Home assistant bluetooth USB
The WT32-ETH01 is an embedded serial to Ethernet module based on the ESP32 series designed by Wireless-Tag. It features RJ45 network port that supports 10/100Mbps speed connections allowing to create ethernet based IoT devices. It also supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth protocols, making it a versatile device for IoT applications that require alternate connectivity. These modules are compatible with Arduino IDE, Tasmota, ESPHome and most other popular ESP32 based projects and distributions.
In this blog post, we will show you how to flash the WT32-ETH01 with the ESPHome Bluetooth Proxy firmware and set it up in Home Assistant as a device that can extend its Bluetooth reach by bridging Bluetooth connections over your LAN. This way, you can integrate more Bluetooth devices into your Smart home system without worrying about the limited range of Bluetooth technology.
What you need
To follow this tutorial, you will need:
- A WT32-ETH01 module
- A USB-to-UART adapter (such as CP2102 or CH340)
- Some dupont jumper wires
- A Home Assistant instance with ESPHome integration enabled
If you have purchased the WT32-ETH01 pre-flashed with ESPHome, you can skip over the section on flashing the device and head straight to setup in Home Assistant.
Flashing ESPHome
The first step is to flash the WT32-ETH01 module with ESPHome firmware. To do this, you need to connect the module to your computer using the USB-to-UART adapter and put it into bootloader mode. Make sure your UART adapter supports and is set to 3.3V mode.
To connect the module to your computer, you need to connect four pins: GND, TX0, RX0, 3v3. You also need to connect GPIO0 to GND temporarily to enter bootloader mode and allow download of the firmware. The connection diagram of the module is shown below:
Make sure to properly connect these pins from within the green box in the below image to the corresponding pins on the USB UART adapter, take note of the TX. RX connections to ensure communication suceeds. Additionally, connect GPIO0 to Ground before applying power to put the board into programming mode before flashing the firmware with ESPHome. You can use a spare jumper wire to connect the 2 pins in the red box.
Use the two pins in the purple box to power the device normally with 5V, once you have completed the flashing process.
Web Installer
With the USB Uart serial adapter and WT32-ETH01 all wired up, proceed to the web installer site. If you don’t see the WT32-ETH01 displayed, make sure to click the ‘DIY Expert’ link at the very bottom of this page.
Select the Wireless-Tag WT32-ETH01 Device and click ‘Connect’. On the window that pops up, select the correct COM port that corresponds to your USB-to-UART adapter (you can check it in Device Manager on Windows or ls /dev/tty on Linux) and click ‘Connect’ again. If everything is wired up correctly, you should see the following pop-up displayed:
Click ‘Install’, Confirm installation, then wait for the flashing process to complete. This process will take around 2-3mins to complete.
Setup in Home Assistant
This device needs to be powered by a 5V supply for normal operation, connect this to the 2 pins shown in the purple box in the previous pinout image of the WT32-ETH01 pinouts. Now you are ready to plug the device into your ethernet network.
NB: Wi-Fi is disabled in the pre-built Bluetooth proxy firmware. If you wish to use Wi-Fi you will need to first connect via ethernet and reload a configuration with Wi-Fi enabled.
Head to your ESPHome Dashboard where you should see a Bluetooth Proxy device ready to be adopted to ESPHome. Click on the green Adopt button, give the device a suitable name and click to adopt. ESPHome will now start installing the device, during these time a lot of lines of text will scroll past, but after a couple of minutes is should be completed.
The final step is to configure the proxy device in Home Assistant, naviagte to Settings. Devices Services menu or click on the devices discovered notification. You should see the Proxy device has been discovered and you just need to click the ‘Configure’ button.
Configuration is now complete, any Bluetooth device within range of your new Bluetooth proxy will get sent to Home Assistant. If it is a device that is supported by Home Assistant, this device will be discovered and available to setup from the Devices services screen.
If you made it this far, let us know in the Комментарии и мнения владельцев how you went!
Advanced ESPHome Usage
ESPHome is a very powerful platform with support for many sensors, relays, displays and more. It is possible to use this device for far more than just the Bluetooth proxy, by making your own custom firmware utilising any of the supported components. Simply add the following code to your ESPHome YAML file to enable the ethernet port. You can retain the Bluetooth Proxy feature as well in your custom firmware, see the documentaion for all the details.
ethernet: type: LAN8720 mdc_pin: GPIO23 mdio_pin: GPIO18 clk_mode: GPIO0_IN phy_addr: 1 power_pin: GPIO16
ESPresense: Easy Room Detection for Home Assistant
I recently installed a Wink Relay in my office and “hacked” it to work with Home Assistant. This completed one of my home automation goals: all of my office’s lighting and its ceiling fan are accessible to Home Assistant for automating tasks.
Ever since first installing up Home Assistant, I’ve been wanting to automate turning on my ceiling fan. I very easily threw together this Node-RED flow. On each update of the temperature from office’s Zooz 4-in-1 sensor, it will use the temperature to decide whether to turn the fan on or turn it off.
There’s a shortcoming with this flow, though. Turning on a fan doesn’t lower the temperature in the room, it only makes it feel cooler thanks to the evaporative effect of air moving over your skin. The only time this automation would be beneficial was if someone (me) was already in the room.
Room-Specific Presence Detection in Home Assistant
Thanks to the Home Assistant iOS App and the GPS features in my iPhone 12 Pro Max, my Home Assistant installation has a pretty good idea of when I’m home. For the longest time, I’ve used this as a condition to either turn the lights on or off inside my office.
But my phone doesn’t necessarily know what room I’m in. I don’t think the GPS is accurate enough, and I definitely don’t want to try and figure out the GPS coordinates for the boundaries of each of the rooms in my house. This is problematic, but even more problematic is the fact that my phone isn’t always near me. I routinely leave my phone in other rooms as I nomadically wander around my house during the day.
I was in need of an easier—and better—method to implement room-specific presence detection inside Home Assistant.
Enter ESPresense
Thanks to a reply to one of my tweets from @HolgBarath, I learned of the existence of the project, ESPresense. After it caught my attention, I took a look at the ESPresense website, the ESPresense GitHub repository, and watched a few videos on YouTube. I immediately knew that I wanted to give it a closer look.
What is ESPresense? On their website, they say it’s “An ESP32 based presence detection node for use with the Home Assistant mqtt_room component for localized device presence detection.”
ESPresense accomplishes its goal by providing an interface to easily flash their firmware onto an ESP32 development board, which enables the ESP32 board to monitor nearby Bluetooth low-energy devices. Scatter a few of those ESP32 devices across your house and set up the Bluetooth device(s) in Home Assistant you want to track and you’re ready to unlock the room presence achievement!
I have two Bluetooth devices that are pretty much attached to me all the time: my Apple Watch SE and my Medtronic 770G Insulin Pump. Of those two devices, I figured the watch was the better device to use ESPresense to track.
Brian implements ESPresense at home
I am relieved to report that setting up ESPresense was easy enough and well-documented enough that I don’t think there’s much need for this blog to turn into a how-to guide. The ESPresense install page has all the information you need to get started, including Everything Smart Home’s excellent video on ESPresense embedded in the page.
The software prerequisites for ESPresense are pretty straightforward. I already had my own functional Home Assistant installation, which includes a MQTT server. For the hardware, I decided that I’d use the following hardware to build my ESPresense base stations:
- D1 Mini NodeMCU ESP32 ESP-WROOM-32 Development board (5 pieces) (34.99)
- UorMe 1A 5V Single Port USB Power Adapters (6 pieces) (10.96)
- Spater 6” Micro USB Sync Cable (5 pieces) (7.98)
- A 3D-printed ESP32 D1 Mini case:
- Brian’s ESP32 D1 Mini Case
- MH-ET Live D1 mini ESP32 Case
Altogether, I wound up spending 60 and some time on my 3D printer to add Bluetooth tracking to 5 different rooms in my house. I definitely could’ve done it cheaper too. I didn’t really need all the USB power adapters or cables, as I probably have plenty of both stashed somewhere in the house.
Flashing ESPresense onto my ESP32 boards was a snap from their Install page. Their website allows you to flash the ESP32 with the latest version of ESPresense from right inside the browser and to open a serial terminal connection to the ESP32 after it is done flashing.
For the most part, everything went as smoothly as I expected from the documentation. I thought I’d share a few things that I encountered along the way that might have made it even smoother.
Bluetooth Chatter: I have a lot of Bluetooth devices in my office: my insulin pump, watch, phone, work laptop, personal laptop, Smart speaker, etc. Figuring out the Bluetooth details to create the sensor in Home Assistant wound up being a bit of a challenge. I used a couple different methods to try and sort that out.
- MQTT Explorer, connected to my MQTT server on Home Assistant, and monitored the espresense\devices topic.
- Took my laptop, watch, and an ESP32 board to a room with no BLE devices and used the ESPresense Terminal to determine the Bluetooth IDs
- Bluetooth Scanner Apps were recommended a couple different places, and I expected them to be helpful. But I didn’t exactly find them to be especially useful—but everyone’s mileage may vary!
ESPresense’s very active development and automatic updates: By default, the auto-update feature is enabled on the ESPresense base station. It is also a very active project on GitHub. The combination of these two factors might occasionally work against you. On the day I was setting everything up for the first time, a release happened that caused my ESP32s to repeatedly crash and be quite unreliable. I wound up disabling the auto-update and using the ESPHome-Flasher to flash an earlier, more stable, version.
Each base station required calibration: This should be expected—especially in areas of the house where there were base stations near each other. I had to fine-tune each base station’s Maximum Distance to Report (in meters). It’s good to point out that this is an approximation based on the Bluetooth signals RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indicator). I ended up using Home Assistant’s developer tools to monitor the state and attributes of the sensor I created while I walked around each room.
When it was all said and done, I had ESPresense base stations in my office, the master bedroom, the living room, and our dining room.
What about that Ceiling Fan Automation?
Incorporating presence condition into the automation was a snap! I wound up adding a node to that flow to check which room ESPresense detected my watch was in. In order for the fan to get turned on in my office, two conditions would now need to be met: the temperature would need to be over 75 degrees and my watch would need to be nearest to the ESPresense base station in my office.
We had a rather warm day last week, and the automation worked great. I was working on writing this blog and noticed that the fan turned on. As the day progressed, I wandered in and out of my office to do other tasks. It was awesome to see that the ceiling fan was on when I was in the office—but off when I was somewhere else.
Final Thoughts
I enjoyed implementing ESPresense enough that I went ahead and ordered another 5-pack of the D1 Mini ESP32 boards. I don’t necessarily need them, but I like the idea that we could have ESPresense base stations in every room in our house. Adding presence detection in Home Assistant for about 12 per room is a tremendous value!
Reliable room-based presence detection is going to open the door for creating better automation that hasn’t been available to me before:
- Motion detection and room presence to turn the lights on in my office, keep them on, and turn them off shortly after I leave the office.
- Create new automation to automatically turn off the lights in my office when it’s empty
- Using my iPhone’s charging status and room presence in the bedroom to deduce whether I’m in bed.
- Personalize automations for other members of the household.
I have enjoyed using ESPresense that I’ve already published a second blog about how much I like ESPresense. In this blog, I talk about my experience after using ESPresense for 3—4 monthsand I discuss listing two products on my Tindie store:
What other kinds of ideas am I overlooking? If you had presence detection enabled in your Smart home, what kind of Bluetooth devices would you use for presence detection? What kind of tasks would you automate using presence detection? I’d love to hear what you think; share your ideas in the Комментарии и мнения владельцев below!
Home Assistant Bluetooth Speaker
Smart technology is becoming more and more popular in homes around the world. Devices like the Amazon Echo and Google Home are becoming common household items. Another device that is becoming popular is the Bluetooth speaker.
These speakers can be controlled by voice assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. There are many different brands and models of Bluetooth speakers on the market, but one brand that is getting a lot of attention is the Home Assistant Bluetooth speaker. This speaker has been designed to work with the Home Assistant Smart home platform.
If you’re looking for a great Bluetooth speaker to use with your Home Assistant setup, we’ve got just the thing. Our Home Assistant Bluetooth Speaker is specifically designed to work perfectly with Home Assistant, giving you outstanding audio quality and making it easy to control your music from anywhere in your home. The speaker itself is a high-quality unit that delivers excellent sound, and it comes with a built-in amplifier so you can really crank up the volume if you want to.
The best part, though, is the ease of use. All you need to do is connect your phone or other devices to the speaker via Bluetooth, and then you can start controlling your music using voice commands through Home Assistant. It’s that simple!
So if you’re looking for a top-notch Bluetooth speaker that will work great with Home Assistant, be sure to check out our home Assistant Bluetooth Speaker. You won’t be disappointed!
Home Assistant Bluetooth Speaker Tts
If you’re looking for a great way to add some personality to your home automation setup, consider using a Bluetooth speaker with TTS (text-to-speech) capabilities. This can be a great way to have your system announce things like weather forecasts, incoming messages, or even just the time. There are a few different ways to set this up, but one of the easiest is to use the Home Assistant software on a Raspberry Pi.
This software makes it easy to connect and control various devices in your home, including Bluetooth speakers. To get started, you’ll first need to install Home Assistant on your Raspberry Pi. You can find instructions for doing this here: https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/installation/raspberry-pi/.
Once Home Assistant is up and running, you’ll need to configure it to work with your Bluetooth speaker. The exact steps for doing this will vary depending on the make and model of your speaker, but you should be able to find all of the necessary information in the documentation that came with it. Once your speaker is connected, you can start using it with Home Assistant by adding some simple code snippets to your configuration file.
Home Assistant Raspberry Pi Speaker
If you’re looking for a way to control your Smart home with voice commands, then a Home Assistant Raspberry Pi speaker might be just what you need. With this type of setup, you can use voice commands to control lights, appliances, and other devices in your home. There are a few different ways that you can set up a Home Assistant Raspberry Pi speaker.
One option is to use the Google AIY Voice Kit, which includes a microphone and speaker for your Raspberry Pi. Another option is to use the ReSpeaker 2-MicsPi kit, which includes two microphones and a small audio amplifier. Whichever method you choose, setting up your Home Assistant Raspberry Pi speaker is relatively easy.
In most cases, all you’ll need to do is install the software on your Raspberry Pi and connect it to your home network. Once it’s connected, you’ll be able to start issuing voice commands to control your Smart home devices.
Home Assistant Speaker
If you’re looking for a great way to control your Smart home devices, then you should check out Home Assistant. This open-source software allows you to control all of your devices from a single interface. Plus, it supports a wide range of devices and platforms.
One of the best features of Home Assistant is its support for speakers. With this feature, you can play music, podcasts, or any other audio content through your Smart speaker. Plus, you can use voice commands to control playback.
This makes it super easy to listen to your favorite content without having to fumble around with a remote control or app. To get started with this feature, simply add the ‘media_player:’ component to your configuration file. Then, select your speaker from the list of supported devices.
Once you’ve done that, you’ll be able to access all of your audio content from the Home Assistant interface. So if you’re looking for an easy way to control your Smart home audio setup, then be sure to check out Home Assistant’s speaker support!
Conclusion
This blog post is about setting up a Bluetooth speaker with Home Assistant. The author walks through the process of installing and configuring the necessary software and then connecting the speaker to their Home Assistant system. They provide screenshots and detailed instructions to help readers along the way.
Home Assistant Yellow
We have been working on Home Assistant, the software that powers Home Assistant Yellow, for eight years. It is the second most active Python project on GitHub with over 8,000 contributors last year alone. With this campaign we’re introducing Home Assistant Yellow, a ready-to-use device and the easiest way to run Home Assistant and experience the best home automation in the world.
Home Assistant Yellow integrates 1,000 different devices and services, allowing you to create powerful automations and get insight into your energy usage. All from an easy-to-use interface that runs 100% locally without anything in the Cloud.
Home Assistant Yellow grows with you.
A home is not static. As we grow as a person or expand our family, our homes evolve. What we buy today, should work tomorrow. With Home Assistant Yellow we have created a system that can be upgraded so it can keep up as you grow.
At the heart of Home Assistant Yellow is the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4. This plugs into the Home Assistant Yellow board and provides the brains. You can upgrade to a more powerful version of the Compute Module 4 at any time.
Home Assistant Yellow includes the latest and greatest Zigbee radio chip from Silicon Labs to communicate with Smart devices in your home. The chip is forward-compatible with the upcoming Matter Smart home connectivity standard, in which Silicon Labs is heavily involved. Home Assistant Yellow will be compatible with Matter as soon as the Silicon Labs Matter SDK is released.
Home Assistant Yellow also contains an M.2 extension port. This allows you to easily plug in an NVMe SSD drive to extend the available space.
One app to control them all.
With Home Assistant Yellow, you can control your lights, thermostat, TV, music, and more. Home Assistant integrates with over 1,000 different devices and services. Home Assistant works with popular brands like Philips Hue and also that odd-ball lightbulb you picked up at a sale. Check the growing list of integrations to see if your devices are already compatible.
Home Assistant isn’t limited to integrating hardware devices either. Your dashboards and automations can also use services to get information about your commute, air quality in your area, or the latest currency exchange rates.
Use pre-made automations or create your own.
With Home Assistant Yellow, everything in your home becomes a data point and can be automated:
- Left the garage door open for too long? Send a notification to your mobile phone to confirm that it should be closed.
- Turn on the lights in the living room when the sun sets and someone is home.
- Dim the lights when you start watching TV.
Use our advanced automation editor to create powerful automations, or select one of the many automation blueprints contributed by Home Assistant’s global community of users. Blueprints are templates that you can easily configure, like picking a motion sensor and an area to create a motion-based automation.
Want to fine-tune an automation? Use our automation tracing engine to see exactly what’s happening at every step of the automation.
Track and manage energy consumption.
Home Assistant Yellow helps you track your energy. By pairing Home Assistant Yellow with supported sensing hardware, you can see both how much energy you’re using at the moment and trends over time. Solar panels, home batteries, and gas usage are also supported.
With PoE, a private Smart home is just a cable away.
Don’t like cables? Neither do we, so we created a variant of Home Assistant Yellow that includes Power-over-Ethernet (PoE). With a PoE-compatible switch or router you can communicate and power Home Assistant Yellow with a single Ethernet cable.
Features Specifications
- CM4 board-to-board connector
- Supports direct boot from NVMe devices (e.g., for CM4 Lite)
- 12 cm x 12 cm
- Compatible with all 32 variants of CM4
- Quad-core Cortex-A72 (ARMv8) 64-bit / 1.5 GHz
- Up to 8 GB RAM
- Up to 32 GB eMMC
- Regulatory approval does not cover wireless variants
- Supports Zigbee 3.0, OpenThread, and Matter
- 2.4 GHz radio with TX power up to 20 dBm
- 1024 KB flash program memory, 96 KB RAM data memory
- Pre-installed with Zigbee 3.0 firmware (EZSP), can be upgraded
- For NVMe SSDs (M-Key)
- M.2 socket M-Key
- Supports 2230, 2242, 2260, and 2280 modules
- PCIe x1
- Note: Google Coral AI Accelerator not working, details in this issue
- UART mode (default): debug USB-to-serial adapter
- USB mode: CM4 USB 2.0 interface for USB recovery
- 2 V RMS line-out on 3.5 mm audio jack
- SNR 106 dB
- Red: Factory reset
- Blue: To be determined
- Green: Power
- Red: Disk usage
- Yellow: Home Assistant system state
- 12 V / 2 A through barrel DC power jack (5.5 mm x 2.1 mm)
- Ethernet: PoE IEEE 802.3at-2009 Class 3 or 4 (selectable via jumper)
- Typical power usage
- Idle ~1.5 W
- Idle with NVMe ~2.5 W
- Load ~5-9 W
- 123 mm x 123 mm x 36 mm
- Translucent injection-molded polycarbonate plastic
- Tool-free assembly
- Accommodates custom heat sink (included)
Home Assistant Yellow is configurable.
Storage
The flagship Home Assistant Yellow product comes pre-installed with a variant of the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 (CM4) that has 16 GB of eMMC flash storage, where the operating system and all user data (e.g., sensor readings) are stored. As you install more third-party applications or collect more sensor data, you may want to expand Yellow’s storage capacity. You can do this by upgrading the CM4 to a variant with 32 GB of eMMC flash storage, or by installing an NVMe solid-state drive (SSD) in Yellow’s M.2 slot.
Unlike Home Assistant Yellow, the Yellow Kits do not come with a CM4, so you will need to provide your own. Of the 32 CM4 variants available, some of them do not come with eMMC flash storage. these are known as Lite variants of CM4. When using a CM4 Lite, you will need to install an NVMe SSD in the M.2 slot so the operating system and user data have a place to reside.
Wireless Connectivity
Home Assistant Yellow has an integrated Zigbee chip by Silicon Labs to control Zigbee-enabled devices in your home. The chip is Thread-certified and will support the upcoming Matter Smart home standard.
Z-Wave is an alternative to Zigbee but is not compatible with Zigbee. Home Assistant Yellow does not include a Z-Wave radio, but it is possible to use a Z-Wave USB stick or attach the AEOTEC Z-Pi 7 inside the case. There are several reasons we did not include Z-Wave on the mainboard itself. For example, each region of the world requires a different Z-Wave antenna and the regulatory approval for a board with one radio is much simpler than that with two.
Home Assistant Yellow does not have integrated Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, but you can easily install a variant of the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 that includes both. Note that we do not recommend connecting Home Assistant to your network over Wi-Fi because a reliable Internet connection is important for the backbone of your Smart home.
GPIO
The Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 allows you to communicate with external components via GPIO pins. Most GPIO pins on Home Assistant Yellow are used for on-board features such as the Zigbee module, audio DAC and for the debug console. This is why we don’t include a Raspberry Pi-compatible 40-pin header. most of those pins are already used. Instead, there is a 10-pin header (labeled J11 in the image below) that exposes a serial port and I²C. This header is compatible with the first ten pins of the standard 40-pin header, which makes it compatible with accessories that only use those first ten pins.
That said, we don’t recommend using the GPIO pins with Home Assistant at all. Instead, we suggest using an external ESP-based microcontroller with ESPHome, which means you can place sensors and cameras anywhere, not just physically connected to Home Assistant. It also allows you to extend and reconfigure your sensor node independently. ESPHome is an open source project by the creators of the Home Assistant Yellow and has state-of-the-art integration with the Home Assistant software.
Power
Home Assistant Yellow is powered by a 12 VDC, 2 A power supply with a barrel jack. We opted for a barrel jack over USB because many USB power adapters do not supply enough power, which results in an unreliable system. Home Assistant Yellow uses about 1.5 W when idle, and 2.5 W if an NVMe SSD is installed. Under load, this increases to about 5-9 W.
The Power-over-Ethernet variant of the Yellow Kit is by default configured as an 802.3at Type 1 Class 3 device (PoE, up to 15.4 W). If you require more power, the device can be turned into an 802.3at Type 3 Class 4 (PoE, up to 25 W) device by changing a jumper.
Home Assistant Yellow is open.
With Home Assistant Yellow, there is no vendor lock-in. The product is designed as an open platform that puts you fully in control, without limitations. You can do whatever you want with your data, like export the raw data to a time series database or use it with another automation engine.
Home Assistant Yellow protects your data from being vacuumed into the treasure chest of an advertising company, or disappearing completely if a company goes out of business. All data is stored locally and Home Assistant runs 100% locally. Internet outage? No problem. Home Assistant does not rely on the Internet to operate.
This all sounds great, but you don’t have to take our word for it — Home Assistant Yellow is open source throughout. Home Assistant, with all its components, is open source software. We will also make the Yellow board open source as well — design resources will become available as the project progresses.
Finally, Home Assistant Yellow can also be used with other software. Home Assistant Yellow is based on the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4, for which a lot of software, including full images, has been developed, both by the Raspberry Pi Foundation and the wider community. For example, Raspberry Pi OS itself runs just fine.
Support Documentation
Home Assistant Yellow runs the Home Assistant Operating System. Software documentation and various support channels for Home Assistant can be found on home-assistant.io. Additional user documentation will be added as the project progresses.
For feedback, Комментарии и мнения владельцев, and questions you can reach us on the following channels:
Manufacturing Plan
Our Shenzhen-based manufacturing partner has successfully produced engineering samples. We are preparing for a pilot production run, along with equipment to test all PCB functionality. All boards will be 100% tested before they are shipped to backers.
The same manufacturing partner is also creating the injection mold for our enclosure. The injection molding tools are about to get produced. We expect the first enclosure samples (T0) around end of October.
For the heat sink, we are working with a partner that specializes in metal processing. We already received a pilot run and validated a proper fit and thermal properties, which fully met our requirements. The same is true for other metal parts — we are working with a specialized supplier to make plastic inserts (nuts) and metal thumb screws for our enclosure.
All parts will be shipped to the electronics manufacturer for final assembly and packaging.
Fulfillment Logistics
Teaming up with Crowd Supply allows us to utilize the global logistics capabilities of Mouser Electronics, Crowd Supply’s fulfillment partner. Once Yellow leaves the factory, Mouser will make sure it gets shipped directly to your doorstep. You can learn more about Crowd Supply’s fulfillment service under Ordering, Paying, and Shipping in their guide.
Risks Challenges
There is a worldwide component shortage and Home Assistant Yellow is not immune to its effects. However, we have ordered and paid for components to create 500 units of Home Assistant Yellow and 2,000 units of each Yellow Kit variant. As such, we will start production within six months. The Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 has been especially hard to source in bulk, though many of the CM4 variants are available in low quantities at various vendors. If you aren’t one of the first 500 backers, then ordering an Yellow kit variant and sourcing your own CM4 is likely the fastest way to get an Yellow up and running.
Home Assistant Yellow will undergo a series of regulatory approvals, including for electromagnetic emissions and immunity testing. We’ve already visited an EMI lab to test a prototype and found it to be within acceptable limits. However, the full approval will be more involved. This might require us to redesign the PCB, which may lead to delays. We will make sure that Home Assistant Yellow will be fully compliant with all regulatory requirements and won’t interfere unintentionally with other electronic devices.
During the design phase, we carefully avoided components which are currently known to be difficult to source. However, the supply chain situation is constantly evolving — a component which seems available today might be scarce a month later. If we cannot get a certain component, we can either wait until the component is available, or redesign with an alternative. The latter will become more expensive in the later stages of the project, especially after we go through regulatory approvals, because replacing a part will require going through some of regulatory approval process again.
Home Assistant Yellow vs Home Assistant Blue
Last year, we partnered with a single-board computer (SBC) manufacturer to introduce Home Assistant Blue, our first foray into creating hardware that runs Home Assistant. Home Assistant Blue was always meant to be a limited edition and its production has been discontinued.
Home Assistant Yellow is the natural successor to Home Assistant Blue. With Home Assistant Yellow, we designed the hardware from scratch, taking into account everything we had learned from Blue. For example, Home Assistant Yellow has a home automation radio for a better out-of-the-box experience and its M.2 slot opens the door to many hardware extensions to cover a wider range of use cases.
Though Home Assistant Blue has been discontinued, we will continue to support it and, just like Home Assistant Yellow, it is able to run the latest version of Home Assistant.
In the Press
Home Assistant’s primary appeal lies in its local control (the ability to access your devices even when the internet is down); its secure, privacy-focused Cloud offering; and that it’s completely platform agnostic.
It is a fantastic little device and I for one am really happy to see Home Assistant start to get into some hardware.
[Is] compatible with all variants of Compute Module, and supports booting from NVMe if on-board flash isn’t available. Two USB 2.0 ports are available, along with a Type-C port via a USB bridge.
This is a device that normal people can use to get started on the Home Assistant platform without having to worry about buying their own computer, attaching dongles, or installing software.
One of the key features is running 100% on a local network, meaning it does not rely on a Cloud-based solution. There are over 1,000 compatible devices and services. A significant and highly active community of users further strengthens the ecosystem.
The Amber is powered by a Compute Module 4 and incorporates Zigbee, and M.2 slot, RTC, and optionally Power over Ethernet, to make the ideal Home Assistant setup.
Ask a Question
Produced by Nabu Casa in Planet Earth.
Sold and shipped by Crowd Supply.
Yellow Kit with Regional Power Supply (CM4 Not Included)
Some assembly required! This kit includes everything in the flagship version except the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4. This option allows you to pick the compute module with the memory and eMMC storage to fit your needs. You will need to install Home Assistant on the compute module you provide. Custom enclosure, custom heat sink, and Ethernet cable included. This version comes with a power supply, but does not support Power-over-Ethernet. Other than the power supply, it is the same as the Yellow Kit with Universal Power Supply, which will replace this version once stock is depleted.
Yellow Kit with Universal Power Supply (CM4 Not Included)
Some assembly required! This kit includes everything in the flagship version except the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4. This option allows you to pick the compute module with the memory and eMMC storage to fit your needs. You will need to install Home Assistant on the compute module you provide. Custom enclosure, custom heat sink, and Ethernet cable included. This version includes an international power supply with US, EU, AU, and UK plugs, but does not support Power-over-Ethernet. Other than the power supply, it is the same as the Yellow Kit with Regional Power Supply, which is currently being phased out.
Orders placed now ship Jul 31, 2023.
Yellow Kit with Power-over-Ethernet (CM4 Not Included)
The Home Assistant Yellow mainboard that comes with this kit supports Power-over-Ethernet (PoE). The kit does not include a power supply, though it is safe to operate it with both PoE and a 12 VDC power supply plugged in at the same time, in which case power will be drawn from the 12 VDC supply and not PoE. Custom enclosure, custom heat sink, and Ethernet cable included. You must provide your own Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 and install Home Assistant on it.
Orders placed now ship Aug 04, 2023.
12 VDC 36 W International Wall Mount AC Adapter
In case you want an extra power supply.
A 12 V, 3 A (36 W) AC adapter with interchangeable plugs provided for the US, EU, AU, UK, plus a CCC-compliant plug. connecting via a 2.1 mm center-positive barrel jack.
NVMe SSD
For booting or expanded storage.
SanDisk NVMe SSDs in various capacities: 256 GB (P/N SDBPNPZ-256G), and 512 GB (P/N SDBPNPZ-512G).
USB Cable: Type-C to Type-A (1 m, ~3.3 ft)
Optional. only needed for accessing Home Assistant Yellow’s UART and CM4 USB recovery.
A 100 cm cable with a USB Type-C and a USB Type-A connector.
