Remote-access Guide

home assistant ios remote access

by Dr. Shaina Hudson Published 2 years ago Updated 1 year ago
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Install the iOS app and enter the URL (this would be the Duck DNS URL created when setting up remote access) and password for Home Assistant into the app settings Enable notifications in the app settings Restart Home Assistant again so it can detect the iOS app is connected

Full Answer

Does home assistant work with iOS?

Home Assistant iOS The ios integration is used by the Home Assistant Companion App for iOS to store and provide settings for actionable notifications and actions. Both of these can also be configured for a single device within the app, in which case the ios integration is not required.

How do I set up remote access to home assistant?

Remember to follow the securing checklist before doing this. Home Assistant no longer support remote access via IP address since release 0.77, you have to use a domain name. The most common approach is to set up port forwarding (for any port) from your router to port 8123 on the computer that is hosting Home Assistant.

How does the app talk to my home assistant?

The basics: How the app talks to your Home Assistant In order for the app to talk to HA, it needs to know its address. Just within your home network you might know that your Home Assistant is on an IP like 192.168.1.4 and listening on port 8123.

How do I log in to home assistant while away?

If you’re interested in logging in to Home Assistant while away, you’ll have to make your instance remotely accessible. Remember to follow the securing checklist before doing this. The most common approach is to set up port forwarding (for any port) from your router to port 8123 on the computer that is hosting Home Assistant.

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How do I access my Home Assistant app remotely?

2:1917:57Home Assistant 101: Setting up Remote Access - YouTubeYouTubeStart of suggested clipEnd of suggested clipAccess let's get started adding remote access to home assistant is as simple as opening a port onMoreAccess let's get started adding remote access to home assistant is as simple as opening a port on your network router to allow the outside world to get to your home assistant instance.

Can you expose Home Assistant on the internet?

There's always some risk. Having said that the last known exploit was patched very quickly by home assistant. So the risk is pretty small if you keep Home Assistant up to date and keep up to date with Home Assistant news.

How do I access Home Assistant on local network?

3:3725:41How to access Home Assistant and your internal network with Twingate ...YouTubeStart of suggested clipEnd of suggested clipSo you can install twin gate on your local network where your home assistant device resides. You canMoreSo you can install twin gate on your local network where your home assistant device resides. You can set it up on a raspberry pi if you have access to install docker containers.

Is Nabu Casa worth it?

Nabu Casa provides good value for money with features like access to smart home from everyone, text to speech technology and one click connection to voice assistants (Alexa, Google). All of this can be achieved without Nabu Casa by the technically inclined with some degree of work.

How do I securely access Home Assistant remotely?

If you want secure remote access, the easiest option is to use Home Assistant cloud by which you also support the founders of Home Assistant. Another option is to use TLS/SSL via the add-on Duck DNS integrating Let's Encrypt. To expose your instance to the internet, use a VPN, or an SSH tunnel.

Is port forwarding Home Assistant safe?

Just putting a port up is not secure. You should definitely consider encrypting your traffic if you are accessing your Home Assistant installation remotely. For details please check the set up encryption using Let's Encrypt blog post or this detailed guide to using Let's Encrypt with Home Assistant.

How can I access my home server from outside?

Use a VPN. If you connect to your local area network by using a virtual private network (VPN), you don't have to open your PC to the public internet. Instead, when you connect to the VPN, your RD client acts like it's part of the same network and be able to access your PC.

What is the IP address of Home Assistant?

Just within your home network you might know that your Home Assistant is on an IP like 192.168. 1.4 and listening on port 8123. If you use Home Assistant OS and haven't changed any of the defaults, Home Assistant will also be reachable at http://homeassistant.local:8123.

What is my external URL for Home Assistant?

The URL that Home Assistant is available on from your local network. For example: http://homeassistant.local:8123 . Note that this setting may only contain a protocol, hostname and port; using a path is not supported. Customize entities.

How much does Nabu Casa cost?

After the initial 31-day trial period for new users, the subscription costs $6.50 + tax per month or $65 + tax for the annual plan. The annual plan is available for all countries.

Can I run Home Assistant in the cloud?

The short answer is yes and no, you can either test or run OpenHAB full-time on a cloud server but all of the Home Assistant cloud setups I've found are simply cloud connectors to the software on a Pi.

Is Home Assistant cloud free?

Well good news, because you can trial Home Assistant cloud for free for one month. In a few easy steps you can set-up your trial: From the Home Assistant user interface go to Settings, and then go to Home Assistant cloud. Click on the Start your free 1 month trial.

What is docker in home assistant?

0:0016:56Installing Docker and Home Assistant Container - YouTubeYouTubeStart of suggested clipEnd of suggested clipHome i run piehole for ad blocking frigate for using ai to detect objects in my security cameraMoreHome i run piehole for ad blocking frigate for using ai to detect objects in my security camera streams zigbee to mqtt for my zigbee devices.

What is ESPHome?

ESPHome is a system to control your ESP8266/ESP32 by simple yet powerful configuration files and control them remotely through Home Automation systems.

What is home assistant Io?

Home Assistant is a free and open-source software for home automation designed to be a central control system for smart home devices with a focus on local control and privacy.

What is home assistant?

Home Assistant is a free and open-source system for home automation and allows you to view the status and control various IoT and smart devices in your home. Once Home Assistant is setup it will scan your network for devices and identify them. You can setup credentials for these devices and with the help of a plugin for the device, ...

Why is the HA prompt displayed?

This prompt will be displayed if the mobile app isn’t able to detected to the HA instance automatically on your network, however, you want to manually input a URL to your HA instance so this way you can access it remotely when you’re not on your LAN.

Does HA have plugins?

HA has a very expansive eco-system of plugins and opportunities to customize. They have a great community so I would check them out. The help page on the HA website has more resources as well.

Does a HA container need to be on the same network as the host?

This means that the container for HA needs to be on the same network as the host. This also implies that the Packetriot tunnel (client) needs to be on the host network since it would otherwise be isolated from communicating to the host running the HA container.

Do you have to authenticate before using Home Assistant?

A user would have to authenticate here first before any traffic is even proxied to the Home Assistant service . This means that any automated traffic would just get dropped.

Can you set location on Home Assistant?

Once you create your user will be able to set or confirm a location for your home and make a few other small customizations. Finally, you’ll be presented the dashboard for Home Assistant.

Can you control lights with Home Assistant?

You can setup credentials for these devices and with the help of a plugin for the device , it can be controlled and automated through Home Assistant’s web dashboard. You can control lights, thermostats, robot vacuum cleaners and many more devices. Home Assistant.

Does Nabu Casato need new hardware?

There's no new hardware needed for this part, though I will be using my phone (running iOS) to get the mobile appsetup and a separate service called Nabu Casato remotely connect to our Home Assistant install. An Android versionof the app is also available, though I can't comment on that as I haven't used it.

Can you use Nabu Casa for remote access?

I'm using Home Assistant Cloudby Nabu Casa for my remote access. You can setup remote access yourself, but I don't mind paying $5 a month to not have to worry about managing it all (at the minute, I might end up switching to something like Cloudflare eventually thanks to this guide on how to use Cloudflare with Home Assistant- but that's something for future me to deal with)

Why is it important to have your home available anywhere?

Having your Home available anywhere and everywhere you go is important, whether you forgot to turn off the stove or you want to check the camera views because of an alert.

What to do if your ISP doesn't give you a public IPv4 address?

If your ISP doesn't give you a public IPv4 address you're down to basically only two solutions: You can call your ISP and ask if they can give you a real address or if there is an upgrade for your connection available (oddly enough, asking nicely will work with many ISPs out there) or use Nabu Casa Cloud.

What port does HA use?

While it is possible to have your HA use Port 8123 internally and have your router do a port-forwarding from say the default https port of 443 to 8123, we recommend you NOT do this for reasons of simplicity which we will explain later.

Does Home Assistant have wifi access?

In iOS settings, set location access permissoin for Home Assistant to Always. This is required because starting with iOS 13, Apple will only let apps with such permission have access to the wifi SSID which is used by the app to determine whether to use internal or external URLs.

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Remotely Access and Control Home Assistant

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Published at December 22, 2020 · 11 min read Home Assistantis a free and open-source system for home automation and allows you to view the status and control various IoT and smart devices in your home. Once Home Assistant is setup it will scan your network for devices and identify them. You can setup credentials for th…
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Setup and Start Containers

  • Below is the compose file we’re going to use. It includes a container called pktriot-tunnel for running and hosting our Packetriot tunnel and another called home-assistantfor running HA. Typically you want to run containers within their own virtual network. This helps isolate them from the host and is good from a security perspective. However, Home Assistant can scan your local …
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Setup Tunnel & Traffic Rules

  • We’re going to configure and setup the traffic rule for the tunnel that will serve our Home Assitant service. In this tutorial we are using a custom domain, so be sure to verifya custom domain you own that you are using to follow along. Change into the containers directory. We’ll use the command docker exec -it to execute a command inside the pktriot container to configure a new …
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Initial Home Assistant Setup

  • We’ll be visiting the URL https://ha.packetdemo.comto access our HA instance. You will be presented with a page from Home Assistant to setup a user and their credentials. Once you create your user will be able to set or confirm a location for your home and make a few other small customizations. Finally, you’ll be presented the dashboard for Home Assistant. Our tutorial ends …
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Companion Apps

  • HA includes support for companion apps on smart phones/tablets and supports iOS and Android. So you can control your smart home from the couch or while you’re away. I’d like to walk through some of the setup for the iOS application so we can review what information needs to be input while setting up a mobile app. Initially you’ll be presented with a view to begin the HA instance c…
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Software Updates

  • With this installation keeping up with software should be easy, this is because all of our application data for all of our containers (Home Assistant, Packetriot) is being stored on the host and not inside the container. Below are commands you can run to refresh all the software for all of the containers.
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Security Improvements

  • I don’t run Home Assistant on my home network, I just haven’t jumped on the smart home bandwagon yet. However, if you’re installing and using smart devices in your home, HA is a very popular system to command and control them, and adds a lot of utility to your home. It can also make it easy to monitor these devices when you’re away from home. That being said, I’d persona…
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Conclusion

  • I’m very impressed with the amount of plugins and devices Home Assistant supports. HA has an pretty awesome community as well. I think if you’re looking at home automation then Home Assistant is the right software to consider setting up and the eco-system is there to support any smart or IoT devices you setup in your home. We did not cover all options and configurations fo…
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Equipment

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There's no new hardware needed for this part, though I will be using my phone (running iOS) to get the mobile app setup and a separate service called Nabu Casa to remotely connect to our Home Assistant install. An Android versionof the app is also available, though I can't comment on that as I haven't used it.
See more on brunty.me

Setup

  • After installing the mobile app on my phone I ran into my first issue after just a couple of clicks, I tried continuing through the app setup and it crashed. I tried again. It crashed. Off to search for the problem I went! It turns out that version of the app had a bug that crashed when on WiFi and trying to look at an external_url- I wasn't the only one having that issue either: I disabled WiFi, an…
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Impressions

  • When I first started using it the app felt a little janky. But I completely understood why as it's mostly just a web view of your Home Assistant instance and that leads to layout shifting and re-flows of content as things load in, as well as unstyled flashes until it picks up on your theme. With updates to Home Assistant in the past couple of months though, the UI performance is dramatic…
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Usage

  • One thing I found through using it a little was that I felt the header took up quite a lot of space (minor thing, but hey...) I discovered a custom header plugin (installed via Home Assistant Community Store (HACS)that allows custom header options! Using these options I was able to get the menu down to this: Much better! I've hidden the menu button (top left) that accesses the …
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Location

  • Using the mobile app also allows us to use our phones as device trackers for location. Using this I'm able to setup automations that run only when we're not home. For example, when we leave home, I want to turn on motion detection on my cameras, and turn off the lights (I'm notoriously bad at turning them off) - so I have an automation that runs with the following configuration:
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Notifications

  • I've only played around with simple notifications so far (as you can see above). You can have actionable notificationsbut that's not something I've played with (yet). One thing I have realised is: not all notifications are relevant at all times. So I have conditional checks in some automations that send notifications only when they're relevant. For example, if the washing machine or dishw…
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Conclusion

  • I'm happy with the mobile app, it's not quite as slick as some other apps from some platforms, but it allows me to configure it to do what Iwant it to show, not what a device maker decides it should show. Notifications are nice, I'm going to experiment with actionable notifications at somepoint soon I think. There's the ability to have things triggered by widgets (actions)in iOS too, which is s…
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