LR2021-SDR is an open-source project by Samuel Reynolds (SAMS0N1TE). It turns the Semtech LR2021 LoRa transceiver into a software-defined radio (SDR). On 27 October 2026 the author relicensed it under the MIT licence. The same day he merged firmware changes for transmitting at up to 1 million samples per second. CNX Software first described the pro
Two related pull requests landed in ESPHome's development branch on the evening of 27 October 2026. The first, #21669 by bdraco, merged at 19:00 Polish time, adds rate limiting filters to text sensors. The second, #21416 by fornellas, merged at 21:50, uses them for a new xy text sensor on the Hi-Link LD2450 radar. The branch is numbered 2026.11.0-d
ESPHome has had no way to react in YAML to the traffic going through a Modbus hub. A new modbus_monitor block fills that gap. Pull request #20256 by Bascht74 was merged into the development branch on 27 October 2026 at 02:28 Polish time. The branch is numbered 2026.11.0-dev, so the block should first appear in ESPHome 2026.11.
Most split air conditioners and many portable units are controlled by an infrared remote. If the unit has no Wi-Fi module, or its Wi-Fi only works through the manufacturer's cloud app, an ESP32 with an IR LED can take over the remote's job. ESPHome has a family of climate platforms that do more than replay recorded buttons: they build the full IR c
The usual way to get a Zigbee adapter away from a metal server cupboard is a USB extension cable or a network coordinator. Home Assistant has been building a third option: plug the USB adapter into an ESP32 running ESPHome and let Home Assistant talk to it over the network. On 26 October 2026 that work gained a piece that makes moving an adapter pa
Beken BK72xx chips running ESPHome could not talk to a single I2C sensor until now. Change #21586 by Korkuttum, merged into ESPHome's development branch on 26 October 2026, adds a software I2C bus for the bk72xx platform. It is set to ship in ESPHome 2026.11.
ESPHome devices built on Beken BK7231N and BK7231T chips, common in cheap Tuya plugs and switches, get a new toolchain in ESPHome 2026.11. Pull request #21531 by J. Nick Koston (bdraco), merged into the development branch on 26 October 2026, bumps LibreTiny to 1.14.0, released on 22 October, and builds both chips with version 3.0.78 of Beken's SDK
Updating a Beken or Lightning chip over Wi-Fi with ESPHome is about to get noticeably shorter. Change #21642 by J. Nick Koston (bdraco), merged into ESPHome's development branch on 26 October 2026, makes the CLI send only the parts of a LibreTiny firmware file the device actually writes. That roughly cuts the upload by 60% for BK72xx and LN882H chi
For three years the "Simple" option in ESPHome's LD2420 operating mode select did not do what it said. Change #21651 by J. Nick Koston (bdraco), merged into the development branch on 26 October 2026, makes it actually switch the HLK-LD2420 mmWave presence radar into simple reporting. The fix is expected in ESPHome 2026.11, unless it is backported t
