Home Assistant - HA & PI: Step 1

Automating my home with home assistant and raspberry pi. How to install HA on the Raspberry Pi 3 B+ ?

There are almost 8.4 billion internet of things (IoT) across the world right now. The number of devices are expected to more than double the next couple of years to the stage of 20.4 billion in 2020. The problem with all these devices are that each and every brand of smart device has their own gateway and platform to automate and control. This is where Home Assistant steps in.

Home assistant is an open source platform where all your digital smart things can talk to each other. Implemented with an raspberry pi, you can shedual or command events for your smart devices (events as turn up heat when cold outside, or dim lights after 21:00).

Home assistant can run on any always connected operating system that supports Python 3 apps, and its very lightweight and small. Which makes it great to run on a Raspberry Pi.

My smart devices range from:

• IKEA tradfri
  • Bulbs
  • Motion sensor
  • Gateway
• Philips hue bulbs and motion detectors
  • Bulbs
  • Motion sensor
  • Temperature sensor
  • Light sensor
  • Gateway
• Sonos
  • Two speakers
• Gooogle Cast
  • Livingroom tv with Android OS
  • Nvidea Shield on my bedroom tv
• Z-wave
  • Door/Window sensor
  • USB gateway

To create a setup where all these different brands of devices can talk to each other i'll create a new home automation server on my Raspberry Pi 3B+.

Follow this guide for a easy setup. And follow my blog for more information, ideas and guides for Home Assistant that i will post in the near future!

Requirements:

• Raspberry Pi 3B+ (Recommended)
• Micro SD (At least 32gb)
• Raspbian (Stretch light) installed on micro sd card

Installing Home Assistant on raspbian

Enable SSH

Assuming raspbian is already installed on the raspberry pi.

Make sure your connected to your local network, control by running ifconfig.

Activate SSH on the raspberry pi by running sudo raspi-config in the terminal window.

Then select Interfacing Options.

Navigate to SSH and select it.

Choose Yes and select Ok.

Then choose Finish.

Connect by SSH and install HA

To connect to your Raspberry Pi over SSH run the following command in terminal.

# Default password is: raspberry
$ ssh pi@piaddress

Change the default password by running:

$ passwd

Update your pi:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade -y

Install dependencies:

$ sudo apt-get install python3 python3-venv python3-pip libffi-dev libssl-dev

Add a homeassistant user with groups dialout and gpio. Dialout is required for using Z-Wave and Zigbee controllers, while GPIO is required to communicate with Raspberry's GPIO.

$ sudo useradd -rm homeassistant -G dialout,gpio

Create a directory for the installation in /srv directory and set owner permissions to the homeassistant account:

$ cd /srv
$ sudo mkdir homeassistant
$ sudo chown homeassistant:homeassistant homeassistant

Then create and change to a virtual environment for Home assistant as the homeassistant account:

$ sudo -u homeassistant -H -s
$ cd /srv/homeassistant
$ python3 -m venv .
$ source bin/activate

Once the virtual environment is activated, run the following command to install a required python package:

$ (homeassistant) homeassistant@raspberrypi:/srv/homeassistant $ python3 -m pip install wheel

Last but not least, install Home Assistant:

$ (homeassistant) homeassistant@raspberrypi:/srv/homeassistant $ pip3 install homeassistant

To complete the installation, start Home Assistant for the first time.

(homeassistant) $ hass

This will create the .homeassistant directory under the home/homeassistant directory.

If the installation was successful you can reach the Home Assistant web interface on http://ipaddress:8121.

Autostart Home Assistant on boot

Since the raspberry pi will host the Home Assistant server i would like to create a deamon that autostarts Home Assistant on boot.

A service file is needed to control Home Assistant with systemd.

Create the template below with sudo rights with the following path /etc/systemd/system/home-assistant@homeassistant.service.

# /etc/systemd/system/home-assistant@homeassistant.service

[Unit]
Description=Home Assistant
After=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=%i
ExecStart=ExecStart=/srv/homeassistant/bin/hass -c "/home/%i/.homeassistant"

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Now reload systemd to make the deamon aware of the new configuration.

$ sudo systemctl --system daemon-reload

Enable the home assistant service to automatically start on boot:

$ sudo systemctl enable home-assistant@homeassistant.service

To start the service run this command:

$ sudo systemctl start home-assistant@homeassistant.service

Now go to your Home Assistant web interface by going to http://ipaddress:8123.

Next time we will show how to setup your smart devices in HA and configure them so that you can access them all.

Follow my blog for more information, ideas and guides for Home Assistant that i will post in the near future!

Want more?

Get familiar with Home Assistant by reading the docs!