-
Latest entry
Home Assistant Cloud Is Becoming “Link.” As Someone Who Does Not Subscribe, I Think the Rename Is Fair.
Read the log: Home Assistant Cloud Is Becoming “Link.” As Someone Who Does Not Subscribe, I Think the Rename Is Fair.Nabu Casa is renaming Home Assistant Cloud to Link. A rebrand sounds trivial, but for a local-first setup the word matters. Here is what changes, what does not, and what I will watch before December.
Recent entries
-
Home Assistant Cloud Is Becoming “Link.” As Someone Who Does Not Subscribe, I Think the Rename Is Fair.
Nabu Casa is renaming Home Assistant Cloud to Link. A rebrand sounds trivial, but for a local-first setup the word matters. Here is what changes, what does not, and what I will watch before December.
-
I Finally Read the Home Assistant 2026.9 Patch Notes Line by Line. Here Is What My Update Routine Looks Like Now.
Two patch releases, 44 changes, and a few of them touch backups, auth and log leaks. What I look for before I press Update on my bare-metal install.
-
My Security Dashboard Used to Show Every Sensor, All the Time. Home Assistant 2026.9 Taught It to Shut Up Until Something’s Wrong.
The new Active Alerts card on Home Assistant’s Security dashboard stays empty until a door, lock, or smoke detector actually needs you. Here’s how I wired mine up with real Zigbee2MQTT entities — and why the empty state is the whole point.
-
My Router Has Been Watching My Living Room for Years. A Community Project Just Taught It to Say So.
A forum thread about turning ordinary Wi-Fi signals into a motion sensor sent me down a rabbit hole — here’s what ESPectre gets right, and where I’d still trust a €9 PIR more.
-
Shelly Is Bringing Thread to My Gen4 Relays. The Cloud Switch Lives on My Border Router.
Shelly’s new ThreadLink firmware runs Matter, device-to-device scenes and Shelly Cloud over a single Thread radio. On a Home Assistant border router with NAT64 switched off, the local-only setup might be the default.
-
For Years My ESPHome Updates Carried My Wi-Fi Password in the Clear. 2026.9 Closed That.
ESPHome 2026.9.0 finally encrypts the OTA firmware image itself, not just the uploader. I read the release notes, worked out what had actually been crossing my LAN for years, and mapped the two-install migration that trips people up.
One house, going fully automated — documented honestly
No sponsor scripts, no spec-sheet worship. Just a working log of every room as it gets wired, what broke, and what I’d do differently. If it didn’t earn its place, it doesn’t make the site.
Read the full storyGear I actually use
Zigbee PIR Sensor
Fast trigger, two-year battery, and rock-solid local control. The one in every room.
Thread radio
Home Assistant Connect ZBT-2
The official HA stick, running OpenThread — the anchor of my local-first Thread network. No big-tech hub required.
Dimmable Smart Bulbs
Warm-to-cool tuning that actually holds state after a power cut. Worth the extra.
The newsletter for people building it themselves
One email when a new build log lands — plus the small wins and dumb mistakes that don’t make the site. Free, weekly-ish, no spam.