Why we’re investing in the human touch
Welcome to the March edition of the Open Home Foundation newsletter, the place to learn about the latest and greatest things for your smart home that improve its privacy, choice, and sustainability.
The Open Home newsletter is written by Paulus Schoutsen – President of the Open Home Foundation, and founder of Home Assistant. Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe here!
There’s less than a month until my favorite event of the year: State of the Open Home! I can’t wait to see everyone in person on April 8, and of course I love talking about the Open Home. But my passion for these sorts of gatherings goes deeper than that. Here’s why I believe meeting human-to-human is so important…
While Big Tech bets on AI, we’re investing in humans
Everyone’s talking about what AI can build, what it can automate, what it can replace – including people. So it’s no surprise that social media platforms are betting big on AI. But at what cost? Your feeds get filled with machine-generated slop designed to prioritize engagement, and you miss posts from the people you actually care about. It erodes the very thing “social” media was supposed to strengthen: human connection.
At the Open Home Foundation, we’re excited by the possibilities of AI, and have seen it help people build great things. But we refuse to let it replace the human touch.
People are our strength
It’s people who grew Home Assistant into an open source smart home platform with more than two million users worldwide. It’s people who contribute to all our other projects, and support each other daily on GitHub and Discord. And that’s before we count all those who create tutorials and videos, and organize meetups to bring together smart home enthusiasts and curious newcomers alike.
All these people, whether writing code, or simply supporting us by subscribing to this newsletter 👋 are our community. And that’s what AI can never replace.
Real resources for the community
That’s why I’m stoked to say we’ve created a new Community Department, with more people dedicated to strengthening the bonds between us, and creating spaces for us to interact. We’re investing real resources: more funding for meetups and events (see some cool examples below!), better support for the amazing volunteers who work on our projects, and new ways to connect person-to-person, among other things… but I’m not telling you the details just yet 🤫.
Which brings me back to State of the Open Home! If you want to hear about our plans, you’ll need to join us live in Utrecht on April 8 – where the Lead of the Community Department, Melissa Thermidor, will be revealing what her team are doing for the community throughout 2026 and beyond.
There’s no place like (State of the Open) Home
State of the Open Home has always been where we celebrate our community and reflect on what we’ve achieved together – and this year we’re taking it to the next level! By inviting an audience, we’re giving you the chance not just to watch our program, but to be part of the live experience. The excitement (and, yes, nerves 😬) on stage, the random chats over drinks, meeting the people behind the usernames. Those are exactly the kind of human connections we want to create.
Tickets are still available, but selling fast – so if you can make it to the Netherlands, come and say hi!
Open Home Foundation
Meetups
On the subject of connecting IRL, I’ve been doing just that! Lead of Ecosystem Marcel van der Veldt and I visited China this month, where we joined a Home Assistant Community Day in Shenzhen, organized by Seeed Studio. Apparently 200 people registered in minutes, and this enthusiasm shone through with conversations at every level: from getting started to custom Zigbee clusters, and agentic AI. Being in the area was also a great chance to catch up with our Works with Home Assistant partners Aqara, Reolink, SwitchBot, ThirdReality, and Xthings in person, as well as Espressif, one of our donors. Hearing our partners’ plans means we can help their new devices integrate smoothly when they launch.
Celebrating our contributors
We also headed to Yokohama, Japan, for the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) Member Meeting. For me, the highlight there was seeing Ingo Fischer win an Outstanding Contributor Award 🥳. Ingo was recognized for his work on our alternative Matter SDK matter.js, which he donated to the foundation in November. Being one of only four recipients – alongside contributors from Apple and Signify – is a huge deal. He was praised for supporting other members with “exceptional insights into the testing framework and specification” that ultimately strengthen the standard for everyone. Congratulations Ingo!
Why these meetings matter
Being part of these meetups has really reinforced my belief in the importance of the human touch. Having face-to-face conversations reveal regional challenges, different approaches, fresh perspectives, and opportunities we’d miss on video calls. That’s how we build something that serves our whole community, wherever they are in the world.
Get a taste of our meetups
If you need any further encouragement to attend a meetup – there may be cake! Or at least there was at a recent get together in Cologne, where community member Jan Marienfeldt brought this tasty treat along. Check out our Luma calendar to see if there’s something in your area, it’s updated regularly – and if you live around Hasselt, Santiago, or Stockholm, sign up now! You can also set up your own event: find out how.
Help us build the Open Home
Can’t make it to an event right now? No worries, you can support our work in other ways.
Shop our store: show your love for our principles and projects with our range of high quality, ethically made apparel and accessories.
Support our work: subscribe to Home Assistant Cloud, or buy official Home Assistant or ESPHome products from our commercial partners.
Share your skills: contribute code, translations, docs, or designs to any of our projects – or sponsor a maintainer directly on GitHub or Ko-fi.
Home Assistant 2026.3: community-powered improvements
After February’s big release, we took a breath and focused on something equally important: reviewing and merging community contributions. And you really delivered 🙌! Watch our release party to discover the new integrations, bug fixes, and quality upgrades – and thanks to all who made them happen.
Franck Nijhof
Works with Home Assistant says “hei” to Heiman
Our first Works with Home Assistant partner of 2026 is here: Heiman. This safety-focused company is bringing an impressive range of smart sensors and alarms to the program – including the first Matter CO alarms we’ve certified. Check out our article to discover the full list of devices!
Miranda Bishop
This month in the news
Public service announcements the Nor-way
How’s this for a PSA? I’ve mentioned enshittification a couple of times before, but this video from the Norwegian Consumer Council probably explains it better (and more amusingly) than I ever could. If only all countries were so proactive in protecting their citizens’ privacy!
This story rings a bell…
Every time I see Amazon Ring in the headlines I get deja vu – probably because every story sets off the same surveillance alarm bells. This time the company’s CEO Jamie Siminoff has been doing his best to calm the storm that blew up in the wake of its controversial Super Bowl ad. However, as this article explains, he may not have fully succeeded at setting the record straight…
How Sonos is earning back trust
Another tech CEO in the press, but with more encouraging news: in a candid interview, Sonos boss Tom Conrad discusses the infamous 2024 app redesign that led to the replacement of his predecessor Patrick Spence. “We just changed too much too fast”, Conrad says, admitting the current app is “peculiar”. On the plus side, Sonos seems to be fixing things properly: testing with users in their homes, engaging on Reddit, with opt-in betas, and gradual rollouts. Let’s hope it continues!
More clouds on Google Home’s horizon
Back in January we highlighted the Google Home outage that left cloud-dependent devices offline. Now in another case of tech deja vu, devices appear to be auto-removing themselves from users’ setups, breaking automations repeatedly. At the time of writing, Google was working on a fix. Another month, another reminder why local control is so important.
Testing times for Hisense TV owners
Reports from the UK, Spain, and Germany suggest Hisense TV owners are being forced to watch non-skippable ads when switching inputs, turning on their sets, or simply changing channels – even if ad-related options had been disabled. Hisense meanwhile claims it was only a “spot test” limited to Spain... Anyhow, to fix it seems you’ll need to either disconnect your TV from the internet, or email Hisense support (in Australia) to disable it. Good luck.
Fewer ads, at what cost?
If you do find TV ads annoying, you may like the idea of an app that offers an alternative to paying to go ad-free... until you learn what it actually does. Apps using Bright Data’s SDK turn your TV into a proxy crawling and scraping web data in the background – data that gets resold to train AI models 😕. I think I’ll pass.
OpenAI’s smart home debut is a bit “meh”
After much hype and 200+ employees working on it, OpenAI’s smart home debut is reported to be... a smart speaker with camera. Expected to cost $200 to $300 and ship early 2027, it will apparently recognize faces and objects. So pretty much what your phone does already. Still, OpenAI entering this space is worth watching, even if it sounds uninspiring so far 👀.
Community highlights
Taking local control (rooms) to nuclear levels, u/seriousthrillissue’s power station-style kinetic art project is completely over the top, yet utterly compelling.
u/Conscious-Draw-3759 linked menstrual cycle data to Home Assistant to create automations that at least half the population will appreciate: higher heating on certain days, comfort lighting for migraines, and preparing for cravings with chocolate supply monitoring. All local and under your control.
Fed up with trekking down his drive to check his mailbox, Conrad Farnsworth has built the ! Notifier. ESP32-powered, it flashes LED icons and rings a bell when mail or cars arrive.
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