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Home Assistant

Home Assistant is the most popular open-source smart home platform. It connects thousands of devices and services and enables complex automations.

Installation

Add the following template to your docker-compose.yml and then run ei23 dc.

Template

  homeassistant:
    image: ghcr.io/home-assistant/home-assistant:stable
    container_name: homeassistant
    restart: unless-stopped
    network_mode: host
    volumes:
      - ./volumes/homeassistant/config:/config
      - /run/dbus:/run/dbus:ro
    environment:
      - TZ=Europe/Berlin

Network Mode

The template uses network_mode: host for best compatibility with local device discovery (mDNS, SSDP, etc.).

First Start

  1. After starting, you can access Home Assistant at http://[IP]:8123
  2. Create an admin account
  3. Configure your location data
  4. Start adding integrations

Integrations

Home Assistant connects with many devices and services:

Local Integrations

Integration Description
MQTT Connection with MQTT broker
ESPHome ESPHome devices automatically detected
Shelly WLAN devices from Shelly
Zigbee2MQTT Zigbee devices via MQTT
InfluxDB Export data
NodeRED Complex automations

Cloud Integrations

Integration Description
Alexa Amazon voice control
Google Assistant Google voice control
Spotify Music control
Weather Weather data

HACS (Home Assistant Community Store)

HACS allows installing community integrations:

Installation

The ei23 script installs HACS automatically. Manual installation:

  1. Download HACS: hacs.xyz
  2. Copy the hacs folder to /config/custom_components/
  3. Restart Home Assistant
  4. Go to Settings → Integrations → HACS
Integration Description
hass-node-red NodeRED in HA
Mushroom Modern UI cards
Button Card Customizable buttons
ApexCharts Advanced charts
Auto Entities Dynamic lists

Automations

Example: Light on Motion

automation:
  - alias: "Light on Motion in Hallway"
    trigger:
      platform: state
      entity_id: binary_sensor.motion_hallway
      to: "on"
    condition:
      condition: time
      after: "07:00:00"
      before: "22:00:00"
    action:
      service: light.turn_on
      target:
        entity_id: light.hallway

Example: Heating in the Morning

automation:
  - alias: "Heating Up in the Morning"
    trigger:
      platform: time
      at: "06:30:00"
    condition:
      condition: time
      weekday:
        - mon
        - tue
        - wed
        - thu
        - fri
    action:
      service: climate.set_temperature
      target:
        entity_id: climate.living_room
      data:
        temperature: 21

Dashboards

Home Assistant offers customizable dashboards:

Lovelace (Default)

The default dashboard can be customized via the web interface:

  1. Click the three dots in the top right
  2. Edit Dashboard
  3. Add cards:
Card Description
Entities List of devices
Button Single switch
Glance Quick overview
History History chart
Weather Weather forecast
Map Location map

Custom Dashboards

With HACS and Mushroom/Button Cards, you can create modern UIs.

Backups

Automatic Backup

Add to your configuration.yaml:

backup:

Manual Backup

# Create backup
cd ~/ei23-docker/
docker compose exec homeassistant tar -czf /config/backup-$(date +%Y%m%d).tar.gz /config

Migrating from Home Assistant OS

Restore Backup from HA OS

Home Assistant OS is somewhat different in structure, but ultimately runs the exact same version of Home Assistant as in this script.

  1. Create a backup with Home Assistant OS via the backup function in the web interface
  2. Save the *.tar file
  3. Copy the contents to this folder: /home/user/ei23-docker/volumes/homeassistant/config
  4. Restart Home Assistant: docker restart homeassistant
  5. The backup will be imported

Connecting Hardware

USB Devices

Add devices in docker-compose.yml:

devices:
  - /dev/ttyUSB0:/dev/ttyUSB0  # Zigbee stick
  - /dev/ttyACM0:/dev/ttyACM0  # ConBee

GPIO (Raspberry Pi)

For GPIO access on the Raspberry Pi:

devices:
  - /dev/gpiomem:/dev/gpiomem
volumes:
  - /sys:/sys

Home Assistant Docker vs. Supervised

There are two versions of Home Assistant:

Feature Docker (ei23) Supervised/OS
Flexibility ✅ Maximum ⚠️ Limited
Docker Images ✅ All available ⚠️ Only Addons
Addons ⚠️ As separate containers ✅ Integrated
Hardware ⚠️ Manual configuration ✅ Automatic
Updates Via docker compose Via HA Supervisor

Why Docker?

In this script, we use Home Assistant Docker. This offers significantly more flexibility and access to all Docker images, not just the official addons. Technically, addons are also just pre-configured Docker containers.

Secure with HTTPS

See: - Reverse Proxy with Traefik - Reverse Proxy with Nginx Proxy Manager

Notes

  • The configuration is located in ./volumes/homeassistant/config/
  • The main configuration file is configuration.yaml
  • Automations in automations.yaml
  • Custom components in custom_components/
  • Minimum 2GB RAM recommended

Further Information