Local smart home this week: ESPHome 2026.10 and a local route for Nanoleaf Essentials over Bluetooth
Local smart home news for October 17-23, 2026: ESPHome 2026.10.0, the Kasa authentication fix, local Nanoleaf Essentials and KEBA P40 integrations, and Oread voice ID.
On this page
- ESPHome 2026.10.0 ships compressed updates and outgoing connections
- TP-Link’s Kasa authentication fix can cost you local control
- Nanoleaf Essentials lights get a local Bluetooth integration
- KEBA KeContact P40 chargers get a local REST integration
- Oread adds local speech-to-text that knows who’s talking
Five items this week. ESPHome’s monthly release is the one most people will install, and three community projects took a light, an EV charger and voice recognition local.
ESPHome 2026.10.0 ships compressed updates and outgoing connections
ESPHome 2026.10.0 came out on October 21. OTA uploads are now compressed on ESP32, RP2040, LibreTiny and host builds, which makes images about a third smaller, and the native ESP8266 toolchain is the default. A new outgoing_connection option under api: lets a device dial Home Assistant itself instead of waiting to be reached, which helps when the device sits on a VLAN or behind NAT that Home Assistant can’t reach inbound; it only works with API encryption on. My ESPHome guide covers the basics.
Local impact: more local. Devices on a locked-down IoT network can now talk to Home Assistant without opening inbound firewall rules.
The catch: lights with initial_state: now honor it at boot, so a light that used to stay off after a power cut may come on. Sendspin users need Music Assistant 2.10.7 or newer first, and speaker configs that still set codec_support_enabled fail validation.
TP-Link’s Kasa authentication fix can cost you local control
TP-Link’s advisory for CVE-2026-108473 covers a long list of Kasa plugs, switches and bulbs, and the newer firmware that fixes it can stop Home Assistant from controlling them until you turn on Third-Party Compatibility in the Kasa app. I covered which devices are listed and what to flip in the Kasa brief.
Nanoleaf Essentials lights get a local Bluetooth integration
A community developer released ha-nanoleaf-ble, a HACS integration that controls Nanoleaf Essentials lights and the Secretlab MAGRGB desk strip over Bluetooth LE, through an ESPHome Bluetooth proxy. It exposes the strip’s scenes as light effects, can save Nanoleaf community scenes, and pairs with the setup code, so no factory reset. It needs Home Assistant 2025.3 or newer.
Local impact: more local. Scenes and effects run from Home Assistant over Bluetooth, with no Nanoleaf app or account in the loop.
The catch: only the MAGRGB strip (NL62) has been tested; the Essentials Lightstrip and A19 bulb are listed as “should work”, and firmware 5 support hasn’t been run on real hardware. Your proxy has to scan in active mode, and each strip holds one of its connection slots. I haven’t run it.
KEBA KeContact P40 chargers get a local REST integration
A HACS integration for the KEBA KeContact P40 talks to the charger’s local HTTPS REST API, with no cloud or Modbus. It adds 33 monitoring entities and four optional controls (start, stop, availability, current limit), off by default, and needs Home Assistant 2026.9 or newer. The built-in keba integration only covers the older P20 and P30.
Local impact: more local, for P40 owners who had no local route in core Home Assistant.
The catch: the author tested one P40 with one car on one installation, and the P40 Pro is untested.
Oread adds local speech-to-text that knows who’s talking
Oread is a self-hosted, Apache 2.0 speech-to-text server that you train on each household member’s voice so it can tell who is speaking. It plugs into Home Assistant through Wyoming, runs on CPU with about 2 cores and 1 GB of memory, and the author tested it with a Voice Preview Edition.
Local impact: more local. It adds speaker identification to a voice pipeline that never leaves the house.
The catch: it is English only, runs as a separate Docker container rather than an add-on, and the author calls it a work in progress. I run a Voice Preview Edition but haven’t tried Oread on it.
Sources
- ESPHome blog, October 21, 2026: ESPHome 2026.10.0
- TP-Link Security Advisory FAQ 5342, October 14, 2026: CVE-2026-108473 (covered in my October 18 brief)
- Home Assistant community, October 20, 2026: Nanoleaf Essentials over Bluetooth
- Home Assistant community, October 18, 2026: KEBA KeContact P40 local REST integration
- Home Assistant community, October 20, 2026: Introducing Oread
Every fact above comes from these sources, checked Oct 23, 2026. A launch brief is written before hands-on testing; the "what I verified" box says what is confirmed and what is not.