u/Reikan-Ysora

Hi everyone (again :D),

A quick word of context first: Helios is my Home Assistant card (a Lovelace card for HA) that I released a few days ago. I've had a lot of feedback since then, and I wanted to offer you a solution to a problem quite a few of you ran into.

I hesitated a lot before posting yet another message, because for the past week I've really felt like I've been flooding the subreddit, and that's not like me. But given the announcement I had to make about Helios, I wanted to give it a dedicated post. I get a lot of support messages, and I think I can finally show you a solution that should make everyone happy. So, sorry in advance for cluttering your feed a little more.

About Helios: I've been pleasantly surprised by the enthusiasm and the feedback on my card, but I also picked up on a lot of frustration on your side. For many of you, you weren't in a LiDAR zone covered by Helios.

Unfortunately, after spending many hours trying to find compatible providers for the majority of you, I hit a serious wall. Between the data formats, the incomplete websites, and the APIs that work whenever they feel like it, I tried to find a way for as many people as possible to get access to this feature. And that's when a certain u/jourdant suggested adding a feature to my card: the ability to import a homemade LiDAR map, along with all the tools to do it.

So I decided to recycle my little OVH VPS to offer you an alternative, and above all community-driven, solution: https://helios-lidar.org.

It's an automatic conversion pipeline that supports the majority of LiDAR formats available in each country. Anyone can head to the site, convert their map, and receive a ready-to-use LiDAR map along with the YAML configuration that goes with it. I wanted this tool to be simple, free (of course), and practical. The data is only kept for 10 minutes, both to preserve everyone's anonymity and to avoid overloading my server's storage.

If any of you finds a working API for a country, all you have to do is submit a pull request on the site's GitHub repository, in the "LIDAR_SOURCES.md" file, and the whole community can benefit from that link.

It's simple, community-driven, practical, and, for now, maybe a little slow given the computing power I have :X, but I wanted to share it with you. I'm convinced that with LiDAR data, Helios's predictions are much finer and more relevant than with other forecasts.

So I'm going to stop flooding for good and let you breathe a little with this project. I'll do the same myself: I've spent a lot of hours on it recently and I'm going to ease off a bit. I plan to bring you a 1.7.0 with plenty of new features, but it'll come when it comes. I want to take the time to do things right, and above all to do my best to give you a quality card.

Hoping this card brings you as much joy as I had designing it.

Don't hesitate to keep reaching out to me by DM; I'll do my best to help you and reply as quickly as possible. I was very busy wrapping up 1.6.0, which means quite a few of you had to wait a few days before getting an answer. If that's the case, feel free to open a discussion thread on the Helios GitHub: most of the issues you've run into have probably also been hit by other users.

And for the curious, here are all the links. Everything is open source, even the site:

• The site: https://helios-lidar.org
• The site's repository: https://github.com/ReikanYsora/Helios-Lidar
• The card's repository: https://github.com/ReikanYsora/Helios
• The page to edit to add a LiDAR coverage link: https://github.com/ReikanYsora/Helios-Lidar/blob/main/LIDAR_SOURCES.md

Please don't hesitate to send me your feedback, I strongly encourage it: that's how this tool will keep growing and improving.

And if you feel like it, feel free to drop a little GitHub star on both repos (or buy me a coffee sometime if you can). It's always nice to see that the project sparks some interest :)

Feel free to share the link too: I'm afraid the HACS integration request might take longer than expected (I'm guessing around 1 to 2 months).

And sorry for the length of this message, but the topic is a little complex and deserves, I think, to be explained properly.

Thanks everyone, and see you soon :)

ReikanYsora / Jérôme

Sorry, I deleted the previous post because it sorely lacked clarity.

Hey r/homeassistant, some of you saw the v1.5 post a few days ago and helped me clear out a long list of bugs. Today it's v1.6, big update and a clearer direction for what comes next.

For those discovering Helios: it's a custom Lovelace card that visualises live solar conditions at your home on a 3D MapLibre map. The sun arc, cloud cover, real cast shadows from buildings and vegetation (where LiDAR data is available), an optional PV production overlay with forecast, an optional battery overlay, and a scrubbable 5-day timeline that drives the whole scene through time. No API key, no signup, no cloud: tiles come from OpenFreeMap (OSM) and the weather from Open-Meteo.

Getting to this 1.6 took over 40 alpha versions and around ten betas. The card is now robust, functional, and I hope as user-friendly as possible. The goal: install it and use it fast, no headaches. I've put a huge amount of time into polishing the details to deliver the best possible experience.

What's new since v1.5.1

• Forecast calibration, Helios learns from your last 5 days of actual production and surfaces a refined kWh estimate alongside the raw model. Catches biases the model can't see (cloud forecast skew, panel soiling, install drift).
• Multi-orientation PV layouts, the editor accepts a list of arrays, each with its own tilt, azimuth, share, and optional GPS coordinates (for installs where panels sit elsewhere than the home).
• GPU-rendered LiDAR overlay, toggle the dot cloud on top of the map to see exactly which aerial scan data Helios is using.
• Architecture refactor, the two ~5k-line monoliths split into focused modules. Zero user-visible change, but the next LiDAR provider takes 30 minutes to add instead of 3 hours.
• External solar-radiation sensor input, pyranometer or any W/m² sensor? Helios uses it for live + historical data, and falls back to Open-Meteo for the forecast portion.
• 4 new LiDAR providers, Poland (national), Canada (national, via NRCan HRDEM), Germany Brandenburg + Berlin (one WCS covers both), and Vermont USA (first native US state). Helios now ships with 10 native LiDAR integrations.

Plus a long tail of fixes (PV chart quantization spike, dashboard polish on smartphone, battery cap rendering, freeze on solar-radiation sensor selection, etc., all in the changelog).

Thanks

This release wouldn't be where it is without external help:

• @jourdant (Jourdan Templeton) contributed the entire BYO local nDSM provider (PR #5), originally for NSW Australia, but the design unlocks shadows in any region where raw local LiDAR data is available. He also wrote the Python preparation toolchain (PR #11). Original idea credit: @stephenwq.
• @i6media (Frank Boon) contributed the home-latitude / home-longitude override (PR #9, useful for shared HA installs, holiday homes, or privacy) and the multi-orientation PV layout (PR #10).
• Everyone who filed clean bug reports or ideas since the 1.5 release.

If you want to contribute, the door is wide open, the codebase is now structured enough that a focused contribution doesn't have to wrestle with the rest of it.

LiDAR coverage, the priority now

The card is stable. The dashboard is finally done. The next direction is clear: extend LiDAR coverage to as many people as possible.

I've published a worldwide LiDAR provider registry: https://reikanysora.github.io/Helios/LIDAR_PROVIDERS.html

Every public elevation API I've inspected is there, with its status (integrated, verified compatible, partially blocked, incompatible), the actual endpoint, and a curl-verified example URL. There's also a world map of the integrated providers' coverage.

If you're in a covered region, you get real LiDAR shadows. If not, two options:

1. Use the BYO local nDSM path (a GeoTIFF prepared from your country's open data, 6 config keys in Helios).
2. Request your region here or on GitHub.

The next iterations attack the "verified compatible but pending" tier of the registry: Baden-Württemberg, Austria (Steiermark + Tirol), Switzerland (swissSURFACE3D), New Zealand (LINZ), Denmark (Dataforsyningen), and a few more. Each is a provider file to write once I add the projection helper it needs. Suggestions, code contributions, or even just "here's the WCS URL for my region", all of it is useful.

Install

In HACS:

1. Add the custom repo https://github.com/ReikanYsora/Helios, category Dashboard
2. Install Helios
3. Add type: custom:helios-card to your dashboard
4. The visual editor exposes every option, no YAML needed

Repo + full release notes: https://github.com/ReikanYsora/Helios

All feedback is welcome, bugs, ideas, region requests.

And if you enjoy Helios, a little star on the repo (or a coffee for those who want) really helps me keep going with my efforts to "map" the world.

Thanks again for all the feedback, encouragement, and DMs, it really means the world.

ReikanYsora / Jérôme ;)