Infrared is cool again with Home Assistant 2026.4
Home Assistant Podcast
E‑ink and Open Display support
They discuss BLE e‑paper display support, use-cases, battery life, cost, and image quality tradeoffs.
Home Assistant 2026.4 is here! We break down Infrared as a first‑class feature with IR proxies, expanded purpose‑specific triggers, dashboard background colors, favorites for lights/covers, Matter lock credential management, and more. We also cover a critical HA OS/Supervisor security patch you should apply now.
Show notes for this episode are available at https://homeassistant.fm/HA228
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Chapters
00:00:00 Intro, sponsors, housekeeping
00:02:30 2026.4 overview and event
00:05:00 Security alert and patch tips
00:07:30 New Works With partner: HeatIt
00:10:00 Feedback: Frigate and Litter‑Robot
00:12:30 Thread/Matter experiences and FP300
00:15:00 Local LLMs and home agents
00:17:30 Cat litter → RoboRock cleanup
00:20:00 Entity naming change delayed
00:23:00 Infrared goes first‑class
00:26:00 IR proxies now, RF coming
00:28:30 Purpose‑specific triggers expand
00:31:00 Dashboard background colors
00:33:30 Favorites for lights and covers
00:36:00 Matter lock credentials, locks
00:38:30 Robots: Roborock Q10, SmartThings
00:41:00 Jellyfin and Proxmox updates
00:43:30 Voice cleaning, backup progress
00:46:00 Markdown actions, LG IR nuances
00:48:30 New integrations roundup
00:51:00 E‑ink, energy, access, breaking changes
This episode was made possible thanks to our sponsors
Home Assistant Cloud by Nabu Casa
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Hosts
Phil Hawthorne
Twitter: @philhawthorne
Bluesky: @philhawthorne.com
Rohan Karamandi
Twitter: @rohank9
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