Home Assistant Setup Made Easy: The Ultimate Guide

looking into getting Home Assistant setup, what NAS do you suggest for the job as of today?

Hi Chris. Now when you have installed HA on a virtual machine on Synology with ip address in your IoT network, how to manage firewall rules if your UniFi cameras are on the NoT vlan and you want to integrate in HA? 😅

Home assistant I followed and installed on docker in Synology does not contain an Addons option. How does yours have? Please tell me how to activate it.

Excellent guide. This is the second or third major piece of my infrastructure that I've gotten off the ground using the help you've been generously providing in your videos.

Such a great video. Straight-forward, step by step, instructions without rambling tangents. Definitely subbed. Thanks for making this!

Nice video Chris, however, Im unable to get to my HA landing page 'page cannot be displayed' once docker was configured and running?

Great tutorial! Congratulations!

This is my first HA tutorial - on a investigation basis. Gave me a good idea on what is involved. Can't wait to get started. Thanks!

I want to set up an always on device like yours, that i can set up a virtual machine for home assistant on as well as run video game servers on and have for storage. What hardware do you recommend?

nice mousepad

How do you control remotely? Is it possible without a VPN?

👍

HA is available on the Synology NAS Application Center, Community section. In your opinion, is using Docker or a VM a better way to install or is that just a personal preference ?

Hello Chris. I love the videos you produce. Thank you! I have a DS920+ I wanted to install HA on. A concern not covered in this video is installing devices like Z Wave and Zigbee USB devices on my NAS? My NAS only has two USB ports, and from reading comments on some HA boards going with Docker in version 7, there may be some USB driver issues. People have recommended installing the VM that would handle the USB drivers much better. I don't have any machines on 24/7 to put VM on except my NAS. The other option would be to go with Raspberry Pi and call it good. Any thoughts on this? Could I use a USB hub if I had more than two USB devices?

Sorry for the newbie question. But with all these installs, how does HA communicate directly with my Zwave and Zigbee devices without proper Z radios build in?

Grate Video. Thanks a lot

For the issue of long term usage of the micro SD, you can setup backups of your home assistnant setup and then just restore off a new micro SD. I'm about to get started on my first raspberry pie home assistant setup

I'm a tech guy, but for the life of me I can't really see a use case for turning lights on/off from my desk. I could see this being used to control a greenhouse or something like that if you can configure the logic.

Thanks so much for a great tutorial....it helped me a lot!

Hi Can you make a video, How to integrate Hubitat with Home Assistant

Can home assistant be used to shut down a udm pro, say during a power outage before the ups runs down?

I have several raspberry pi 4 B’s. I put them in the GeekWorm Naspi case , it has a nice shutdown switch, PWM fan , which adjusts speed according to the temperature, and last but not least a SATA to SSD board. One of my pi’s runs off of a 2.5” 1TB SSD and the other has an M.2 SSD drive, also 1TB. If you’re going to run a server on a Raspberry Pi something like this is the way to go.

No it's not - Sorry but HA starts looking like a scam. Strange developers decisions, litterally every update destabilizing system, admins on HA forum playing some shady political games, security questionable integrations. Not to mention security in general. That is platform for naive tinkerers who don't care about safety, stability and transparency, because after all those years not much changed and seems like it stays that way. That is not a platform to to build serious home automation system. I'm strongly recommending searching for alternatives.

can you link to where you got that tiny monitor from. thanks!

I think overall home assistant is great, but there is an issue. Do you want to control the blinds? Then you need the blind Homelink device. Do you want to control ac? Then you need the ac homelink device. Do you want to open the garage? Then you need the garage homelink device. How many devices and bridges do you need to have? I think they should put on the market a device that detects RF or IF signals, and then a home assistant software selects what it is.

Unless I've missed something (my apologies if I did) Very little has been said on Zigbee and Z-wave devices which require radios. In your 3 suggested ways of running HA, how to connect and which radios do you suggest?

Nah not for me.

SD cards are cheap, just make a note in the calender to exchange the SD card once a year to a new one, and of course backup once a month, once a week or why not nightly to some HDD?

Hello, im new to HA. I followed your steps and downloaded HA to my raspberry pi 4. is there any way to download pi-hole on the same pi? If so can you share any info or maybe youve already done a video on this. Thanks Love the vids

sd cards dont last in HA you should be advising people to use an ssd

I have installed a three way Meross wall switch and experiencing some problems . Installed just one . The light does switch on and off at the Meross switch. But at the other switch the light will some times come right back on after turning off the switch. Do I have it wired wrong ? Thanks in advance ,love the videos.

America/Detroit
Its always weird to see the different Distros; Detroit is always in a different location.....
I mean I use arCh.....Uhhh

Well done.

So what if you have Alexa and several Amazon/Alexa WIFI switches, I can't see them. yes I have Cloud and Alexa/HA skill

Earned a Sub just for the T-Shirt alone. Hail Cobra.

I love your work, your content and your presentation my friend. However, it would be great if you would upgrade your mic. You are so technically on top of so many things, shouldn’t take you much to find the right one to get the sound upgrade you need. Best of luck

A most excellent IOT video. 🥳 Thank you. Question # 1 can Home Assistant control the Orange Pi-5 GPIO PWM or I2C pins
Question # 2 Can a Raspberry Pi can control an off the shelf Pan_Tilt camera like the WAAWO 4K PTZ Webcam instead of making a Pan/Tilt servo camera using Wi-FI or Ethernet?

What is the reason for not have HA as a docker image in Synology? I've been testing now for a while and it seems to work quite nice, but for one thing. And that's that my shelly devices (reports the temp using CoIoT) does not work. The NAS is on my main VLAN and the IoT stuff is on its own VLAN (using UniFi). Did you have the problem? It's like if the devices can't send any packages to the NAS... 😞 I have connected my IoT VLAN to my Lan 2 interface of the NAS but I can't see a way to make that work either..

Lot of updates reboots en hacs not so simple for non it-ers / people do not know what a container is. They think it is a kliko. ;-)

TOO MUCH... :)

Hey Chris, what’s the story behind the map of New Zealand with your Lutron light switch 👍

Chris, any chance you could do a vid on getting ubiquity protect cameras to show in homeassistant in the IOT network from main LAN? I don't really want to have them on the IOT LAN specifically

I'd like to start with HA using Raspberry Pi, Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 Dongle Plus, and a couple of Hue light bulbs with no hub. I understand your concern about the micro SD however, you did a video a couple of years back about booting the Raspberry Pi from USB. I have an Argon One M.2 case and SATA SSD M.2. Is there a reason that this wouldn't work instead of the Micro SD?

Can a device be controlled from one country to another through the Home Assistant platform?

Good.. How we can use any of our old pc to use as server for home assistant

I own a boat. It doesn't get super cold where I live so rely on a bilge heater inside the boat to keep it from freezing. I worry the GCFI could trip and turn off my heater. I have a z-wave temp sensor in there and if the temp drops below 37 degrees it'll send me a notification and turn the hue lights in my bedroom on to an ugly color (since it'll most likely be at night when it gets cold). It saved my butt this past winter!

Sorry to be a pain, but how about an overview of the VM install from scratch, for example, I'm running unraid so if I built a windows vm, how would I install it on there? Or a variation of the docker on unraid (if you know that even)?

DON'T DO IT. Home Assistant? after four years and spending endless money Home assistant it is anything but. You will piss on the floor because the light won't switch on due to the latest Python release. It's junk, just pass the variable <5674321133454677-piuhgtgnbgfde > -fhfhgrhggrvrvdvdshe (dfdgdgdgdfggdgdgdgsdgsdgf) to the light switch and it will work just fine until the next Python update that is. One digit or char wrong and "well obviously the light won't turn on" it's your fault.

I need a thin client. It's on a SFF computer right now, but I feel like it's still taking up far too much space. I tried Docker before that, but quickly learned what Add-ons are, and the container died a suddenly and abrupt death.

I’ve never took a dive into HA because everything I have supports HomeKit. Periodically re evaluating my decision