Home Assistant new thermostat card customization

In the 2023.12 release of Home Assistant, a new thermostat card was introduced with a new look and feel. Overall, I really liked the new design. However with the new release, it altered my personal workflow by not including the thermostat mode controls directly on the card. While attempting to change the HVAC mode, I found my fat fingers would accidentally adjust the temperature in an unexpected manner. Prior to upgrading to 2023. Continue reading

Installing Kumo Cloud integration into Home Assistant

A few years ago, we purchased a Mitsubishi mini-split ductless HVAC solution with multiple head units. During the purchasing process, we added the provided manufacturer remote access solution named Kumo Cloud. The manufacturer described the solution as “Manage Your Systems anytime and from anywhere using the Kumo Cloud App”. To Mitsubishi’s credit, the solution did allow remote system management. Additionally, the Kumo Cloud addon was a single one time purchase rather than a monthly ongoing charge. Continue reading

Using Home Assistant to troubleshoot ISP issues

For the last 19 years, I would consider our ISP to be reliable. Outside of weather related issues, we have had only two outages which I can recall. That all changed about a month ago. We started to experience small outages which became more of an issue. As I run my own equipment, I started performing diagnostic. I quickly came to the conclusion the issue resided with the ISP. I pulled on my big person pants, took a deep breath, and called the ISP. Continue reading