Remote-access Guide

home assistant remote access

by Prof. Lindsey Marquardt Published 2 years ago Updated 1 year ago
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How do I access my Home Assistant externally?

13:3817:57Home Assistant 101: Setting up Remote Access - YouTubeYouTubeStart of suggested clipEnd of suggested clipStore but in ssl cert only allows the communication. Between home assistant. And an outside deviceMoreStore but in ssl cert only allows the communication. Between home assistant. And an outside device to remain private it doesn't prevent someone from trying multiple passwords.

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.

How do I access my Home Assistant server?

14:3219:04Home Assistant Remote Access for FREE - DuckDNS + LetsEncrypt + ...YouTubeStart of suggested clipEnd of suggested clipAnd enter https followed by your dns domain name and port 8123.MoreAnd enter https followed by your dns domain name and port 8123.

How do I access Duck assistant homed remotely?

Access Remotely Fill in the External URL with your DuckDNS domain URL (e.g., https://myhomeassistant.duckdns.org) and Internal URL with your Raspberry PI IP address. Now restart the Home Assistant.

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.

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.

Can Home Assistant work without Internet?

As long as your local network stays up and your integrations don't depend on an external service you should be able to continue to use it. When your WAN connection is down what kind of issue are you having when trying to connect locally?

Is Home Assistant a hub?

Home Assistant acts as a central smart home controller hub by combining different devices and services in a single place and integrating them as entities.

How do I secure my Home Assistant on Raspberry Pi?

1:468:225 ESSENTIAL Tips for Security on Home Assistant - YouTubeYouTubeStart of suggested clipEnd of suggested clipAnd server speaks to an external api make sure that it uses https tip number two is to make sure youMoreAnd server speaks to an external api make sure that it uses https tip number two is to make sure you are using strong passwords.

How do I set https at Home Assistant?

9:0713:10Getting started with Home Assistant - 2021 - YouTubeYouTubeStart of suggested clipEnd of suggested clipSo go back to home assistant. Click on configuration. And then general. Under external url enterMoreSo go back to home assistant. Click on configuration. And then general. Under external url enter your dac dns url including https colon forward slash forward slash at the beginning for the internal.

What port is Home Assistant on?

You just have to open port 443 in your router and forward it to your local Home Assistant IP on port 8123 . You also have to assign a static IP address for the server where your Home Assistant is installed. If you don’t know how to do that just ask in the comments section below or search in Google.

How to change password on Home Assistant?

Log in your Home Assistant and click on your username in the lower left corner of the screen. Then do the following: Change your password with a password that contains: letters in upper and lower case, digits and special characters. It will be best if you use this password only for your Home Assistant and nowhere else.

Does Home Assistant have a warning?

That means – you will receive warnings from your browser when you access the https version of your local Home Assistant. Depending of the browser that you are using you may add your local Home Assistant https address as exclusion once and you will not receive any warnings after that.

Why Home Assistant Doesn't Work Remotely by Default

The reason it's almost impossible for remote functionality to work out of the box is quite technical but can still be understood if we accept certain facts about home networking. First, your average router (which is often a box your Internet Service Provider (ISP) gives you) will be hard at work protecting your network.

Why Using Regular Remote Access Could be Insecure

The reality is that most people trust a product's instructions to provide the best way of achieving their goal. Unfortunately, when it comes to Home Assistant and remote access, the instructions are focused more on ease of use rather than security.

How a Reverse Proxy Fixes All Our Problems

A proxy is a service that hides your identity to internet services by collecting all their customers' connections and routing them through a few IP addresses which belong to the proxy company. As such, a third-party website can no longer tell who exactly is sending this information or where they live.

Prerequisites For Running a Reverse Proxy With Home Assistant

While the proxy helps tremendously, unfortunately, it adds some complexity to the standard process seen here. What exactly you need to do will depend on your setup, but we will assume that you are using the same computer for this as you are for Home Assistant.

Setting up a Reverse Proxy For Home Assistant

We will be using Apache, but you could also use Nginx if you wanted to. The configuration will be done differently, but they are both equally as good for this purpose.

Remote access for Home Assistant

Sometimes you want remote access to Home Assistant. Maybe it’s just so you can have a mobile app update your location, or so you can use some integration that requires it, or you want full access to the user interface.

Before you begin

Log on to your router’s admin pages and check the WAN IP. You don’t want to see a value that begins with:

Reverse Proxy (optional)

There are many reasons you may want to use a reverse proxy. Common reasons are that you don’t want to use SSL inside your network, or that you want to limit remote access to only webhooks. If you want more than remote access to the API and webhooks you’ll need to ensure the proxy is configured with websocket support.

Port forwarding

Congratulations on getting this far without throwing your computer out of the window!

How to edit yaml file in Home Assistant?

To edit your configuration.yaml file in Home Assistant, you need to have their File Editor plug-in installed. Click on Supervisor in the left hand menu. Click Add-on store, and then click on File Editor. Click Install and wait for the installation to complete. Once the installation is complete, ...

How often can Home Assistant update Cloudflare?

Home Assistant can run a check every hour for changes, and update Cloudflare if your IP changes. Paste the following into your configuration.yaml file. Your zone should be your domain, and the records will be any subdomains you wish to update. Use the same Global API Key that was used above.

What is remote access?

While this may be obvious to some, remote access is the feature that allows users to control their home from outside the local network over the internet. Most commercial hubs simply have a cloud service that accepts your commands and forwards them to your home, but since Home Assistant is the server, there are a few extra steps to take.

How does it work?

The principle is quite simple. It involves "forwarding" a port on your router to the outside world which effectively makes that port open for external traffic to flow in. Then when you use your public IP address, you will be connected to the correct computer within your network.

Before starting checklist

Before you begin, you will need to have a few things on hand. Notably:

Setting it all up

In this section, we are going to perform the actual setup. There are several ways to do the dynamic DNS step, but the port forwarding step should be fairly ubiquitous.

Securing the system

This is critical. When you expose a computer to the outside world, it becomes almost sure that it will be attacked by hackers or bots. Bad actors run bots that attempt to use known exploits on any public IP address they can find, so if your system is vulnerable, you will get hacked.

User accounts

When you start Home Assistant for the first time the owner user account is created. This account has some special privileges and can:

Other authentication techniques

Home Assistant provides several ways to authenticate. See the Auth Providers section.

Troubleshooting

If you’re seeing authentication failures from 127.0.0.1 and you’re using the nmap device tracker, you should exclude the Home Assistant IP from being scanned.

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