The Home Assistant Beginner’s Guide
Home Assistant is an open-source DIY home automation platform. All you need to get started is a Raspberry Pi and a bit of patience. To get you started, I’ve put together a few beginner-friendly guides on Home Assistant. These will guide you through the setup on a Raspberry Pi, installing your first add-on, and making your Home Assistant accessible from the web. Before you get going I suggest you read two of my articles. The first will tell you what exactly is possible using Home Assistant and the second. Details all the names Home Assistant uses (it can get confusing sometimes).
The Home Assistant basics
Start off by reading these two articles. Knowing what exactly Home Assistant can and can’t do will help you make the decision whether it is what you are looking for. The second article is recommended because you will find many brand names in the Home Assistant communities.
What is Home Assistant and what can it do?
This article serves as a starting off point for newcomers to the world of Home Assistant. I will cover the basics of what Home Assistant is, why local software is better than cloud software, and what the alternatives to Home Assistant are.
Why does Home Assistant have so many names?
There’s Home Assistant, Hass.IO, HassOS, Home Assistant Core, and Home Assistant Supervised (to just name a few). That’s many names for a single project. Fear not, for I have written a guide which will explain each one of the names mentioned.
Choosing the right hardware for Home Assistant
As you’ve returned to this page I’m going to assume that you’ve decided to go with Home Assistant for your home automation. Good choice! To get your project started you’re going to want to buy a Raspberry Pi. I’ve got a detailed comparison of the different models ready for you.
The best Raspberry Pi for Home Assistant in 2020
The Raspberry Pi is a popular device for newcomers to run Home Assistant on. It’s small, cheap, quiet, and doesn’t use much electricity.
Setting up Home Assistant
If you’ve followed my guides you will by now know what the differences between Home Assistant and Home Assistant Core are and you should have your Raspberry Pi 4 Model B ready for action. The following three guides will show you what to do next.
Setting up Home Assistant
Getting your Raspberry Pi ready, installing Home Assistant, and adding your first add-on.
Web access
Setting up DuckDNS so you can access your Home Assistant from anywhere.
Integrating Home Assistant with the Google Assistant
The Google Assistant is an easy way to control your Home Assistant.
What next?
Now that you’ve got everything set up you can take things one step further. Setting up integrations and your Home Assistant dashboard should be next on the list. Home Assistant supports over 1700 integrations!