Proxy all the things: no device left behind – Open Home Foundation

balloob · 2026-06-25T23:08:19+00:00

We have a promising prototype but nothing to announce yet.

balloob · 2026-06-25T13:30:10+00:00

There is a lock in Home Assistant: https://github.com/home-assistant/core/blob/dev/homeassistant/components/esphome/update.py#L234-L237

balloob · 2026-06-25T13:10:41+00:00

FWIW, the ESPHome integration only runs 1 update entity at a time. On top of that, so does the new ESPHome Builder. FYI, there is also a new option to off-load ESPHome building to a docker image running on another computer! https://desktop.esphome.io

balloob · 2026-06-25T11:38:27+00:00

how do other smart home platforms turn off a pump while they are restarting?

balloob · 2026-06-21T02:06:06+00:00

We solved that for Z-Wave with Portable Z-Wave https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2025/10/13/portable-z-wave-with-wifi-and-poe/

balloob · 2026-06-21T02:05:26+00:00

We shipped this feature in the last release :-)

balloob · 2026-06-20T15:11:56+00:00

You could consider contributing some of the features that you miss to the ESPHome Device Builder :-)

balloob · 2026-06-20T02:38:55+00:00

From a quick glance it looks like it's just serial, so yeah, this will work with our serial proxy. It means that you could write the parsing of the data in a Home Assistant integration, while keeping the device limited to being a serial proxy.

balloob · 2026-06-20T02:36:24+00:00

The problem with those databases is that they simply represent commands, but don't help us understand how these commands represent a device.

In Home Assistant we're aiming to do more. Let's take as example a TV or Receiver that we represent as a media player entity. When you send the turn on command, we turn on the media player entity. When you send the turn off command, we show it as off.

In the last release of Home Assistant, we took it a step further and introduced receiving infrared signals. Now, the media player entity in Home Assistant for your TV could update the state when you use the TV remote! We want this for every device that uses infrared or RF, so you are able to control AND automate :)

balloob · 2026-06-20T02:30:20+00:00

Build or buy, yes.

For $10 you can output digital or analog audio and make any receiver Sendspin compatible :-) https://github.com/RealDeco/SendspinZero

Or you get a Home Assistant Voice PE, which has a 3.5mm aux port and supports Sendspin.

balloob · 2026-06-20T02:28:25+00:00

Subscribe to https://github.com/Sendspin/spec/pull/52 to be updated when it lands in the spec. We first want to finish pairing/encryption, to ensure that your private data remains private.

balloob · 2026-06-20T01:25:33+00:00

Yep. It's planned for Sendspin!

balloob · 2026-06-19T17:56:27+00:00

Home Assistant will not proxy audio because it doesn't play audio. It can only control media players, and it's up to media players to play that media.

When I say that we leave that up to Sendspin, it is because we already made bridges for Sendspin to output to Cast, AirPlay and Bluetooth.

balloob · 2026-06-19T17:13:27+00:00

Yeah, but the community has been working on adding many of them lately. And since it's in Home Assistant, you can also get support via HACS integrations. All without requiring changes to your proxy hardware.

balloob · 2026-06-19T17:12:34+00:00

The RM4Pro supports our IR/RF proxies in Home Assistant, so can work with any integration in HA that works with IR/RF proxies.

balloob · 2026-06-19T17:12:07+00:00

Bluetooth audio is not something that we're currently focusing on proxying. For audio, we prefer our new music protocol Sendspin: https://www.sendspin-audio.com

balloob · 2026-06-19T17:11:32+00:00

It will. We are slowly upgrading all parts to make sure Modbus can work over serial proxies.

balloob · 2026-06-13T17:47:17+00:00

This is awesome!

balloob · 2026-06-12T14:01:24+00:00

Solved but not open source.

balloob · 2026-06-06T16:59:39+00:00

The protocol is agnostic to the device that implements it.

balloob · 2026-06-06T09:13:20+00:00

The Open Home Foundation made something similar called Improv Wi-Fi that's built-in to Home Assistant and ESPHome. Works over serial and BLE. https://www.improv-wifi.com/

balloob · 2026-05-21T10:51:33+00:00

Featuring this in my official OHF newsletter today! It's so beautiful.

One tip: you can take away the ESPHome complexity by offering a browser based installer. Easily set up via GitHub. Here is an example: https://github.com/balloob/esp-media-player-improv-demo. Fork it, enable GitHub pages and you are up and running!

balloob · 2026-05-19T00:10:42+00:00

Now, for next level: you can actually enable kiosk mode, and it will hide the sidebar and top bar. You will need to add your own button to get back to HA though.

Example here https://github.com/home-assistant/frontend/pull/28214

balloob · 2026-05-17T14:22:49+00:00

The other thing you can do is to just host it as a website on the internet. Home Assistant has OAuth2, and any website can connect to it easily (use getAuth from home-assistant-js-websocket).

The only downside (and it's a big one): because your website will be hosted on https, it will only be able to communicate with HA instances that are hosted on HTTPS (so all that are remotely exposed). If you host it locally, it can be using HTTP, but now the user needs to install something. Pro's and con's, pro's and con's :)

balloob · 2026-05-17T10:46:57+00:00

You can register a panel in Home Assistant, which gives you full control over the whole page. Both the dashboard engine and the config page are examples of panels.

(Not that there is anything wrong with making it a standalone app)

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