HACS is built in now — and my hand-installs were invisible
Home Assistant 2026.11 leaves nothing of HACS to install. What changes, what breaks in templates, and why manually installed integrations do not show up.
Series
What happens if …?
Pull the trigger and watch what really happens.
8 articles
What does a flat cool towards? Not the outside air
Seven hours with no heat in the circuit, and the question of how far to preheat. The answer hung on a figure I had assumed wrongly at first.
The UPS shuts nothing down — and that is deliberate
Every guide says: shut down cleanly on power failure. Mine keeps the Pi running. The reason lies in a property no UPS puts in its datasheet.
Blink answers with 202 — and nobody got in
The login failed in the version I tested. Three days later the project had three new releases. What lay in between was not code.
A few drops, and my phone speaks up
A leak sensor under 20 euros passed a real water test in my Vienna flat: instant alert, all-clear after 30 seconds, battery warning included.
Two masters on the same light
The Hue bridge automates by itself, even when Home Assistant is off. Use the same sensor twice and you will later wonder why the light goes out on its own.
One convenience feature cost me nine devices
A camera would not join the Wi-Fi, and in the garden the connection dropped. Same cause — and after switching it off, nine more devices were reachable.
35 minutes of cooling, zero degrees colder — the proof run
The air conditioner ran and did not cool. "Cools badly" is not a finding. How a complaint became a measurement series the engineer confirmed.