I’ve been a diy HA guy for >10 years. This is probably the best getting started video I’ve seen. Presenter has a terrific style to covering the material. Very well done!
You can run them both in parallel while you complete the move to HA and get your head around how things work, this is what I did. Now the Hubitat is in a box somewhere. I think the only issue I had was with some Aqara PIRs that were added to Hubitat with a reset, hut if you use the Aqara integration they just turn up in HA.
Wow!! This is exactly the video that needs to be shown right on top of the result by RU-vid when people search for a home assistant. Thanks a ton!!!! EXTREMELY HELPFUL.
One of the most useful video I have ever come across for Home assistant. Actually its an honest effort by you - not like so called popular & young content creators who tries to advertise themselves more but doesn't add value. Thank you really.
Not many 1hr long instruction videos that I've sat through on RU-vid, I often have to skip around till the presenter gets to the point! You have a great balance of practical explanation, covering enough to get someone off to the races, but not going down and un-necessary rabbit holes! You showed the physical setup/connections of devices, and fast forwarded or skipped the boring parts! Excellent work.
I really appreciate your feedback because I wasn’t sure if this format would work. I could have gotten 10 weeks of content from this video if I split it up, but I decided this format was more useful for someone who is just starting out.
It's as simple as if the content is good and it fills up the time and it's just not a crazy amount of introductions and subjective commentary then it's super valuable. So I guess the length of the video is likely determined by how practical the steps are. If someone wants to get down into some really nitty gritty part of automation then they're going to have to do the hard work anyway.
You can run both ZHA and Zigbee2MQTT at the same time. Comes in handy when you have a few devices that do not work in ZHA. You will, of course, need two Zigbee coordinators (dongles), but it does work...and quite well. Great job. Thanks for the well-explained processes.
I installed Home Assistant on an F210 thin client computer last night and found your video this morning. You hit it out of the park as a getting started video.
Still I feel videos like this miss the mark. Just like this one, they all assume that the viewers are users of these devices. For people who want to use HA and have not purchased anything yet. Where do we start? How do we protect ourselves from the internet data leaks? How do we do this without costing a fortune?
I am in a similar situation. I believe the content creator explained what's needed well. You need to get an Intel NUC and install your image file using one of the two methods shown. I will use the SSD to USB method as it seems straightforward. Currently, my Control4 installation cannot get stats from my Buderus boiler, so I plan to use a BBQkees electronics EMS Bus Wi-Fi Gateway to connect with Home Assistant. The goal is to achieve this integration. Regarding internet data leaks, that depends on your internet infrastructure unless Home Assistant has a built-in firewall which I am not aware of.
I tried to make it as easy as possible. You can use a Raspberry Pi or a NUC. I prefer the NUC but either one works. By default, HomeAssistant is only accessible from your local network, not remotely. If you’re worried about data leaks, don’t make it Internet accessible. To be honest, HomeAssistant is a vast sea of complicated integrations and add-ons. It takes a lot of time, can be very frustrating at times, and is best suited for techies or people willing to do the research and learn. If you want a more turnkey solution, look into Hubitat or HomeSeer.
@@handydadtv Things that would be helpful are: 1. What devices (light switches, bulbs, outlets, etc.) i should buy that do not require access out to the internet? 2. How do I set them up and connect them to my Wi-Fi so HA can manage them? 3. How do i wall off these devices from being able to communicate to the outside internet? 4. Etc. I feel that the devices end is more important than how to setup HA to manage them. Those wanting to use HA probably want to do so because they are weary of exposing these devices to the outside internet and to companies like Google and Amazon. However, IMO all of the videos center around how to setup HA rather than how to safely integrate the devices with HA.
Those questions are beyond the scope of this video. HomeAssistant is flexible and you can integrate it with most kinds of devices. Most people come to HomeAssistant from something else, so they already have smart devices to integrate. Choice of protocol is a very personal decision and many people will disagree with me, but if you’re completely new to home automation and on a tight budget, I’d recommend Zigbee. The devices are the cheapest and they don’t require Internet access. If you use Amazon Echo, some of them have built-in Zigbee hubs so you don’t necessarily need HomeAssistant to start with. Just put them in pairing mode and say “Alexa discover devices.” After she finds them, you can control them by voice and create simple routines to automate them.
Wow...what a fantastic tutorial! And I had no idea that Insteon is back- I don't know why, because since I've converted all my smart plugs to KASA, they not only work FASTER than Insteon, they are far less expensive than Insteon (I started out with X10 if you can believe that!). I also didn't even though there were Intel NUCs you can use to separate HA from your PC. Right now I'm just stuck on Google Home (I'm curious to see how many of my devices I could migrate to HA), but GH has it's challenges as well. I read on Reddit quite a bit about all the users who have gone to HA, so I think I might just try it out. I will keep your video for reference! Thanks much!!!
Impressive tutorial! Well planned and executed. I’ve been a Homeseer user since v1.0 but recently I’ve been considering a new platform mostly because Homeseer requires Windows. After watching this tutorial I’ll be exploring Home Assistant in detail and see what it will take to convert my current setup to HA. Thank you for your hard work. Subscribed! Oh, and I did order two of your Amazon affiliation links.
They are both very capable platforms, but HomeSeer is more controlled and better supported. With Home Assistant, you depend a lot on the community more than the vendor.
I've been dipping my toes (more like up to my neck) into HA for a couple of weeks now, and it's a pretty steep learning curve. I've run across most of the stuff you covered in this video, but I'm struggling to put it together. Congratulations for laying it out in a meaningful way that is more easily understood. One of the things that blocked my progress was that I too soon got into sensors and ESP32 microcontrollers. I certainly want to get into that, and perhaps you could help with that (maybe you have already). Another area of interest is energy monitoring. I've watched your video on Emporia Vue 3 with great interest. Many thanks for you great work.
Hi, Very nice and relevant. I made it even easier buying a Home Assistant Green. Break out the long section about using linux to install on the SSD, a waste of time. Also talk about Integrating with google assistant, not only Alexa, please. I personally think that you can include the MQTT stuff in this video. Is Zwave still relevant, not sure, but it was quite quick so why not. Maybe you should add bluetooth instead. Love your pedagogics, right level for me.
Thanks for the feedback. There are still a lot of ZWave users out there, including me. I really wish they included a Zigbee/Thread antenna in Green. That would have been compelling even for 20% more. As for Google Home, I don’t use it. And I feel MQTT is an advanced topic not for a basic how-to guide.
I have the DiskStation DS723+, is it possible to install HA on the synology? I don't what to do, buy mini pc or Home Assistant Yellow, what do you recommend? thanks hello from Italy
Yes, in still using the computer in this video. It works flawlessly. If you don’t mind doing a little YAML from time to time, I prefer Home Assistant. All of the integrations are free, as opposed to HomeSeer which charges for many of them. In addition, as a content creator, Home Assistant has a bigger audience. I’m going to redo this video for 2024 using the new Home Assistant Green.
I was looking for automation and ran into your video. Perfect tuts for a newbie like myself in smart home installation. Would love to know how to run the backup in the event I need to. If there’s a video for it, a link is extremely appreciated. Thanks again and immediate subscriber here! Cheers!!!
Trying to do a new install on a NUC I just received... It seems that many of these commands are returning various errors now. Looks like Balena is asking for a payment.
@@handydadtv yeah, I'm getting the same thing. Spent hours trying different ways and keep getting a 402 Payment Required and my IP Address when I run the curl -1sLF... command. So it can't download Etcher and I can't find a way around it.
I think your guide was so good That I want to make a second set of commenté. 1. I see you have video's about NAS. Some users argue that the best place to install HA is on your NAS. Synology even supplies that to download and install. Could be a candidate for your intro guide. 2. The super geeks argue that HA should be installed in a container. The only one I would trust for a guide to do the HA installation as a container on a mini PC would be you. Br
Port forwarding? At minute 50:18 this crucial detail is mentioned, which can kill the whole point of setting up Home Assistant for remote access if it cannot be supported. I have T-Mobile Home Internet and from what I read on the T-Mobile Community website, they block port forwarding. It doesn't matter if I buy a second router to connect to the one T-Mobile supplies, I am still screwed.
Hey Chris, thanks for the video. Something you may want to mention. I just followed your instructions and got HA installed on a small micro computer and it's up and running on my network. However, once I signed out, I was unable to sign back in because during the initialization, you never get to set or see your username. I am in the process of trying to figure it out but instructions online are sketchy. Any ideas on that?
Your username was selected during initial setup. I don’t believe there is a default or a way to override it. Just reinstall and go through setup again if you don’t remember it.
Thank you for your video. I have questions please. I went through the raspberry pi route and got ha loaded but mine didn't come up like yours. I got the map but there was no button for it to auto find my place and even editing the map doesn't allow me to pick more than my time zone. What might I have done wrong and how do I fix it. Or is it better to just start over again?
Thanks for this. Nobody talks about how to setup HA after it’s installed. I’ve been searching for what to do next. This is the only explanation I’ve seen on setting up zigbee and zwave. You got a sub.
veryinformative and helpful video thanks. i just installed home assisatnt on my PC , i cant find my tuya devices, can you give me a tip on how to do it ?
Try restarting Home Assistant. Also make sure the devices are on the same network as Home Assistant. I personally avoid Tuya devices because their local control API is so hard to use.
quick and practical question: when power goes off, what happens when power comes back on? Do the Z-Wave and Zibee devices re-pair with the hubs? Are there any configes required after power goes out at all? I've had issues where some wall switches and smart outlets aren't bound to an IP adress and have replaced my server on one occasion, So are there specific things to do with those z-wave#zigbee items, since they arent on "wifi" per se?
Great vid! A question though, seems I'm pretty useless with this - after etching the image and installing the SSD back in the NUC, the homeassistant.local address directs us to where? The NUC device? Do we need to set it up before?
Yes homeassistant.local should direct you to Home Assistant running on the NUC. If it doesn’t, you’ll need to lookup the IP address assigned by your router.
@@handydadtv Yes, did it the oldschool way via ip address. The homeassistant.local:8123 does not work, but the localipadreess:8123 does. Thank you very much good Sir for your time. :)
What if add-on option is missing in the setting menu? I tried to check the advanced mode in profile settings but the add-on is still missing. I installed the 2023.12.0 version on my Synology
I’m no expert, but if you’re using HA on Synology, I think you need to use Docker for add-ons. That’s the advantage of using a dedicated device with HAOS.
@@handydadtv Yes, I am using HA in Docker (now called Container Manager in Synology). I have found out that HA in Docker sadly miss whole add-on section for some reason I am not quite understand yet since I am new to this. All I want from HA was to control my new lights with Adaptive Lighting since the original options and possibilities from producer are much more limited than I tought (and not "smart" at all). Sadly I have not found the solution to run this add-on on my synology yet. Not sure if it is even possible. But still istalling the HA on SYnology was not completely useless, since some basic HA automation helped me to improve some "basic" function that I think should be included from the start in Philips Hue light system... and on top of that Apple homekit helped me a bit to tune lights during the day automatically. Feels a bit weird to me that instead using one system I need combine 3 systems together to get the lights working like I intended but all systems sadly has its limitations in settings and now I am quite satisfied with results. Altought from what I read the Adaptive Lighting addon for HA would be far superior to what I achieve right now.
Great video. I see Geekom mini computers doesn't offer the same mini computer you mentioned. What model would you recommend now. I am very interested in building a system.
I’m planning to make a new version of this video using a Home Assistant Green hub. I have one on my desk. Just need time to test it. www.home-assistant.io/green/
Handydad! Why are you my twin without me knowing nothing about it? I was scrolling thru my feed with home assistant info and that was a brief moment when i just stopped, my jaw dropped and also caught a thought - "why do I appear in a video about home assistant" and "why do i don't know about that?", "Is this a joke?". Spooky but extremely accurate! Keep up the good work my new and improved "twin brother"
They are constantly releasing new versions of Home Assistant so some things may certainly look different. But your device has Home Assistant pre-installed so you don’t need to worry about all the installation and setup at the beginning. You can just focus on adding your devices and creating automations.
Hey Chris, I am also Chris. Just started trying to automate some things around the house and didn't have a clue. I'm good with tech (Senior System Admin for an online tech company and preparing for Cloud Architecture certifications). I started going down the rabbit hole when I received an Alexa Echo Dot for Christmas. Very handy toy. Then I decided to try out some home automation by putting my Christmas lights on some Tuya plugs and conrolling both through the Smart Life app and/or Alexa. I found I was quickly looking at doing some other things as well. This video is a great explanation for those who are technical or not. I am really leaning towards the Home Assistant for a hub. I have some older micro computers that would work greatand love fooling around with Ubuntu. I am wondering, if I have wifi devices that are controlled basically over the internet, is there a way to ensure that they are controlled only through the Home Assistant and not directly over the internet? I have a PF Sense firewall and a little touchy about about what comes and goes over my internet connection. Thanks. Going to check out some of your other videos now. Probably become a subscriber if they're as good as this one. Cheers,
I don’t know PF Sense. I have a UniFi system (see ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-PyDpLJIKg0M.html) with a separate vlan for IoT devices. I also have a group called NO INTERNET so I can add any device if I want to block access. Research an add-on called LOCAL TUYA. It’s a pain in the ass to setup, but after I did it, I moved my devices into the NO INTERNET group so they can only be controlled locally.
16:15 Removing a USB device by making zig-zag movements can pose risks, such as damaging the USB port of your computer. i am the guy of the inappropiated comments😂
Hi All I'm new to Home Assistant and have been struggling to set up the Smartthings integration for the last few hours. (Many hours!) I've discovered that the url in the Home Assistant Cloud (Nabu Casa) does not match the url I'm presented with when I try to configure the Smartthings Integration in 'Integrations'. Is this the issue and if so how do I correct it? Many thanks.
Love all your videos..thank you so much. 1 Quick question..How do I shutdown/turn off the HA server using the HA> command line? or whatever command prompt. I am using the same x86 pc as you detailed in this video.
I use the UI, not the command line. Go to Settings >> System, then click the power button in the top corner. Under Advanced Options, click Shutdown System.
Hello, I have a question. I have portable thermostats Habitat, which send the signal to the wall-mounted ac unit. I don't want to buy their hubs because they are super expensive. The portable thermostat works with RF. Is there a way I can connect those to HA? Thank you
I delayed and gave up many times installing HA for over 2 years due to the complexity of installing HA as the HA was changing so frequently. Eventually sat down and and looked at the latest videos not older than 3 months and I was successful.. Now a year latter Im so gl;ad to have moved my automation to HA as it automates so much more than a app off the specific brand. Google home is beyond useless to setup automation's and Alexa is a close 2nd. I also stared on a raspB however a celeron NUC is heaps better in performance. Great vid explaining for the newbies.
Nice video I’m way out in left field lol Tho I will say I’ve these Ac motorized window blinds with RF 433 mhz and eventually I’d like to set them up with google assistant . I’d prefer to buy something user friendly as most of this is out of my league
Great channel, thank you. Following your recommendation I recently purchased and set up the GEEKOM PC and joined the Home Assistant user team. I'm learning as I go and am particularly interested in Tile cards which look to be the future. My specific query is as follows. We recently had a power cut when I was away from the property for some time. My other smart home tech restarted fine when the power was restored but the Home Assistant GEEKOM PC did not which left me unable to control many aspects of my smart home. On returning to the property l simply pressed the button on the NUC and everything started fine. How do I make the GEEKOM PC automatically restart on the restoration of power to the unit? Hopefully you can help with this issue.
Thanks for the video. I have been a Amazon device user for several years now, and it’s been very important to me to have all the automations and everything set up as I have extremely low vision, i.e. blind. One of the issues that I have is that whenever my Internet drops, then I have no longer able to access via voice my devices. So I’m starting to look into home assistant to see if that will eliminate this and as am already using a Lenox server, I am looking to add home assistant, and under a docker install onto my wound to server. I think that would be the best practice now the question I would have is candy immigration integration with function without the Internet. Answer doubt it always worth checking what other options would be available thanks for the great video.
Yes, Home Assistant will continue to operate even if your internet is down. However some integrations may not work until the internet is restored. It’s best to look for devices that can be locally-controlled, like Zigbee and Z-Wave. Then you’ll be good to go. If you depend on voice to control lights, Home Assistant now has features for voice activation even without internet. I haven’t explored that yet.
Great video by the way. I am researching how I can get rid of my useless and intrusive Amazon Echo setup I am currently using and gain better control over my network and device security.
A wonderful fulsome explanatory video. Thank you so much for the time and effort. I have to learn about containers, podman and how to get the Unifi network controller working there before I can start Home Assistant but this gentle introduction was just what I needed.
Thanks very much, great video! As a 71 year old newbie to HA this was very useful information provided at the right speed for me to absorb. Thanks from the Netherlands
Great video! I am new to the smart home world so this is very very helpful, Thank you. I have a question tho. I have been able to set up my Home Assistant server with the Geekom mini air 11 and it's up and running, but for some reason I keep getting connection lost. I have to trun of the system and turn it back on. Even with that, sometimes it doesn't work and I have to keep repeating the process before it works. Please advise.
This is all new to me, I bought a HA yellow and am trying to get all my stuff set up. Your video was very helpful. Thanks for going to the trouble of producing it.
Great video and thank you for your patience in making it. I have tried HA about two years ago and just wasn't for me at the time and stuck with Smartthings. Seen your video it encouraged me to maybe try again to take a look at HA even try the x86 mini computer rather than their Yellow or Green new offerings or a raspberry. I'll take a look at the rest of your videos and see if ever made the Alexa video.
Thank you for such a comprehensive video! I'm curious why you don't use your NAS to run Home Assistant through a docker installation? I ask because it seems many other RU-vidrs suggested the docker approach, though don't really explain why.
I tried that several times and got frustrated. The software installs fine, but all the add-ons need to be separate Docker containers. Accessing physical dongles from the containers for Z-Wave and Zigbee were frustrating as well, and Synology didn’t have device drivers readily available. I think a dedicated device is worth the money because the Home Assistant Operating System controls everything.
I have only watched about 1/4 of this but very informative. I will watch the full video. I am seriously thinking about about dumping my Homeseer for Home Assistant. Early on after the Insteon crash I had Home Assistant running on an old windows laptop. I was thinking about running it from my Truenas server that I built but the plugin is gone. I think it is still possible but I'll probably take you approach. It will be less headaches and hassle in the long run. Thanks for the great work!
Your solution to setting up the Wallmote Quad button three is awkward. Why not just set up a group then program the button to toggle the group? You can find "group" under helpers.
@@handydadtv thanks. have you ever run into an issue with the scripts you run to get etcher installed? I am running them in the ubuntu terminal and get "Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages" at the implementation of the last step.
It's also convenient if you migrate HA from docker container to the OS one. There's a option for those who'd like to restore backup. All my setting transferred to the OS smoothly
Great Video to get you started! Was reading a lot of how to guides on the Home assistant web site but they skipped over what you need to do before that! Thanks
Thats good to hear. I had tried home assistant a quite a while back and i did not find the option to schedule a device. But watcing videos on how to schedule, its quite hard to choose time. I guess in the mobile app we cannot do it. We will have to login to dashboard every time. Let me give a try.
You need a device to run Home Assistant. If you’re planning to use a Raspberry Pi, you need a computer to download Home Assistant to the SD card. If you’re planning to use a mini computer (NUC) to run Home Assistant, you can probably download and install it using that computer alone.
@@handydadtv thank you for the very quick response, the only reason I asked is because I do not own a laptop or computer and only have a phone for this sorta stuff, I have a few apps for some smart home stuff and want to automate them but the 3 apps I have don't all work with each other, I heard this app will work with what I'm trying to do so that's why I'm here
Great video, I am just looking at getting my own Home Asaistant setup, this was very enlightening as to what I need to know and do, I am very interested in, and plan on integrating Alexa
Check your home router, mine (ASUS) had OpenVPN built in, so I set that up, and just turn on OpenVPN when I am away from home and it gives me access to Home Assistant without need port forwarding.
I had an old pc hanging around, so I couldn't justify buying a nuc. However, it was so old that it did not have uefi, which is a requirement of home assistant operating system(HAOS). So instead I went the ubuntu with home assistant (HA) as a VM route. It works great. All I bought was a flash drive. Anyhow, just wanted to say the quality of this video is top notch!
I was following along and then got to the end of the remote portion and then broke my app. Need to do the port forwarding thing. could you post a short on that as well?
Just what I needed to see! I was headed down the hubitat path when I decided to dig into home assistant. One of my smart device groups are a LoRa set of devices and they only have HA integration or just standalone app setups. After watching this, I know I can get HA running on my unused raspberry pi. Simply great video and worth the time to ramp up my knowledge and confidence.
