Frenck | Home Assistant & Smart Home

Preparing the Home Assistant 2026.11 beta right now and... wow. 4,858 merged pull requests. Every record we've ever set for a release is gone, by about a thousand PRs. Big new features, tons of fixes, and an insane amount of quality improvements. I'm not even kidding.

Zaterdag 7 november hosten @adorablecyb.org en ik een #HomeAssistant meetup in Enschede 🏠 Onderdeel van de Open Home Foundation Community Day, met meetups op 90+ plekken wereldwijd. Vanaf 14:00 bij Stadscafé BLAUW. Er is ook merch! Graag even aanmelden: luma.com/openhome-7e9g

This might be the biggest thing I've shipped in Home Assistant. And also the most boring one. I'm weirdly proud of both. HACS is now built in, as the Marketplace. If we did it right, you'll barely notice. I wrote down how I look at it, what it means for you, and why we picked that name.

Landed in San Francisco ✈️ GitHub Universe this week, and this time I'm on the Ship & Tell stage. Let's go!

OK I'm done with the complex network setup... #FromScratch #Matter

What my day looks like nowadays with @coderabbitai.bsky.social....

Some people still think Home Assistant automations mean YAML and a quiet evening to question your life choices. 😅 Nope. The new triggers and conditions let you start with what you want your home to react to, not which trigger type fits... More power, less complexity!

Open source won. That is why LGTM stopped being enough. In projects like Home Assistant, a pull request is not just a diff. It can affect real homes, personal data, and trust. Review got heavier because the stakes changed.

Home Assistant automation modes: why the default isn’t your friend. The default mode is “single”. Safe, backwards-compatible, and why automations can appear to ignore you. Learn how to pick the mode you need 🙂

Woke up with a random brain wave and had to check if I was right. My Saturday morning. 😄 Tiny Home Assistant PR: less wasted work in a hot template rendering path. Benchmark on my machine: about 51% faster. 🚀 Nice way to start the weekend. 🍻

My second newsletter just went out. 🚀 This one has RSS, YAML, Thread plumbing, old-web nostalgia, and the slightly uncomfortable confession that my Home Assistant setup has 294 devices and zero automations. Curious what people think when they open it from their inbox.

My first personal newsletter shipped. The next one is already slowly forming from links, notes, and things I did not want to lose in a browser tab forever. If you want one from the next batch, subscribe here: frenck.dev/newsletter/

I’ve been quietly working on a new, extremely focused open-source project. The sensible part of me says: finish the tests and documentation first. The impatient part has already hovered over the publish button more than once. Soon™ 😀

Home Assistant just added the Reolink Elite Floodlight WiFi and Trackmix WiFi to Works with Home Assistant. Reolink now has 10 certified cameras. That matches my setup: local, reliable, and excellent with Home Assistant.

𝗔 𝗺𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗼𝗿 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘄𝗮𝘆 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗽𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗰𝘆. But a smart home can help you measure waste, automate boring fixes, and keep useful hardware out of the trash. New post: 𝗔 𝘀𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗵𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝘀𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗲𝘁 🍃

Home Assistant 2026.6! 🎉 A friendlier card picker 💡, infrared devices that now also listen 📡, live condition tests and target counts in the automation editor ✨, Z-Wave smart lock credential management 🔐, and 16 new integrations! www.home-assistant.io/blog/2026/06... #HomeAssistant

@home-assistant.io 2026.6 is releasing later this week (Wednesday, June 3rd). Here are the 5 features that I really liked in the release: youtu.be/6cY7zSTrEIM Have you spotted any other features in 2026.6 that you're excited about?

First newsletter went out Friday. Subscribers got it first, but I made this one public too so you can see what kind of thing it is. Mostly notes, links, thoughts, and a drawer being slightly less full. Read it here: frenck.dev/email/e333f2...

AI did not create the maintainer burden problem in open source. It accelerated it. Contributors are being amplified. Maintainers are still the verification bottleneck. New post: frenck.dev/open-source-...

Smoke and CO alarms are not the flashy part of a smart home. Good. They should quietly work, connect locally, and not become another app island. Nice to see Sensereo join Works with Home Assistant. www.home-assistant.io/blog/2026/05...

First newsletter sent. 🚀 I’m genuinely proud of that one. Not because it is perfect, but because I actually shipped it. If it landed in your inbox, I’d love to hear what you think. What worked, what didn’t, what you want more of. Now I’m going to pretend I’m calm and normal about this.

I’m publishing my first newsletter this Friday. It will be a more personal place for Home Assistant, open source, and the local-first smart home thoughts that don’t always fit into a post. If that sounds useful, you can subscribe here: frenck.dev/newsletter/

Developer machines are not production, but they often hold keys to production-shaped doors. Editors, extensions, CLIs, and local credentials are part of the supply chain now. That is uncomfortable. Also true. frenck.dev/your-editor-...

NFC tags sound boring until you use them. A cheap sticker becomes a Home Assistant trigger. No app hunting. No voice command. Just tap, and let the home do the thing. www.howtogeek.com/home-assista...

I am ready for it! State of the Open Home 2026! Are you?! #HomeAssistant

On my way to Utrecht to prepare for the State of the Open Home 2026! The Dutch railroad 🚂 in the mean time be like: safe travels and enjoy the view… 🧽🧼 🙈 #ns #trains #roflpimplmao

Templating has felt like homework for too long in Home Assistant. I reworked the docs on @home-assistant.io with one goal: make them more approachable. Every function has its own page now, with real examples! First pass, feedback welcome 🙏 www.home-assistant.io/docs/templat...

Just moved into a place with a garden. 60-70m2 of lawn I am not touching by hand. 🤪 Looking for a robot lawnmower for a small space that works with Home Assistant. Everything I find is sized for a castle. Recommendations? Manufacturers? Anyone? 🌿

The @openhomefoundation.org partnerships team is growing, and we need someone who loves building relationships as much as we love building @home-assistant.io! Are you part relationship-builder, part deal-closer, part open-source ambassador? Check out:

#DOOm läuft auf .. einem Home AssistantDashboard https://github.com/frenck/home-assistant-doom

"it's a bonus that you'd work with me 😏" That is true though... 🫶

🚀 I've just opened 2 new roles at the Open Home Foundation to work full-time on @home-assistant.io! 🖥️ Frontend Engineer 🔐 Security Engineer Fully remote. Full-time. Open source every day. Best job in the world. It changed my life. This is your chance to change yours. 🔗 openhomefoundation.org/jobs

Meet the speakers of SOTOH26! 🎙 They'll be taking to the stage on Wednesday, 8 April to celebrate building in the open with our community, share successes and get excited about what's coming next. Join us online or in person. Limited tickets available: sotoh.openhomefoundation.org/ #HomeAssistant

Wanted to install a Reolink garden cam. Found this instead 😬🔌 vm.tiktok.com/ZGdukWvw7/

Can @home-assistant.io run DOOM? Turns out: yes. I built an integration that runs the real DOOM (1993) inside a dashboard, including some sensor entities.. The entire thing was written by AI in under 2 hours. I didn't write a single line of code. Full story: frenck.dev/home-assista...

An amazing Home Assistant cake at @home-assistant.io Community Meetup in Cologne yesterday! 🤩🍰😋 Isn’t the our community the best? 🫶 #HomeAssistant #HomeBakeAutomation #SmartHome

On my way to the Home Assistant Community Meetup in Cologne! 🚗 Excited to meet everyone! 🤗 #HomeAssistant #Community

I said for years I probably wouldn’t go for smart locks. Yet here we are 😅 Installing the NUKI Smart Lock Ultra + Keypad 2 with @home-assistant.io soon. Curious about real world experience. What are your do’s and don’ts? Got automations that actually improved daily life? #SmartHome #HomeAssistant

And we're particularly excited about using this to help open-source maintainers. When we showed this to @frenck.social, the maintainer of Home Assistant, he wrote a workflow that reads the traces for bugs and figures out if they originate in the HA codebase or not. True noise elimination for OSS.

📦 A fresh package arrived! I still get that “kid on a birthday” feeling when the mail shows up with a box of new goodies… This one from Signify has me pretty excited 🤗

Come to our the @home-assistant.io community meetup in Utrecht! We opened up way more spots, so more people can join! Lot of us are there, including famous ESPHome people! See you tomorrow? 🍻 luma.com/wgktnnxp?tk=...

Arrived in Brussels! 🚂 Even with the trains strike happening here in Belgium 🙈 Excited for #FOSDEM! 🎉 See you there?

I decided to give UniFi’s Teleport a shot while traveling. In a 4 hour train ride right now; working remotely on my MacBook. First impression: meh… it works; but it for sure needs a lot of improvements around recovering from flaky 5G internet connections…

Let it run overnight and woke up to this beauty! 🏠✨ 5+ hours of printing later, my new office has some proper @home-assistant.io decoration. Now to find the perfect spot in my streaming background… 🎬

Meh… I am experiencing Odido connectivity issues the past day at my new home… kinda cool UniFi logs and warns for it though!

Well, CES didn't happen for me this year. After three flight cancellations (broken plane, crew limits, lost instrumentation on the runway), I'm still in the Netherlands. My luggage made it to Vegas though, which is the most hilarious part of this whole mess. Choo choo from the frozen Netherlands🚂❄️

Let's go! 🚀 Time to bootstrap a fresh Home Assistant instance for my new home ✨ @home-assistant.io #HomeAssistant #SmartHome

New house came with a SolarEdge inverter ☀️ Plot twist: can't access it. SetApp login fails, Wi-Fi credentials on the side are useless. Anyone reset one of these as a new homeowner? Or am I stuck pointing at it hoping it works? #Solar #SmartHome