Local smart home this week: Everything Presence sensors join Works with Home Assistant, and HA OS 18.4 fixes the 18.3 regressions

Seven items this week. The Everything Presence certification and HA OS 18.4 matter to the most people; the other five are community projects that take an EV charger, a robot vacuum, a plug and a heat pump off the cloud.

Everything Presence sensors join Works with Home Assistant

Home Assistant announced on October 27 that Everything Smart Home, the family business behind the Everything Presence line, has joined the Works with Home Assistant program. The certified devices are the Everything Presence Lite, One and Pro, all mmWave sensors running ESPHome, and all three also work as Bluetooth proxies. Home Assistant says its team tested them for local control, privacy and sustainability, and the company has committed to long-term firmware support. I run an Everything Presence One, and nothing about it changes with the badge.

Local impact: more local. These were already local ESPHome devices; the certification adds a support commitment, which is what you want from a sensor you mount in the ceiling.

Home Assistant OS 18.4 fixes the 18.3 kernel regressions

HA OS 18.4 came out on October 27. It fixes VLAN networking on Realtek network adapters and RTL8761B (0bda:a728) Bluetooth adapters, both broken in 18.3 by kernel 6.18.45, plus several boot and USB storage issues, and moves to kernel 6.18.58. The new CA bundle drops trust in the eMudhra root certificates that signed compromised intermediates, and release downloads now come with signed SHA256 checksums you can check with Cosign.

Local impact: none on its own, but if 18.3 took down a Realtek VLAN or a Bluetooth dongle, this is the fix.

The Marketplace lands in the 2026.11 beta

HACS is moving into Home Assistant as the built-in Marketplace, and the first 2026.11 beta came out on October 28 with it included. Your downloads migrate on their own, and I covered what changes when you update in the Marketplace brief.

Wallbox Pulsar chargers get a local Bluetooth integration

hass-wallbox-ble is a new HACS integration that talks to a Wallbox Pulsar or Pulsar Plus over Bluetooth LE, using the charger’s own protocol, with no Wallbox account or cloud. It works through the Home Assistant host’s adapter or an ESPHome Bluetooth proxy, and covers charger state, power and session sensors, max charging current, editable schedules, a reboot button and the LED halo. Chargers under OCPP control keep charging and lock read-only.

Local impact: more local. Charging current and schedules come off Wallbox’s cloud.

The catch: the charger accepts one Bluetooth connection at a time, so the author recommends removing it from your phone’s Bluetooth list or the app will keep grabbing the link. Other Wallbox models are untested. I haven’t run it.

Ecovacs Deebot X1 Omni goes local with a Valetudo fork

A community developer published valetudo-ecovacs-x1, a Valetudo fork that runs on the Deebot X1 Omni itself, along with the reverse-engineering notes behind it. The robot shows up in Home Assistant through MQTT discovery as a normal vacuum with start, stop, return, battery, tank sensors, fan and water selects and a live map.

Local impact: more local, for X1 owners willing to root.

The catch: it needs a rooted and reflashed X1, which the author says could brick it, and dock automations (wash, dry, auto-empty) and consumables aren’t done yet.

Sonoff S60 plugs can now go to ESPHome over the air

The Sonoff-OTA tool, which already converted the Wi-Fi Sonoff S60 to Tasmota without opening it, now installs ESPHome too, and it can move a plug back to Sonoff’s firmware. It has been run on the UK S60TPG and EU S60TPF; the Zigbee S60 isn’t covered.

Local impact: more local. The S60’s case is welded shut, so this replaces a soldering job.

The catch: the plug has to be added to an eWeLink account first (a throwaway one is fine), and the tool needs admin rights on your computer for a temporary firewall rule.

Vaillant aroTHERM plus and GeniaAir heat pumps get a local eBUS integration

arotherm-genia-ebusd (v1.1.0) is a HACS integration for Vaillant aroTHERM plus and Saunier Duval GeniaAir heat pumps that reads ebusd over MQTT. The author built it because cooling and hot water boost didn’t work properly over local eBUS: it opens the cooling calendar lock for you, forces a boost on a lukewarm tank, and calculates live COP. It exposes 144 entities across four devices.

Local impact: more local, as an alternative to the myVAILLANT cloud.

The catch: you need an eBUS adapter running ebusd with --mqttjson, and the author has tested it on their own GeniaAir Max. I haven’t run it.

Sources

1. Home Assistant blog, October 27, 2026: Everything Smart Home joins Works with Home Assistant
2. GitHub, October 27, 2026: home-assistant/operating-system release 18.4
3. GitHub, October 28, 2026: home-assistant/core release 2026.11.0b0 (covered in my October 25 Marketplace brief)
4. GitHub, created October 26, 2026: LilSlippinJimmy/hass-wallbox-ble
5. Home Assistant community, October 27, 2026: Ecovacs Deebot X1 fully local with a Valetudo fork
6. Reddit r/homeassistant, October 24, 2026: Sonoff S60 OTA tool can now flash ESPHome
7. Home Assistant community, October 30, 2026: Vaillant aroTHERM plus and Saunier Duval GeniaAir via local eBUS

Every fact above comes from these sources, checked Oct 30, 2026. A launch brief is written before hands-on testing; the "what I verified" box says what is confirmed and what is not.