[EN] Home Assistant - Installation with Raspberry Pi 2

Putri Dewi Purnamasari
https://www.home-assistant.io/

With Home Assistant, you can create automation routines, set up smart scenes, and control devices from a unified interface. It supports a wide range of devices and platforms, including smart lights, thermostats, cameras, sensors, and more. Home Assistant can be installed on various systems, such as Raspberry Pi, Linux, Windows, and Docker.

I was introduced to Home Assistant by super cool coworker, Mitchell Sion during the Brown Bag Meeting. He said he use that to monitor his smart devices, such as CCTV and smart lights and create automation routines from that. I'm thrilled to have it installed at my home.

Home Assistant can be installed in various boards, even Mitchell set his STB (Set Top Box) to be a Home Assistant dedicated server, and it's still working fine. In this article, I want to share my experience about installing Home Assistant using Raspberry Pi 2. We can say it's kinda outdated, but since it's the only available hardware that I have at home, I'll try to use that.

Not recommended but still supported.

It wasn't available in the official installation page, as it supported but not recommended. However if you have any other devices and want to see whether it's supported / not, please refer here: https://github.com/home-assistant/operating-system/blob/dev/Documentation/boards/README.md

What you'll need:

  1. Raspberry Pi 2 (You can replace it with any supported device)
  2. Power Supply
  3. USB Card Reader
  4. SD Card, at very least 32GB. Ideally get one that is Application Class 2 (A2) as they handle small I/O much more consistently than cards not optimized to host applications. Keyword tips on marketplace: "A2 SD Card 32GB".
  5. Ethernet cable
  6. Definitely a working router that has internet connection and all your devices will connect there.

Got them all? Let's get started.

  1. Let's begin with installing home assistant operating system. Download and install the Raspberry Pi Imager https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/
  2. Go to https://github.com/home-assistant/operating-system/releases and look for rpi2, you'll find any latest release. I'm using haos_rpi2-10.3.img.xz

3. Open the Raspberry Pi Imager

4. Scroll down a bit and choose Use Custom and then select the image that you've downloaded before.

5. Plug your SD Card Reader along with the SD Card, click Choose Storage and select your SD Card.

6. Click Write and wait until finished. It will take some time, be patient.

7. After you finished write the SD Card, take off your SD Card and put it to your Raspberry Pi 2. Plug the power source, and the ethernet cable. Wait at least 5-10 minutes, as it need some time to initialize.

8. Using your other device, can be a PC or phone as long as it's connected within the same network with your dedicated Home Assistant device. Go to http://homeassistant.local:8123/ and check whether it's finished. In the meantime you can also get the mobile apps to access Home Assistant.

You can take a nap while waiting until it's done.
If you can't access homeassistant.local:8123, try to scan your network and see whether homeassistant hostname is exist. You can try to use IP:8123 instead. If it doesn't, try to check if you actually on the same network.

9. Once it's finished, you can start to make a user account. Fill everything that you need.

10. It will also detect any smart devices within your network. If you can't see any of it, makes sure all you devices within the same network.

11. Enjoy your centralized Home Assistant.

My smol dedicated server.

    My experience so far from this installation, it took some time for Raspberry Pi 2 to boot up. It's understandable since it's an old hardware, but I can say it's working fine. I need to setup all my Bardi devices such as smart bulb, extension power strip as they need to be registered as Tuya devices first.


    Well I guess, that's only the beginning. Thanks for reading!