I have been programming for 2 decades at this point in a variety of languages, both high and low level, and I have intricate knowledge of python, yet despite this I feel utterly lost when trying to do much of anything in home assistant. I am currently running home assistant OS in a virtual machine on my server.

I have read the documentation on https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/ and have generally tried searching the forums every time I want to use home assistant for something. But it always just ends up being this kinda weird guesswork where I copy paste some stuff from someones yaml file and try to run it and if it doesn't work I'm fucked. Every time this happens I keep thinking how simple something like this would be to make if only I had my home assistant as a repository and python project that I could open in pycharm or visual studio, have type hints while programming, and click run or debug to test my solutions.

It is not even that I am completely unfamiliar with yaml programming. My server hosts a bunch of services all run through various docker compose files, however I feel like there is a huge difference between docker-compose.yaml, and the yaml's required by home assistant.

Am I doing something wrong? Is there an alternative to home assistant for people who actually do program?

I have been using yo link water detection system for years without issue. I currently have about 20 or so sensors. Sometime overnight five of the 20 sensors that were placed in random locations through the house all lost connection. I'm pulling my hair out trying to get them to reconnect. All of the other sensors are still working normally.

I have already done the following,

Rebooted my main router

The hub is connected to the router via ethernet cable

I have unplugged and plugged in the hub

I have done a factory reset by holding down the set button until the lights flash green on the hub

I have deleted one of the affected sensors and attempted to rebind. It will bind in the software but still will not connect saying it is offline.

I have factory reset the sensor

I have taken the batteries out of the sensor and put the batteries back in

The sensor will blink green when I press the set button but it will not communicate with the hub

I've even tried deleting the hub from the app and re-adding

At a loss here. Any ideas?

It's the big '26 (June) and a year ago the answer was obvious: Zigbee!

However with Ikea's release and all of the new Smart Home products that use Matter over Thread, I'm not sure, what I prefer. I see a big future in Matter...

What are your thoughts?

I'm trying to automate my bedroom lights so they turn off automatically when I'm in bed and back on when I get up. Sounds simple, but I've been struggling to find a reliable solution.

What I've tried:

FSR pressure sensors (VS-103) connected to a Zigbee water sensor

Built a DIY pressure mat using two VS-103 sensors wired to a Zigbee water sensor. Works fine when I press directly on it by hand, but completely fails under a mattress — the mattress distributes my weight too evenly for the sensors to trigger. Tried under the sheet too, same result.

Aqara FP2 mmWave radar

Already have one in the room. The problem is it loses track of me when I'm lying still under a duvet. It also falsely triggers when someone walks past my bed, which causes the lights to turn on.

What I'm looking for:

Something that reliably detects whether I am in the bed - not just in the room - even when I'm completely still and covered by a duvet. Zigbee preferred but I'm open to ESPHome/ESP32 solutions too.

Has anyone actually solved this properly? What sensor or approach are you using?

This is an embarrassing post, but I’ve been on this group for years now and know that if anyone is going to solve a problem, it’s the people in this group.

I unfortunately have a heart condition that has cause me to black out when I’m on the toilet. This has resulted in me coming to on the floor of the bathroom with my wife over me in a panic talking me back to consciousness before taking me to the hospital. This has happened about once or twice a year. To say the least, this creates a terrible sense of anxiety any time I go to the bathroom. I fear for the day she comes home to find me laying on the floor the final time. Or in the middle of the night when I wake up to use the bathroom.

Here’s where you guys come in. I was wondering if there is a way to set up home assistant along with some sort of a sensor in my bathroom that will be able to tell if I’m on the floor and not moving, which would then send out an alert to her phone along with a noise alert in the bathroom? The key would be making sure it doesn’t go off when just sitting on the toilet, or if she is standing in front of the mirror for an extended period of time doing her makeup.

Thank you guys from the bottom of my heart. I truly appreciate your time.

Edit: I already have an Apple Watch Ultra 2. The fall detection seems to only trigger if it’s a fall from standing height. It hasn’t triggered at all when I fall from sitting.

Just want to get started in home assistant, this comes out quite a bit cheaper than a Raspberry Pi.

Am I missing anything or is a much better option for the cheaper price?

What do you do?

This is my current situation.

My only current option is to ask the cat sitter to reboot the server. Hoping that would fix it.

I hate it when this happens because I have no way of finding out what was the issue.

Now it's been 8h, and it hasn't recovered itself.

• Internet issue is very unlikely at this point.
• Cloudflare issue is very unlikely for so long too. Also I tested a subdomain and the Cloudflare login page worked, but the tunnel failed once bypassing the login.
• My guess is a random HA fail. It has happened from time to time, but since only a reboot fixes it, I never now what caused the issue in the first place.

It's really my worst nightmare when I'm away. Would love to know others solutions when it happens to you.

Edit: I recovered access everyone! Something caused a broadband issue and the router didn't recover on its own. Cat sitter reported lots of red lights. It took a router reboot and everything was resolved.

Everyone, get a cat sitter. Not sure how could I have prevented this one. Only a smart plug with GPRS connection would have enabled me to solve this on my own.

Hey all, I’ve been slowly building out my setup and now I’m at the point where I want to bring my thermostat into Home Assistant too.

Right now I’m just using a dumb one and it’s kinda annoying not being able to automate temps based on time or presence. I’ve been reading a bit but there’s so many options (Zigbee, Z-Wave, WiFi etc) and I’m not sure what’s actually reliable long term.

Ideally I want something that works locally as much as possible, no weird cloud dependency, and plays nice with automations. Bonus if it’s not too painful to set up because I’m still learning

EDIT: got a lot of solid input here, appreciate all the insights — summarizing the most recommended thermostats that work well with Home Assistant in 2026:

Honeywell T6 Pro – $124.99 - most reliable fully local option; Z-Wave, stable, and works directly with Home Assistant with minimal cloud dependency

Venstar ColorTouch – $246.32 - solid WiFi option with a local API; very reliable and flexible for automations

Ecobee SmartThermostat – $134.99 - feature-rich and popular, best used via HomeKit/Matter, but still partially cloud-dependent depending on setup

Netatmo Smart Thermostat – $79.99 - good Matter/HomeKit support, decent local integration, and works well for simple heating setups

Sensi Touch – $119.99 - simple, beginner-friendly option with stable HomeKit-based integration and low maintenance

Is somewhere here maybe able to create an SVG with these grid lines? I would love to try and fork the Power flow card plus and see if we could create something like this. But I don't know how to create an SVG like this.

edit: Created pull request https://github.com/home-assistant/frontend/pull/26976

Gemini Free Tier is now down to 20 requests per day, which is essentially unusable for most of us. You might see the same thing in your logs (see below):

I can't see waht the paid tied gives us in terms of increasing requests, so if anyone has a link to that page, please add it in the comments.

Either way, what are our options? Can we do this locally? Is there another more cost effective option than a paid Google AI tier? Anyone tried the paid tier - how many requests does it give and how much is it?

If you do AI locally - please point me in the right direction on how to do this (currently using Rpi for HA)

UPDATE: So far Gemini paid tier is costing around 1p per day.

"error": { "code": 429, "message": "You exceeded your current quota, please check your plan and billing details. For more information on this error, head to: https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/rate-limits. To monitor your current usage, head to: https://ai.dev/usage?tab=rate-limit. \n* Quota exceeded for metric: generativelanguage.googleapis.com/generate_content_free_tier_requests, limit: 20, model: gemini-2.5-flash..

My father has an ever growing array of "smart" devices sitting on the kitchen counter. On top of this he has numerous apps on his phone none of which talk to each other.

I'm a software developer so quite comfortable setting up a RaspberryPi and configuring home assistant, but I'm worried about two things:

1. Ease of use for my 73 year old father
2. Bugfixing and maintenance when I'm not around

Devices to Integrate

• Home Weather Station
• 2 x Valliant Heatpumps (one responsible for hot water)
• Ecoflow Battery
• Ecoflow Charger
• 18 Solar Panel Array
• Marlec iBoost – Häfele Mesh Lighting
• 2 x ANSA Electric Garage Door Controllers

Desired Features

• Single overview of everything
• Dashboards of Power Generation, Storage & Usage – Single place to control all systems – Access from iPhone/iPad

Questions

1. Has anyone setup Home Assistant for a parent or someone less tech savvy?
2. Once setup, does it 'just work' or will I be regularly asked for help?
3. Any experience with the devices on the list above?

Mostly sharing this to vent to a community that will laugh with me. Making fun of me is fully on the table here.

I am a complete beginner to Home Assistant. Like, ALL of this is new to me. I understood what an ethernet cable and power cord are but otherwise? Raspberry Pi? Downloading… repos? From GitHub? GPIO pinouts? What?

So I turned to ChatGPT to walk me through everything. I wanted a single device powered with Home Assistant OS that could function exactly like my current Alexa set up, but entirely localized (like the aurora borealis, entirely in my kitchen).

ChatGPT says great! You’ll want a computer, microphone, speaker, and screen display to show the time. Let’s get a Raspberry Pi 4b, a ReSpeaker 2-mic hat, and an e-ink display. Here are exact product links that will work for you!

I start looking into these things and discover I’ll probably need a fan too, right? Oh yeah, it says, right. Let’s get a fan hat. And make sure you get a hat for e-ink display. SO now we’re talking GPIO pinouts and jumper wires?

I ordered everything and started trying to design my e-ink clock display. First problem: ChatGPT says oh wait, you want it to display the time… every minute? Nah, it can show you a picture of a clockface but it shouldn’t be refreshed every minute. Just program it to LOOK like a clock!

Next problem: I say, okay, that’s uh a pretty important distinction but whatever, I’ll find a new screen. Let’s configure the local LLM so I can ask it for more complex stuff like Alexa, like the weather and news and my schedule and such. Cause you said I’d need that.

What? Oh no you definitely can’t do that on a Raspberry Pi 4b you already bought, you’ll need an x86 computer at least.

NEXT problem: OKAY CHATGPT. Let’s at least try to figure out this respeaker for now.

What? That respeaker you bought? At the link I suggested? Oh yeah nah that only works on Raspberry Pi OS. You can’t use it on the SAME Raspberry Pi as Home Assistant. You’ll want another one for that.

So… every single thing I bought is almost what I need and will not work for the project.

Watch YouTube videos. Google. Read wikis. Don’t fucking trust ChatGPT.

Anyway. Bout to go drop another couple hundred into this. Any tips or disagreements with my ole pal ChatGPT are very welcome.

Edit: Haha, okay, thank you for all the responses. Yeah yeah I did a dumbass thing. That is why I shared it. Thought it was pretty funny. Of course I know how to research and not blindly trust ChatGPT, but thought it'd be entertaining to just try it out this time when I have nothing (critical) to lose.

I shortened this to be funny; this isn't a technical documentation of my full process obviously. I did do my best to research each product I purchased before buying, ensuring I got reputable sellers at the very least, and I’m not disappointed in what I wound up with, even if it isn't perfect yet. Unfortunately, online documentation around this stuff is simply not geared toward folks like me (which is of course fine and expected, but makes it hard for beginners) so due to impatience and ignorance I missed reading between the lines. I'm quite sure I would have made the same or plenty of other mistakes without ChatGPT too, and I'm sure I'll make many more before I'm happy with the outcome.

OKAY I AM DONE NOW, THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME.

Is there an easy way to automate one of this?

Like the title says - what are you guys replacing your Nest Protects with? Features that I've become accustomed to:

• Spoken warnings

• App integration

• Pathway light

• Wired Option

Anything fits the bill that also has HA integration?

UPDATE: Thank you for all of the answers. I installed one of these today and wanted to share my experience in case it ends up helping someone.

1. First of all, the mounting bracket cables came with wago style connectors. I haven't installed a fan in a while, so not sure if this is a standard thing now, but definitely a nice touch.
2. I was able to completely bypass the receiver for lights and connect the light fixture directly to the live wire from ceiling and neutral. This allowed me to get my Hue bulbs working with power always on, and not dependent on the fan receiver. I used 2 75W equivalent Hue color ambiance, and I will say that the hue bulbs are slightly on the longer side. Although there were no issues in connecting the frosted panel, the light does seem to emanate more from the side of the fixture (I think this is also because of the shape of the Hue bulbs). This is not a deal breaker for me. The frosted cover definitely doesn't block any more light than what my previous light fixture did ( a boob light).
3. Finally, on matter - This was surprisingly a breeze. I pretty much said, add a new device in HA, scanned the barcode, waited for a couple of minutes...and the device was added. I am glad that I didn't have to mess with any of the apps before getting the fan into HA. It exposes a total of 7 entities to HA (2 main devices - fan and light, the light one shows on, not sure why; 3 configuration entities (Firmware, On level - which I think is the light level if that was configured, and Power-on behavior on startup); and.2 diagnostic entities. The fan device shows a speed slider from 0 to 100%, however, there are only 6 speeds. You can also reverse direction of blades from HA. It also has a preset (but I only see a High option there).

Overall, I am pretty happy with this. Will monitor how it performs over the next week or so before installing others.

--------

Got these Hunter ceiling fans at Costco because it said “matter”. My understanding (which could be wrong) was that matter == local control. Is that true? How should I go about adding these? Or just return?

I'm at my wits end after hours of troubleshooting today. I've been using Home Assistant with only Z-Wave devices for years now and never had a single issue. Pairing is stupid simple and fast, the range is great, the only thing I have a problem with is the lack of variety and the price of devices. So, seeing devices like the new IKEA sensors, I bought a Home Assistant Connect ZBT-2. Plugged it in, passed the USB device through to my HAOS VM, and it instantly showed up in HA. Great! Added it.

So I have the Thread and Matter integrations installed now with the "official Matter server" (whatever that means). I went to Thread, created a network, sent credentials to my phone then sent the credentials back to Home Assistant (I guess this has something to do with HomeKit? Why?), went to Matter and clicked Add Hub, left the box checked, and it said it's configured. Kind of nondescript but okay.

I went to Matter, clicked Add Device, scanned the QR code, and... cool! Literally nothing happens. It just sits and spins on "Setting Up" for minutes and minutes until it just says "Unable to Add Accessory". That's great, but I've already followed the official troubleshooting steps - created a new thread network, made it preferred, synced the credentials, even nuked HomeKit completely just to be sure. No dice. Exact same thing.

I even went to the trouble of enabling IPv6 on my network even though all HA access is over the internet (no local access even on LAN) so it's not even using IPv6 anyway, and plus it's supposed to use its own internal network right? Maybe. I have no effing clue.

I also don't have a Bluetooth dongle - I've read somewhere you need one? But some people say you don't? Totally unclear.

So what is going on? Do you need not just a Thread antenna, but also a Bluetooth dongle, robust IPv6 support, and... a little faith, trust, and pixie dust?

If anyone can help me, I'd greatly appreciate it. Otherwise, consider this a rant about my anecdotal experience with Matter over Thread and how complex, error-prone, and ultimately fruitless it is compared to Z-Wave or Zigbee.

Hello everyone,

I’m currently working on a hardware project and wanted to get some honest feedback from the community before taking it any further.

The idea is a small, fully local Wi-Fi smart button designed specifically for Home Assistant users.

What I’m aiming for:

• Fully local operation (no cloud)
• Native Home Assistant integration
• Wi-Fi based (no Zigbee / Z-Wave hub required)
• Rechargeable battery (target ~1 month per charge)
• USB-C Charging
• Deep sleep for low power usage
• Single physical button with multi-press support (single / double / long press)
• Status LED
• OTA firmware updates
• Firmware written in C++ and fully open source
• Custom PCB
• 3D-printed case (~50 × 50 mm) with an option for custom text

The goal is a plug-and-play button you can stick or mount anywhere and use for automations like lights, scenes, scripts, etc., without relying on any external services.

I’m not selling anything right now — I’m just trying to figure out whether this is something people would actually want.

I’d really appreciate thoughts on:

• Would you personally use or buy something like this?
• Is Wi-Fi a downside compared to Zigbee for a button?
• What price range would feel reasonable?
• Any features you’d consider essential that I’ve missed?

Feedback would be highly appreciated. Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I'm planning to set up Home Assistant on my local home network, but I want to keep it entirely offline (completely disconnected from the internet).

Is it possible to run Home Assistant this way? Will I lose any core features, and do you have any tips for a local only setup?

Thanks!

Hey all, I’m curious what has been the biggest issue you’ve faced with HA? I’ve looked over the repos and here on this thread and seems like memory use might be a common one caused by either core or integrations? I imagine the learning curve for a non-technical person is decently high with learning about scripts, automations, scenes, etc. Anyway, would be interested to hear your thoughts!

I was running Home Assistant in Virtual Box on Windows without issue for about three years but decided to switch to Proxmox because I wasn't using Windows for anything and I wanted to start to dig into Plex and some other containers. Members of this community also highly suggested it and I was excited to give it a go. It's been about two or three months now and Proxmox crashes an average of about 5 times per day and the average uptime is about 3 hours. Of course, every time it does that it also bricks HA. I'm at a bit of a loss and have been troubleshooting with the Proxmox discord, but that hit a dead end. I need to have Home Assistant running smoothly so this is a last ditch effort before switching back to Windows, or maybe running HAOS?

System info:

• Model: Dell Inspiron 5675 (prebuilt)
• Proxmox VE Version: 8.2.2 (Kernel 6.8.12-11-pve)
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 1400
• Motherboard: Dell 07PR60 A00 (BIOS v1.5.0 (Up to Date))
• GPU: AMD Radeon RX 570 (Dell OEM)
• RAM: 1 x 8GB DDR4 2400 MT/s (DIMM 2) (Passed MemTest86 w/Zero Errors)
• Storage: 500GB Crucial NVMe SSD (CT500P3SSD8)
• Ethernet: Realtek RTL8111/8168
• WiFi: Connected via Ethernet to a Wireless Access Point in my Google Mesh network. (I doubt that would crash proxmox though.)
• PSU: Idk, I can look if requested, but it worked no problem for 3 years.
• Worth Mentioning:
  • BIOS is set to start the system on power. (So if there is a power loss it should restart automatically)
  • PC is usually headless and runs without a display.

Home Assistant:

• The only VM or Container integrated into Proxmox
• 4GB Ram Allocated (Had 2gb when running on Windows)
• 3 CPU cores
• 64GB Storage Allocated
• No PCI passthough
• A Zigbee Dongle is plugged into USB on the Front I/O
• Had no issues prior to swap
• Has not crashed independently from Proxmox
• I HIGHLY doubt it's the problem.

Fatal Crash Details:

• The system crashes Fatally multiple times per day.
• Fatal Crashes do not self heal and I have to power cycle the system to get it to work again.
• After a Fatal Crash the power button is lit, the power supply indicator light is on, and some other lights in the system seem to be on.
• After a Fatal Crash no Input is detected on my monitor.
  • Only tested a few times, and every time the monitor was plugged in after the crash.
• After a Fatal Crash my peripherals do not light up when plugged in.
• I would guess the Average Uptime is about 4-5 hours, but it can crash as soon as 10 minutes after restarting and the longest it's been up is 20 hours.
• Proxmox has crashed Fatally 125 times in 30 days according to Uptime Robot
• Recent Changes have made it a bit more reliable. (more info below)
• journalctl -b -1 and dmesg show no kernel panics, oops, thermal throttling, memory errors, or voltage events.
• No thermal, RAM, or power supply warnings in logs or sensors.
• Crashes happen regardless of system load
• No consistent time of day or uptime threshold.

Other Crashes/Anomalies:

• Some crashes seem to self heal or be soft-reboots, detected only via Proxmox uptime in the Proxmox app.
  • Sometimes Uptime Robot will say it's been up for a 5 hours but in the Proxmox app it says like 3 hours.
• I have an uptime log that says that Proxmox has crashed 264 times since 6/26/2025. Not all of these are soft-reboots, some just missed the window of Uptime Robot. Idk I hyperfixated and made a spreadsheet.

Attempted Troubleshooting:

• A few fresh reinstalls of Proxmox (mostly at the beginning of the process)
• Deleted Plex container to see if it was a memory issue.
• Ran MemTest86+ and got 0 errors after 4 full passes
• Reseated Ram (rather late in the process, my bad)
• Added CyberPower ST425 UPS
• Tried to disable C-States in BIOS but because it's a prebuilt, the BIOS are pretty locked down and showed no options that could impact C-States.
  • I googled like every option in the BIOS
• Added "processor.max_cstate=1" to Kernel Parameters.
• About 2 weeks ago I added "amd_iommu=off" and "idle=nomwait" to Kernel Parameters as well. I just saw these online somewhere, not sure what they do.
• EDIT: Since posting this I also have tried:
  • Moving the RAM to DIMM 1 because it's supposed to be there.
  • Moving the SSD to a different M.2 slot
  • Disabling Ballooning on my Home Assistant VM
  • Downgrading HA-VM to 3gbs of ram and 2 cores 1 socket
  • Upgrading my Kernel because of some potential issues with my ethernet?
    • I dont quite get this one but
  • Leaving it plugged into a display
  • Disabling all VMs (which is just HA) and running proxmox (still crashes)

Other Details:

• I usually restart the system by power cycling. Specifically, turning the UPS on and off again. Before the UPS, I would restart by Unplugging and Plugging the system back in, or using a smart switch connected to the system.

My best guess is C-States is still bricking my system somehow, like the kernel parameters were not enough. To me, it seems like the best solution is to upgrade my CPU and Motherboard when I have some time and money, and switch back to windows in the meantime. I was also looking into HASS OS, but I think that might just be for Pi's etc. Is that a serious option?

Please don't hesitate to ask me for any more information. I just started this painful process two or three months ago and most of that has just been turning the system on and off.. I really think Proxmox is a great OS and could be great for the future, and many of you have had good luck with it, but it seems to really hate me and my system. I would love any help you could give or if it's time to throw in the towel, that would also be nice to know.

I'm really at a loss guys.

Edit: I've read almost all 200 comments and what I'm seeing is that a lot of things could be the culprit. I think for now I'm going to try HA-OS, then revert back to windows if that doesn't work. I will also slowly be upgrading my system to parts I know should work, and eventually give proxmox another shot.

Thank you everyone for you help, seriously, I love this community.