are actually on. Maybe you have that one section only relevant to you or your
partner, and you want to hide it from the kids.

It uses the same conditions as condition cards,
meaning you have a lot of flexibility in what you can do.

Control visibility of cards
Wait, we didn’t stop there! This same visibility feature is now also available
for cards! Oh yes! 🚀

You can now hide or show a card based on certain conditions. This allows you to
create more dynamic dashboards that adapt to your needs. The big difference is
that you don’t need a condition card to use this feature. It is available
directly in the card configuration in the Visibility tab.

Setting a dashboard background
@Nezz contributed a great new feature to our dashboarding UI: the ability to
set a background image for your dashboard!
Previously, this was only possible by editing YAML, but now you can do it
directly from the UI. Even better, you can upload an image directly from your
computer or provide a URL to one!

Photo: Body of Water Between Green Leaf Trees by Ian Turnell.
The same ability (to upload images directly from your computer) was added to
the picture card, too! Thanks, @karwosts, for that one!

Data tables improvements
Like the last release,
this release keeps improving our data tables.
When we introduced data groupings
in the tables, you asked for a way to collapse and expand those groupings,
so we did in the last release! But then we quickly realized that it was not
enough, and you wanted to be able to collapse and expand all groups at once.
So, we did that for this release!

We’ve also expanded the voice assistant expose data table to allow grouping
by area and domain.
Additionally, filters you’ve set in the data tables are now saved in your
browser session. Meaning, if you navigate away from the page and come back, your
filters will still be there. But! Each browser tab or window has its own session,
meaning you can have different filters in different tabs or windows that are
remembered for that specific tab or window.

Integrations
Thanks to our community for keeping pace with the new integrationsIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more.
[Learn more]
and improvements to existing ones! You’re all awesome 🥰

New integrations
We welcome the following new integrations in this release:

Airgradient, added by @joostlekProvides air quality data from your local Airgradient device.

APsystems, added by @mawoka-myblockMonitor your APsystems EZ1 microinverters.

Azure data explorer, added by @kaareserasForward events from Home Assistant to the Azure Data Explorer for analysis.

IMGW-PIB, added by @bieniuHydrological data from the Institute of Meteorology and
Water Management—National Research Institute provides information
about rivers and water reservoirs in Poland.

Intelligent Storage Acceleration, added by @bdracoIntelligent Storage Acceleration Library (ISAL) is used to accelerate our
Home Assistant frontend. It is automatically enabled/activated.

Monzo, added by @JakeMartin-ICLConnect your Monzo bank account to Home Assistant and get insights
into your account balance.

Noteworthy improvements to existing integrations
It is not just new integrationsIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more.
[Learn more] that are added; existing
integrations are also constantly improved. Here are some of the noteworthy
changes to existing integrations:

Do you need a wireless device that can bridge a larger distance, like
kilometers? A LoRa device might be a good option. Thanks to @angelnu
we now have a working integration for The Things Network.

@starkillerOG added support for PIR and battery sensors to the Reolink
integrations. Nice!
The Teslemetry integration has been expanded tremendously, adding new
platforms and features. Awesome job @Bre77!
Limited templates can now be used to disable triggersA trigger is a set of values or conditions of a platform that are defined to cause an automation to run.[Learn more],
conditionsConditions are an optional part of an automation that will prevent an action from firing if they are not met.[Learn more], and actionsActions are used in several places in Home Assistant. As part of a script or automation, actions define what is going to happen once a trigger is activated. In scripts, an action is called sequence.
[Learn more]. @farmio thought this might
be helpful for blueprintA blueprint is a script or automation configuration with certain parts marked as configurable. This allows users to create multiple scripts or automations based on the same blueprint, with each having its own configuration-specific settings.[Learn more] creators.

@Anrijs added support for the Aranet Radiation devices to the
Aranet integration. Nice!
You can now set the cutting height of your Husqvarna Automower and there
are switches to make it stay out of certain zones. Thanks @Thomas55555!

@thomaskistler added flow and rain sensor support to the Hydrawise
integration. Great!
The SwitchBot Cloud integration now supports the SwitchBot Meter,
MeterPlus, and Outdoor Meter. Thanks @laurence-presland!

Integrations reaching platinum quality level
The following integrationsIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more.
[Learn more] reached the platinum 🏆 level on our
integration quality scale. These integrations are
the best of the best and give you an excellent out-of-the-box experience.

Congratulations to all the developers who worked on these integrations!

Now available to set up from the UI
While most integrationsIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more.
[Learn more] can be set up directly from the Home Assistant
user interface, some were only available using YAML configuration. We keep moving
more integrations to the UI, making them more accessible for everyone
to set up and use.
The following integrations are now available via the Home Assistant UI:

Farewell to the following
The following integrationsIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more.
[Learn more] are also no longer available as
of this release:

Ambiclimate has been removed by @gjohansson-ST. Their services have been
terminated, effective March 31, 2024.

Matter turns 1.3
As one of the first in the industry, we proudly announce that Home Assistant
is already based on the latest MatterMatter is an open-source standard that defines how to control smart home devices on a Wi-Fi or Thread network.
[Learn more] specification: Matter 1.3! 😎
This updated version of the Matter SDK improves the reliability
and compatibility of Matter devices.
This release also improves and expands device support. Matter-based
air purifiers and room air conditioner devices are now supported, thermostats
and other climate devices had important fixes around set points, and updates
to our discovery ensure that we can represent more data for most devices.
A couple of Matter devices out there have so-called “custom clusters”.
Custom clusters are a standardized way for manufacturers to include
non-standardized data. We want to support custom clusters, so we need
to add support for each one individually.
This release allows Home Assistant to be notified when the data of a custom
cluster changes (instead of polling for it on an interval). This will reduce the
network traffic and improve the performance of your Matter network,
especially on bigger ThreadThread is a low-power mesh networking standard that is specifically designed for smart home applications. It is a protocol that defines how devices communicate.
[Learn more] networks.

Other noteworthy changes
There are many more improvements in this release; here are some of the other
noteworthy changes this release:

A default code can now be set in the entity settings for every alarm control
panel entitiesAn entity represents a sensor, actor, or function in Home Assistant. Entities are used to monitor physical properties or to control other entities. An entity is usually part of a device or a service.
[Learn more]. Nice work @gjohansson-ST!

@Troon added a filter to our templatesA template is an automation definition that can include variables for the service or data from the trigger values. This allows automations to generate dynamic actions.[Learn more]: add. This filter allows
you to add a value similar to the existing multiply. Great!
A new action building block has been added to our automationsAutomations in Home Assistant allow you to automatically respond to things that happen in and around your home.[Learn more] and
scriptsScripts are components that allow users to specify a sequence of actions to be executed by Home Assistant when turned on.
[Learn more] by @surfingbytes and @frenck: Run sequence of actions.
This allows you to group multiple actionsActions are used in several places in Home Assistant. As part of a script or automation, actions define what is going to happen once a trigger is activated. In scripts, an action is called sequence.
[Learn more] together or run multiple
sequences of actions in parallel.
Sensors can be grouped to calculate, for example, their sum or mean value.
Thanks to @CoRfr, it is now possible to calculate the standard deviation
of a group of sensors. Cool!

Disabling expiration of login tokens
A few releases ago, we introduced the automatic expiration of logins. If a login
session wasn’t used for 90 days, it would expire and be automatically cleaned up.
Some of you have expressed that you would like to disable this feature for
various reasons. For example, because of a secondary holiday home one doesn’t
regularly visit, or because of relatives who can only come over a few times
a year. We added a new option to the user profile settings to disable
the expiration of specific login tokens.

You can find these token in your profile settings, under the Security tab.

Tag entities!
Home Assistant has had support for tags for a long time. The tags feature
allowed NFC tags or QR codes to be used with Home Assistant, for example, to
trigger automationsAutomations in Home Assistant allow you to automatically respond to things that happen in and around your home.[Learn more].
However, tags were not real entities and, thus, not always as logical to use.
With this release, @gjohansson-ST changed this!
Tags are now normal entitiesAn entity represents a sensor, actor, or function in Home Assistant. Entities are used to monitor physical properties or to control other entities. An entity is usually part of a device or a service.
[Learn more] and can be used in automationsAutomations in Home Assistant allow you to automatically respond to things that happen in and around your home.[Learn more],
scriptsScripts are components that allow users to specify a sequence of actions to be executed by Home Assistant when turned on.
[Learn more], templatesA template is an automation definition that can include variables for the service or data from the trigger values. This allows automations to generate dynamic actions.[Learn more], and even be added to your
your dashboards!

Collapsible sections for blueprints!
@karwosts makes an appearance again this release with another one of his QoL
(Quality of Live) improvements. He added the ability to add collapsible sections
to blueprintsA blueprint is a script or automation configuration with certain parts marked as configurable. This allows users to create multiple scripts or automations based on the same blueprint, with each having its own configuration-specific settings.[Learn more]. This allows blueprint creators to group configuration
options together or hide advanced or less common options by default.

Each section can be collapsed or uncollapsed by clicking on the section header.

Thanks @karwosts!
Read more about blueprint input sections in our documentation.
Looking for an interesting blueprint to get started? Check out the
Blueprints Exchange on our community forum! There are great automation
blueprints available.

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
We do our best to avoid making changes to existing functionality that might
unexpectedly impact your Home Assistant installation. Unfortunately, sometimes,
it is inevitable.
We always make sure to document these changes to make the transition as easy as
possible for you. This release has the following backward-incompatible changes:

Anova

The State and Mode entities for Anova devices have been changed to match the
new protocol messaging. Any automations based on these entities will need to be
updated.
(@Lash-L – #109508) (documentation)

AVM FRITZ!Box Tools

The previously deprecated services reboot, reconnect, and cleanup have
been removed. Please use the corresponding button entities instead.
(@mib1185 – #118108) (documentation)

MQTT

MQTT Lock now supports the lock open and opening states. When a lock is used
in optimistic mode, its state will become open instead of unlocked when
it is opened.
(@jbouwh – #117110) (documentation)

The behavior on processing empty and “None” state payloads for MQTT entities
has been made more predictable for alarm_control_panel, climate, cover,
device_tracker, lock, select, valve, and water_heater items:

A “None” (string) for a state payload generally means the state
becomes unknown.
An empty payload is ignored.

Previously, a “None” state could be considered invalid or ignored.
(@jbouwh – #117813) (documentation)

OpenWeatherMap

Migration to the new library with support of OneCall API (3.0).
OWM API v2.5 will be closed in June 2024. All OpenWeatherMap integrations must
be migrated to mode (API) v3.0 to avoid service interruption.
Before the migration, you must have an active subscription (be aware that
subscription activation takes up to 2h). After the subscription is activated,
users can migrate integrations to mode v3.0 via repair notification or manually
via the integration configuration menu.
The subscription has a free tier with 1000 calls/day. Consider setting the limit
on the OpenWeatherMap website to stay under the threshold where API usage
incurs a cost.
OpenWeatherMap official statement
(@freekode – #116870) (documentation)

Synology DSM

The option to define a custom timeout has been removed. The timeout is set
static to a sane value of 30 seconds.
(@mib1185 – #116815) (documentation)

World Air Quality Index (WAQI)

The state attributes of the WAQI air quality sensor have been removed.
The attributes have been replaced by individual sensors; use these instead.
(@joostlek – #116595) (documentation)

Z-Wave

With this release, you will need to update your zwave-js-server instance.
You must use zwave-js-server 1.35.0 or greater (schema 35).

If you use the Z-Wave JS add-on, you need at least version 0.5.0.
If you use the Z-Wave JS UI add-on, you need at least version 3.4.2.
If you use the Z-Wave JS UI Docker container, you need at least version 9.10.0.
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 1.35.0.

(@raman325 – #117288) (documentation)

If you are a custom integration developer and want to learn about 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 2024.6

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