A community developer has published Zendure RestAPI, a custom Home Assistant integration that controls Zendure SolarFlow home batteries entirely over the local network. It talks to the battery's own HTTP server through Zendure's zenSDK API, with no Zendure cloud account and no MQTT broker. The author announced it on the Home Assistant forum on 16 O
Tasmota 16.0.0, codenamed "Theo", was released on 16 October 2026. It follows 15.6.0 "Sylvie" from August and moves the ESP32 builds to Arduino core 3.3.12 on ESP-IDF 5.5.5. ESP8266 builds stay on core 2.7.8. Support for older cores has been removed from the code.
On 16 October 2026 ESPHome merged a haier_water_heater platform that talks to Haier hOn water heaters over UART in place of the factory Wi-Fi module. TheLexus opened the pull request, bdraco reviewed it, and the matching esphome.io documentation merged the same afternoon. The author tested the stack on a Haier VH3W.
The OpenTherm Gateway integration in Home Assistant 2026.11 gets two number entities, "Control setpoint 1 override" and "Control setpoint 2 override". Pull request #182856 by mvn23, the integration's code owner and author of the pyotgw library it uses, was merged on 16 October 2026 at 12:03 UTC by joostlek.
The first install is the awkward part of ESPHome. You need a USB data cable, a browser that talks to serial ports, and a board that actually enters programming mode. After that, every change can go over the air. This guide covers installing the Device Builder, creating a first configuration, flashing over USB, joining Wi-Fi, and connecting the devi
Teslemetry users with a Tesla Powerwall get faster readings in Home Assistant 2026.11. Pull request #184808 by Brett Adams, merged on 15 October 2026, makes Home Assistant read a paired Powerwall's live values directly over the local network every 5 seconds, and its configuration every 30 seconds. The matching documentation change went into the nex
MQTT is a lightweight publish/subscribe protocol. A broker sits in the middle: clients publish messages to topics, and other clients subscribe to those topics. Zigbee2MQTT, many Tasmota devices, ESPHome's MQTT client mode, and plenty of DIY sensors all speak it. Home Assistant can act as one of those clients once you point it at a broker.
Matter devices talk over your existing IP network. Wi-Fi and Ethernet Matter plugs and bulbs join the same LAN as Home Assistant. Thread Matter sensors and locks join a low-power mesh, and a Thread border router bridges that mesh to your LAN. In both cases Home Assistant runs its own Matter controller: the Matter Server app on Home Assistant OS.
Google's release notes for 14 October 2026 include a change that Philips Hue owners will notice: existing Hue bridges linked to Google Home are upgraded in the background to local Matter control through Google Home hubs. Google promises faster responses and better reliability, and you do not have to re-pair anything.
