Categories
Home Assistant

Home Assistant – Wi-Fi

It is recommended to use Home Assistant with a wired connection, however you may need or want to use a Wi-Fi connection. Follow these steps to setup a Wi-Fi connection within Home Assistant.

Setup Wi-Fi

  1. Navigate to your Home Assistant server and login.
  2. Select Settings near the bottom of the left menu, then click on “System”.
    Home Assistant Browser Window - Settings options screen
  3. Select “Network” from the System Options.
    Home Assistant Browser Window - System options screen
  4. Click the “wlan0” tab in “Configure network interfaces” then click the “Search networks” button.
    Home Assistant Browser Window - Network screen
  5. Select the network SSID from the list, select the encryption method and enter the password. Once finished, click the “Save” button.
    Home Assistant Browser Window - Wi-Fi settings
  6. You may now connect to Home Assistant using the Wi-Fi address if needed. You may view the IP address by expanding the “IPv4” box under the “wlan0” tab of the “Configure network interfaces”.

You have successfully connected Home Assistant server to your Wi-Fi network.

Categories
Home Assistant Raspberry Pi

Home Assistant on Raspberry Pi

I can’t believe I have not written up my Home Assistant setup. Perhaps that is a good thing as I needed to become comfortable with the setup and how to use it. I’ve been using it for nearly a year at this point. What prompted me to do a writeup now is I’m setting up another one for my mom so I can control some things remotely and to help her manage some things around the house.

My current installation was on a Raspberry Pi 4 setup to boot from a USB drive. This has been working well, but I’m setting up a Raspberry Pi 5 for mom’s installation with a NVMe SSD drive as the boot device.

Bill of Materials for this project

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Installation Steps

  1. The first step is fitting the NVMe hat to the Raspberry Pi 5. I have found that the 3cm cable that came with my hat did not work properly. I purchased a set of cables to swap out and found that the 3cm cable in the new set had the same issue. I tried the longer 5cm cable and the hat worked well. I would have thought that a shorter cable would be better but I suspect that there is an impedance or timing mismatch with the shorter cable.
  2. Write the image to the NVMe drive using the steps outlined at https://www.martinrowan.co.uk/2024/02/installing-home-assistant-on-raspberry-pi-5-nvme-storage/.
  3. Once my Raspberry Pi rebooted, it was running Home Assistant.
    The Raspberry Pi boot screen for Home Assistant
  4. I opened a browser window and navigated to http://homeassistant.local:8123/. It took a couple of minutes before Home Assistant fully loaded.
    Home Assistant Browser Window - Retrying to connect
    Home Assistant Browser Window - Login Screen
  5. Click on the “Create my smart home” button.
  6. Create a user by enter the information and clicking the “Create account” button.
    Home Assistant Browser Window - Create User
  7. Set the home location. You may try using your address. If that does not work, use the latitude and longitude. Once entered, click the “Next” button.
    Home Assistant Browser Window - Home Location
  8. Select information that you are willing to share with the Home Assistant team and click the “Next” button.
    Home Assistant Browser Window - Help us help you
  9. Click the “Finish” button on the devices screen.
    Home Assistant Browser Window - We found compatible devices!

Home Assistant is now setup and ready to be configured.