Getting Started With Home Assistant

Home Assistant is an open source home automation system that you can deploy yourself, giving you control and privacy. It provides:

• a web GUI
• a REST API
• can easily be deployed through docker.
• An android APP to connect to your server with to control things from your phone.

Steps

Deploy With Docker

docker run -d \
  --name="home-assistant" \
  --restart=always \
  -v $HOME/home-assistant/config:/config \
  -v /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro \
  --net=host \
  homeassistant/home-assistant:stable

Once that has finished deploying, navigate to your server's hostname on port 8123. E.g. http://home-assistant.programster.org:8123. You will see a screen prompting you to create an account by setting a username and password.

After that is done, you will be prompted to set a timezone/location.

Home assistant will then scan your network for compatible devices that you can then configure immediately if you want to. For example, it has picked up my Kodi media center, the Google speakers, and a Synology NAS.

Finally, you will be taken to the dashboard, where you can start playing around.

Update

Every now and then you should update. To do this, simply pull the latest image before stopping and removing the current container and re-deploying.

docker pull homeassistant/home-assistant:stable 
docker stop home-assistant
docker rm home-assistant

References

• Autostart using Docker
• Dockerhub - Home Assistant