Home Assistant

Since HA version 2026.8 the default link has changed: there's no need anymore to pass a port to the IP address!

In the past, port 8123 had to be given as port number to the IP address.  This is not needed anymore.  So the new IP address is simply:

http://192.168.x.xx

No portnumber anymore!!!

Home Assistant can be installed in two different ways if you're using a Raspberry Pi to install it on:

• Download the Home Assistant image from the Raspberry Pi website.
  I don't like this method since this image might contain more things than I want.

• Download Raspberry Pi Lite image and then install Home Automation afterwards.

I haven't used any of the above mentioned methods.  Why?  

I haven't used a Raspberry Pi for this endeavour since I still had a few Libre Computer SBC's of type Le Potato laying around.  Perfect SBC's to try to install HA separately, moreover since those SBC's have 2GB of RAM on board instead of the 1GB for the older Raspberry Pi's (3B+ and lower/older).

This is the approach I've taken so that I can install whatever I want on this image, next to Home Assistant.

Since I don't know a lot of HA, let alone knowing what is needed to get HA up and running, I looked on the inet and found a very useful installation guide made by Carter Roeser.  You can find the article on his blog here.

Carter refers to Ubuntu not supported anymore by the HA team and he used Debian instead.  Therefore, I also download the Debian image from the Libre Computer website for Le Potato.  The distros for the AML-S905X-CC can be found here.  The real images for e.g. Debian can be found here.

After downloading the image I used Win32DiskImager to flash the distro on an 8GB SD card (will use a larger one in the future, but I wanted to try it out first on an SD card with less memory that I had laying around.

After flashing the image, I first had to try to activate SSH on the distro, since Debian does not by default activate SSH.  How this was done, can be read in the sections above called Serial Communication and Activating SSH and connecting through Putty.

Once this was in place, I followed very precise the blog made by Carter.  But I also followed this blog and this blog by FullmetalBrackets because Carter assumes you have SSH up and running "by default" which is, again, true for the Ubuntu distro, but not for the Debian distro.

In short, those are the steps I followed, based on the installation guides by Carter:

• sudo apt update 

• sudo apt upgrade 

• sudo apt install apparmor jq wget curl udisks2 libglib2.0-bin network-manager dbus systemd-journal-remote unzip -y 

• curl -fsSL get.docker.com | sh 

• With the following commands you have to see what is the latest version of the agent.  As of this writing, it was 1.8.1:
  wget https://github.com/home-assistant/os-agent/releases/download/1.8.1/os-agent_1.8.1_linux_aarch64.deb
  sudo dpkg -i os-agent_1.8.1_linux_aarch64.deb 

• wget https://github.com/home-assistant/supervised-installer/releases/latest/download/homeassistant-supervised.deb 

• sudo BYPASS_OS_CHECK=true dpkg -i homeassistant-supervised.deb
  
  When trying to run sudo BYPASS_OS_CHECK=true dpkg -i homeassistant-supervised.deb, I got other issues to resolve first:

  • sudo apt install cifs-utils => I had to run sudo apt --fix-broken install to fix the error I saw when installing cifs-utils.

  • sudo apt install nfs-common 

When I initially started Le Potato, it got an address ending with .16.  However, when HA started it all of a sudden changed to .17.  No idea why...

When HA finally was up and running (it can take between 20-30 minutes before all is in place) I saw that there were two repairs to be done in the "Repair" section:

• Deprecation note about the installation: since I don't use the "genuine" HA distro from the Raspberry Pi organisation (which I simply can't since I'm using another SBC from Libre Computer on which the Raspberry Pi images do not run), I get this repair message.  Which I can't resolve, obviously.

• There was a second warning telling met that AppArmor was not installed.  This was absolutely not correct, since I installed apparmor in one of the above mentioned sudo apt install commands.
  HOWEVER...
  If you don't tell the kernel that it has to activate AppArmor during boot, the AppArmor feature is indeed not working!  And that's where HA was pointing to...
  To pass the necessary parameters to the kernel during startup, the parameters have to be added in a specific file.  For many distro's, u-boot is used as a starting process.  But for the Debian distro (and maybe many others too, like Ubuntu), grub is used.
  
  So, to pass parameters to the kernel, I had to edit the file /etc/default/grub as sudo: sudo vi /etc/default/grub
  In that file, there is a line like this: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="noquiet"
  This is the line that has to be extended with the following info: apparmor=1 security=apparmor
  
  So, finally, the line looks like this: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="noquiet apparmor=1 security=apparmor"
  
  After applying the changes, you have to tell grub to take along those changes, using the command sudo update-grub
  Doing this will result in grub creating a new configuration file.  You have to issue a sudo reboot to restart the SBC and taking  the changes into effect.
  
  To check if AppArmor is now enabled after a restart, you can run the command sudo aa-status (or sudo /sbin/aa-status if /sbin is not in the path).  As a result, you will see:

  • if the apparmor module is loaded

  • how many profiles are loaded and which profiles are in enforced mode

  • how many processes are loaded and which processes are in enforced mode

  • how many profiles/processes are in other modes (complain/mixed/kill/unconfined): in my case all were 0, which is great!

If aa-status is not installed (it normally should) you can check the value of /sys/module/apparmor/parameters/enabled (using cat): it should return a Y if all is fine.

It will take a very long time again for HA to start, since it has to check everything all over, but this time with AppArmor activated.  You really have to be patient and wait untill all is done.  Once the web iface of HA is up and running, you can see the progress by expanding the installation view.  Again, it goes painfully slow!!!

There are some useful commands in HA that I learned from Gemini:

• Forcefully restart HA Supervisor: sudo docker restart hassio_supervisor

• See if all HA docker containers are running: sudo docker ps

• Check the IP address to be sure the browser is looking at the correct place: ip a show end0  # or just ip a

• Make sure the correct port is used: :8123

• sudo docker logs homeassistant: to see for suspicious errors/logs/...

• Look at Suberviser logs: sudo docker logs hassio_supervisor

• Reach out a helping hand: sudo docker start homeassistant

• In the output of sudo docker ps you see an observer running on port :4357.  This is a handy tool to see what the status is at every moment of the HA Supervisor (connected or not) and also the Support and Health status.
  Note that the Support status will show "Unsupported", since we're not using the HA distro, but a Debian disto on which we install HA...
  To see the HA Observer state, open a web page with the same IP address of HA, but with port :4357.
  You should see a small info box.

• Look at the supervisor logs:

  • Through sudo docker logs hassio_supervisor

  • Through --tail: sudo docker logs hassio_supervisor --tail 50
    Shows the last 50 lines of the log (and updates the lines if needed)

  • Sending the output to a file: sudo docker logs hassio_supervisor > supervisor_logs.txt 2>&1
    This will create a file in which we can easily search for certain keywords.  Always handy...

Note: the AppArmor remark should now be disappeared with the kernel start parameters we changed.

Home Assistant also has command line commands.  They usually are in the form of sudo ha <option> .  Example: sudo ha banner.  This command shows a banner with information of HA on the terminal.

It is however, annoying you have to type sudo each and every time in front of a HA CLI command.  To avoid this, you can add your name to the docker group like so: sudo usermod -aG docker $USER.  

To check, type groups.   This will return the following for me:

geertvc@potato:~$ groups  
geertvc sudo users docker 

The fact that docker is now part of the group means it's not needed anymore to use sudo if you want to run a ha command.  

Example: ha banner results in the following screen:

geertvc@potato:/etc$ ha banner

       ▄██▄           _   _

     ▄██████▄        | | | | ___  _ __ ___   ___

   ▄████▀▀████▄      | |_| |/ _ \| '_ ` _ \ / _ \

 ▄█████    █████▄    |  _  | (_) | | | | | |  __/

▄██████▄  ▄██████▄   |_| |_|\___/|_| |_| |_|\___|          _

████████  ██▀  ▀██      / \   ___ ___(_)___| |_ __ _ _ __ | |_

███▀▀███  ██   ▄██     / _ \ / __/ __| / __| __/ _` | '_ \| __|

██    ██  ▀ ▄█████    / ___ \\__ \__ \ \__ \ || (_| | | | | |_

███▄▄ ▀█  ▄███████   /_/   \_\___/___/_|___/\__\__,_|_| |_|\__|

▀█████▄   ███████▀

Welcome to the Home Assistant command line interface.

Home Assistant Supervisor is running!

System information:

  IPv4 addresses for end0:  192.168.1.17/24

  IPv6 addresses for end0:  2a02:a03f:e13e:e300:93c3:253:fc71:d02d/64, 2a02:a03f:e13e:e300:8496:3eff:fe02:23a0/64, fe80::229d:48f4:590f:69aa/64

  OS Version:               Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm)

  Home Assistant Core:      2026.3.4

  Home Assistant URL:       http://potato.local:8123

  Observer URL:             http://potato.local:4357

System is ready! Use browser or app to configure.

In a Linux terminal, type the command ha host shutdown.

Pls. be patient, since the command will first come back to the command line after a long time and some time later the rest of the shutdown process will be executed.

Note: I've seen that in fact the whole machine restarts.  That might be because of running a modified HA on an Armbian distro on Le Potato????

New buy (well... almost new...)

I recently bought a refurbished PC for the first time in my life. 
Brand: HP EliteDesk 800 G4 USFF, delivered by remarkt.be. USFF stands for Ultra Small Form Factor.  The size of the notebook is approx. 17cm x 17cm x 5cm.  A little bit bigger than the mini PC's (which are around 11cm x 11cm x 5cm).

Specs

• 8GB RAM

• 256GB SSD

• Intel Core i5 vPro 8th Gen

• 17x17x5 cm

• 1x HDMI

• 2x DlPort

• 6x USB2.0

• 1x USB-C

• 1x RJ45

• No WiFi (I think...)

• No OS installed (defaults to Windows 11 but I was anyhow going to kick out Windows in favour of Linux, so why paying for a license???)

Purpose

Its purpose is to run Home Assistant.  Therefore, the necessary changes have to be made before you can install the HAOS image:

• Make sure UEFI is applied (is normally the default)

• Make sure the Secure Boot is disabled, otherwise Home Assistant won't start.

• Reset the device to factory defaults: I had to do this because starting up from a USB stick was disabled and I couldn't immediately find how to resolve that, apart from resetting the device to factory mode.

I paid €204 for this.  Is it too much?  Is it OK?  Is it a bargain?  No idea...

I found very nice and small mini PC's on Geekmaxi.com.  Like this one, for instance: 

https://www.geekmaxi.com/nl/mini-pc-s-firebat-t2-mini-pc-intel-n150-4-cores-16gb-ram-512gb-ssd-7069.html

for as little as €149!

However, they are all sold out (a lot of them).  Apparently, a lot of people start using Home Assistant! ;-)

Therefore, I was looking for an alternative, hence, this HP Elitedesk.  Maybe I paid for the name too (HP)...

Preparing for Home Assistant

First off, you need a monitor, keyboard and mouse to be able to work relaxed.  I used on of my regular monitors that has HDMI, since there is a HDMI connector available on the mini PC.

Once this is in place, to be able to install Home Assistant you need an OS.  But since I asked the PC without OS, I had to provide one myself.

Therefor, I downloaded the latest Ubuntu Desktop ISO file, flashed it on a memory stick using Rufus (it took ages before the ISO file was flashed on the memory stick!!!) and then inserted it in a USB slot of my HP PC.

Instructions on how to download the ISO file and install the OS can be found here:
https://ubuntu.com/desktop/docs/en/latest/tutorial/install-ubuntu-desktop/

At startup, you MUST choose to "try Ubuntu", not to install it because you will install HAOS later on.

Once Ubuntu started up, I opened a browser (Firefox is the default browser on Ubuntu) and I downloaded the latest version of the HAOS image for the General X86-64 image from here (20260802):
https://github.com/home-assistant/operating-system/releases/download/18.2/haos_generic-x86-64-18.2.img.xz

General info about the preparation can be found here:
https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/generic-x86-64/

Flashing HAOS on the PC SSD

Once the image is downloaded, you have to do the following things:

• Select Show Applications by clicking on the icon in the left bottom corner of the screen

• Search for an application named Disks

• Once Disks is open you will see all available disks in the left bar

• Select the SSD drive representing the harddisk of the PC

• Click on the 3 vertical dots at the top

• Select Restore Disk Image...

• Select the Home Assistant image you downloaded

• Click Open and then Start Restoring (it might be you have to press Authorize at this moment)

• Once the installation is done, power off the PC and remove the USB disk

Starting up Home Assistant

After starting up the PC again, you will see lots of commands passing by on the monitor.  Finally, it will tell you HA is started and will end on a HA prompt.

Next thing to know, is the IP addres because normally you won't need any connection anymore with the PC, apart from a connection through internet.

To know the IP address, look at your ISP modem and see what IP address has been assigned.  It's best to fix this address through address reservation in the modem.  This way, HA will always get the same IP address assigned which is important for scripts and so on.

Once you know the IP address, open a browser window and pass the IP address, followed by :8123.  This is the default HA port.

From here onwards, you should be in the realm of HA, where you have to create an account and so on...

Once the account is created, the location is given etc, you're ready to start exploring Home Assistant.

One of the first things I have done, is to activate the MQTT app.  I need this, because later on I will start using Zigbee2MQTT.

To install the MQTT app, select Settings-> Apps -> Install app (bottom-right corner, blue button).

In the search bar, type mqtt: the Mosquitto broker will show up.  Click on the tile to open the installation page of the MQTT broker.

Press the Install button: the application will be installed.

After installation you will see two new tabs at the top of the page.  Next to the initial Info and Documentation tab, you will also see Configuration and Log.

When MQTT is installed, it still has to be started.  To start, click on the blue Start button.

Below the Start button there's a few options.  One of them, Start on boot, is already activated.  Also activate the other two options: Watchdog and Auto update.

During or after start up, you can click the Log tab to follow or see what happens/has happened.  If all goes fine you should not see any errors.

Also on the Info page you will see that the application has started.  You will see a red Stop button and a red dimmed Restart button.  Next to this, you will also see some resource usage at the bottom of that section: CPU usage and RAM usage.

The Documentation tab gives explanation about the MQTT broker.  Read it if you're interested.

Next to this, there's also the Configuration tab.  This is important to see/check.  Click on the tab.

• Logins
  Here you can add users and their user password if you want to restrict access to MQTT messages.
  I'm not doing this, so I'll leave this one emtpy.

• Log destination
  Extra log destinations you can give.  If you leave empty (as I will do) the log defaults to stdout.

• Log types
  Here you can add extra log levels.  The default log levels are:

  • error

  • warning

  • notice

  • information

• Require Client Certificate
  If you want to secure your MQTT communication, you hae to activate this option.  It's switched off by default.
  Since I don't want to add extra complexity at this moment, I'll leave it switched off.

• Customize
  See the Documentation tab for more info about this subject

• Network
  Ports used for the different flavours in which MQTT can run.  The most important one is the standard 1883 port that is used by MQTT in non-secured communication (else, 8883 is used with SSL)

This ends the installation of the MQTT application.

If you want to use Zigbee2MQTT you need the MQTT application next to the MQTT broker.

To install the MQTT application go to Settings -> Devices & services and search for MQTT.

Once found, install MQTT.

After installation you have to change the configuration of the MQTT application if you want to use an external broker and not the HA core broker.

To do this, go again to Settings -> Devices & services and select the MQTT application.  It should be in the Configured section of the Devices & services page.

Once the MQTT page is open, click on the 3 vertical dots on the right side and choose Reconfigure.

In the next screen you should see core-mosquitto as broker.  If you want to use an external broker, just give the IP address of the external broker.  You don't have to change anything else, just press Submit.

You should see a message that the reconfigure was successful.  If, in the meantime you have devices discovered and added through Z2M, you will see the all of the devices appearing below the Mosquitto broker title.

A handy tool to install is the File Editor.  It's not a super super editor, but a simple one that does the job well.  The advantage is that it will open the default Home Assistant folder.

To install the application, go to Settings -> Apps and select Install app.  Search for File Editor and install and start it.  Also make sure you add it to the sidebar so that it's easy to quickly start the application.

HACS is a huge repository of applications created by the Home Assistant community.  It is not by default available to Home Assistant.

To get it installed, you first have to get the Get HACS application.  To get this installed, go to Settings -> Apps -> Install app -> Click the three vertical dots -> Repositories and fill in the following repository:

https://github.com/hacs/addons 

See this HACS page.

Once the application is installed, go back to Apps and start typing Get HACS.  Click the tile and click the Start button.

Check the logs: the moment you see the message

INFO: Remember to restart Home Assistant before you configure it 

you should restart Home Assistent using Settings -> System -> Press the standby icon in the right upper corner -> Restart Home Assistant -> confirm.

Note that after a while the Get HACS application will stop since its only purpose is to get the HACS installed in Home Assistant.  You normally don't need Get HACS anymore afterwards.

Once HA is restarted, you can remove Get HACS.  Click on the Get HACS tile in Settings -> Apps (you will see it has stopped).

In the Get HACS page, press the three vertical buttons in the upper right corner and select Uninstall.  Also select Uninstall Data and confirm to get rid of Get HACS.

Once HACS is downloaded and HA is restarted, go to Settings -> Devices & services and select Add integration (bottom-right corner of the screen).

Type in HACS in the brand popup and click on the item.

You will be asked to accept 4 conditions.  Do this and then click Submit.  You will be asked to go to a Github link to fill in a number shown on the screen.  Copy that number, click the link in the popup box and you will end up in your Github account (assuming you have a Github account, otherwise you will have to create one.

Follow the instructions and at a given moment you have to pass the number you just copied.  Give HACS access to your repos and you're all set.

You will get a confirmation window tha the installation was successful and you will get the chance to name and assign the device name.

Click Finish to complete the action.

As a result you will see HACS as one of the items in HA left sidebar.

You have 2 options to change the content and/or order of the Home Assistant menu in the left sidebar:

• Click on your name in the left-bottom corner and look for Change the order and hide items from the sidebar.
  Click on Edit: the left sidebar menu will appear

• Long-click on the Home Assistant title (left-upper corner) for about 1-2 seconds, then release the mouse button: the left sidebar menu will appear

In both cases, the Edit sidebar will appear where you will be able to:

• Remove items

• Shift items to another place

In case you made a mistake, there's also a possibility to reset the left sidebar to its original settings.  Click the 3 vertical dots in the edit popup and select Reset to defaults.

You can choose between a light or dark theme.  You can also let the theme change from light to black or vice versa, based on the time of the day.

To select, click on your name in the left-bottom corner and in the General tab look for Theme.  Then you can select Auto, Light or Dark.

Next to this, you can also select the primary and accent colour.