This is Issue #60 of the Smart Homes School weekly newsletter, free smart home news for professionals, consultants, installers and enthusiasts, every week. Subscribe here to get it in your inbox first.
A solid week for smart home news. Home Assistant 2026.5 landed with one of the most practically useful updates in recent memory, native radio frequency control, which means RF blinds, garage doors and ceiling fans can finally join a smart home without a workaround. Google Home also pushed a significant automation update. Ring has a proper 4K doorbell lineup now, and Ecobee quietly doubled its monitoring prices.
Home Assistant 2026.5 Adds Native RF Control. Your Blinds, Garage and Ceiling Fan Just Got Smart.
Home Assistant 2026.5 dropped on May 7th with a headline feature that is genuinely useful for retrofit installs: native radio frequency support. Until now, RF-controlled devices like motorised blinds, garage door openers, ceiling fans, RF wall switches and wireless doorbells had no clean path into Home Assistant. They speak RF and only RF, and the workarounds were awkward.
This release adds RF as a first-class citizen alongside Zigbee, Z-Wave, Wi-Fi and Matter. Using a Broadlink RM4 Pro or any ESPHome device with a sub-gigahertz transmitter, RF devices now show up as proper controllable entities. The release also adds a new Maintenance Dashboard showing battery states for all devices, a Shortcut Card for dashboards, full Matter lock PIN management, and 14 new integrations including Denon RS232 and Eurotronic.
Why it matters for installers
- Retrofit installs often include RF-only devices, older motorised blinds, ceiling fans and garage doors that clients do not want to replace. This update gives them a smart home story without new hardware
- The Maintenance Dashboard is a practical addition for anyone managing HA installs for clients. All battery states in one view means faster service calls and fewer dead-device complaints
- Matter lock PIN management landing natively means you no longer need a separate app or integration to manage access codes on Matter-certified smart locks
Read the full Home Assistant 2026.5 release notes
Google Home’s May Update Is All About Smarter Automations. Locks, Leaks, Vacuums and Appliances.
Google pushed a May automation update to Google Home that significantly expands what you can trigger, condition, and act on. New starters include security system state changes, door lock conditions such as jammed, forced open, or ajar, binary sensor events like leak detection and contact sensors, and appliance states.
On the action side, you can now pause, resume, and dock robot vacuums, start and stop washers and coffee machines, and trigger automations based on camera face recognition events. Google also quietly added Continued Conversation in late April, removing the need to repeat the wake word between requests.
Why it matters for installers
- Lock state as an automation trigger, including jammed and forced open, is a meaningful security upgrade. You can now build automations that respond to a door being forced rather than just opened
- Continued Conversation means clients no longer need to repeat the wake word during a multi-step interaction, the single biggest daily friction point in Google Home voice installs
Read the full Google Home update breakdown
Ring Has a Full 4K Doorbell Lineup Now. Battery and Wired, Starting at $79.99.
Ring launched a fully refreshed doorbell lineup this spring, including its first-ever battery-powered 4K model, the Battery Doorbell Pro 2nd Gen, alongside new 2K wired and battery variants and two new solar accessories. The flagship Wired Doorbell Pro brings Retinal 4K with 10x enhanced zoom, 3D radar motion detection and Low-Light Sight for true colour in near darkness.
The battery Pro brings 4K to wire-free installs for the first time. All new models include a trial of Ring AI Pro, which adds video descriptions, smart video search, and AI-powered package and person detection.
Why it matters for installers
- 4K in a battery doorbell removes the last major reason to insist on wired for clients who want high resolution, useful for rentals, listed buildings and installations where running cable is not practical
- 3D radar motion detection on the wired Pro significantly reduces false alerts from passing cars and shifting shadows, worth calling out to clients who abandoned earlier Ring models due to notification fatigue
Read the full Ring lineup breakdown
Ecobee Doubled Its Monitoring Price. Professional Monitoring Is Now $20 a Month.
Ecobee has restructured its Smart Security subscription plans, doubling its professional monitoring price from $10 to $20 per month. The move brings Ecobee in line with Ring and Wyze, both of which charge $20 per month for professional monitoring.
Existing customers can keep their current plan until December 31, 2026, at which point everyone moves to the new pricing. Ecobee’s combination of smart thermostat and security hub in one device remains a differentiator, but the pricing advantage that made it a compelling choice for budget-conscious installs is now gone.
Why it matters for installers
- If you have recommended Ecobee to clients specifically for its lower monitoring costs, they need to know the price doubles from January 2027. Worth a proactive heads-up before the December deadline
- The thermostat-as-security-hub proposition still stands on hardware, but the subscription pricing no longer differentiates Ecobee from Ring or Wyze in a meaningful way
Read the full Ecobee pricing breakdown
Worth Reading This Week
- Hackster.io: HA 2026.5 RF support explained in plain English — The clearest technical breakdown of what native RF support actually means and how to set it up. Covers the Broadlink RM4 Pro and ESPHome CC1101 transmitter as hardware options, and explains the difference between RF and infrared control.
- Smart Home Junkie: Full HA 2026.5 feature breakdown — The most thorough third-party write-up of this release. Covers the Shortcut Card, Maintenance Dashboard, new automation triggers for media players and doorbells, and all 14 new integrations.
- BGR: Google Home May 2026 update, what actually changed — A readable summary of the new automation starters, conditions and actions. The facial recognition improvements in Google Home cameras are covered here too.
- Matter Alpha: HA 2026.5 expanded Matter support — Covers the less-reported Matter additions including radon sensor support, thermostat presets, customisable PIR motion sensor delay and the dynamic sensitivity slider for Matter sensors.
- Gizmodo: Ring Wired Doorbell Pro 4K hands-on — A useful practical take on the flagship wired model. The Low-Light Sight colour retention in near darkness is the standout feature separating it from competing doorbells on night-time footage.
- Digital Trends: Why Google Home’s May update matters — A good editorial take on why this automation expansion matters beyond the feature list. The argument is that Google’s most meaningful smart home progress right now is in software rather than hardware.
- Tom’s Guide: Ecobee security subscription changes explained — The full breakdown of what the new plans cost, when existing customers have to switch, and how Ecobee’s new pricing stacks up against Ring, Wyze and SimpliSafe.
- Research and Markets: Smart home market forecast to 2032 — The market sits at $95.83 billion now and is projected to grow at 6.4% CAGR. Smart kitchens are the fastest growing segment. Useful data when writing proposals or pitching the size of the opportunity.
- Home Assistant: 2026.5 official release notes — The breaking changes section is important. Check it before updating client installs. The new duration logic and redesigned vacuum and lawn mower control dialogs will both come up in client handovers.
- Smart Homes School: 2026 Smart Home Predictions Dashboard — Worth a check-in at the midpoint of the year. The RF and local control predictions are tracking ahead of schedule. The Apple Home hardware predictions are running late.
About Smart Homes School Weekly
Smart Homes School Weekly is published by Gerard O’Driscoll from Ireland. It covers smart home technology, AI and automation news for professionals, consultants, installers and serious enthusiasts. Browse the full archive here or subscribe to get it in your inbox every week.