Now that the iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 betas are out, I've been digging a bit into the Shortcuts enhancements for tracking focus mode changes. With previous versions of iOS and iPadOS it was quite difficult to track all the focus mode states and call Shortcut actions based on the...
If you are a Home Assistant user and would like to trigger Home Assistant automations based on iOS or iPadOS focus mode changes, this post is for you. I walk you through a Sleep focus mode example, but the concepts are the same for any focus mode. I've completely revamped the...
This week Apple released Developer Beta 1 of their suite of '27 operating systems. This means developers now have access to iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, and more. One of the hundreds of enhancements and new features is very relevant to Home Assistant users. The Shortcuts app on the...
In early 2026 Aqara introduced the U400 smart lock. It was the first smart lock to support UWB (Ultra-Wideband) technology. The day it was released I jumped on the opportunity to get my hands one and placed an order. Over the past few months I've been using it daily, and...
SmartWings is no stranger to the smart blinds space. For years they have been supporting a variety of smart home protocols including Zigbee, Z-Wave, Matter over Thread, Matter over PoE and Apple Homekit. They were one of the first manufactures to support Matter over Thread smart blinds back in 2023....
Announced at CES 2026, and now available, is the brand new Aqara Camera Hub G350 for USD $139.99. The headline feature of this new smart camera is official support for the Matter v1.5 camera standard. Officially published in November 2025 Matter 1.5 specification now allows platform agnostic integration of video...
Very recently I purchased the Micro-Air EasyStart Flex and via ESPHome, got it connected to Home Assistant. What is the Micro-Air EasyStart Flex? It is an advanced and versatile soft starter, designed for all sizes of residential A/C units up to 6 tons (72,000 BTUs). The EasyStart provides a controlled...
Hot off the press is the brand new Seeed Studio Xiao ESP32-C5. This is the first Seeed Studio Xiao module with 5 GHz Wi-Fi support. Built on the RISC-V architecture, it brings together 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz dual-band Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5 (LE), and IEEE 802.15.4 (Zigbee, Thread) connectivity,...
I've recently gone down the ESPHome rabbit hole with Home Assistant. My primary uses cases are Bluetooth proxies and capturing Bluetooth IRKs for room-level presence detection. In this post I cover three popular Seeed Studio ESP32 devices: C3, C6 and S3. I've created Github repos for each model to simplify...
This blog post will walk you through updating the Aqara FP300 firmware when using it in Zigbee mode with Home Assistant. The process is a little cumbersome, as you can't (yet) do it directly in Home Assistant via Zigbee2MQTT. As of January 18, 2026 we are now on firmware 5841. ...