Advanced Raspberry Pi installations

While we recommend Home Assistant OS, there are also alternative ways to install Home Assistant. Before you continue, be aware of the limitations and differences compared to Home Assistant OS. You can find more information on the installation page. Most notably, add-ons are only available with the Home Assistant Operating System.

Install Home Assistant Container

These below instructions are for an installation of Home Assistant ContainerHome Assistant Container is a standalone container-based installation of Home Assistant Core. Any OCI compatible runtime can be used, but the documentation focus is on Docker. [Learn more] running in your own container environment, which you manage yourself. Any OCI compatible runtime can be used, however this guide will focus on installing it with Docker.

Note

This installation method does not have access to add-ons. If you want to use add-ons, you need to use another installation method. The recommended method is Home Assistant Operating SystemHome Assistant OS, the Home Assistant Operating System, is an embedded, minimalistic, operating system designed to run the Home Assistant ecosystem. It is the recommended installation method for most users. [Learn more]. Checkout the overview table of installation types to see the differences.

Important

Prerequisites This guide assumes that you already have an operating system setup and a container runtime installed (like Docker).

If you are using Docker then you need to be on at least version 19.03.9, ideally an even higher version, and libseccomp 2.4.2 or newer. Docker Desktop will not work, you must use Docker Engine.

Platform installation

Installation with Docker is straightforward. Adjust the following command so that:

  • /PATH_TO_YOUR_CONFIG points at the folder where you want to store your configuration and run it. Make sure that you keep the :/config part.

  • MY_TIME_ZONE is a tz database name, like TZ=America/Los_Angeles.

  • D-Bus is optional but required if you plan to use the Bluetooth integration.

    docker run -d \
      --name homeassistant \
      --privileged \
      --restart=unless-stopped \
      -e TZ=MY_TIME_ZONE \
      -v /PATH_TO_YOUR_CONFIG:/config \
      -v /run/dbus:/run/dbus:ro \
      --network=host \
      ghcr.io/home-assistant/home-assistant:stable
    
    # if this returns "Image is up to date" then you can stop here
    docker pull ghcr.io/home-assistant/home-assistant:stable
    
    # stop the running container
    docker stop homeassistant
    
    # remove it from Docker's list of containers
    docker rm homeassistant
    
    # finally, start a new one
    docker run -d \
      --name homeassistant \
      --restart=unless-stopped \
      --privileged \
      -e TZ=MY_TIME_ZONE \
      -v /PATH_TO_YOUR_CONFIG:/config \
      -v /run/dbus:/run/dbus:ro \
      --network=host \
      ghcr.io/home-assistant/home-assistant:stable
    

    Once the Home Assistant Container is running Home Assistant should be accessible using http://<host>:8123 (replace with the hostname or IP of the system). You can continue with onboarding.

      Onboarding

    Restart Home Assistant

    If you change the configuration, you have to restart the server. To do that you have 3 options.

    1. In your Home Assistant UI, go to the Settings > System and click the Restart button.
    2. You can go to the Developer Tools > Actions, select homeassistant.restart and select Perform action.
    3. Restart it from a terminal.
    docker restart homeassistant
    
    docker compose restart
    

    Docker compose

    Tip

    docker compose should already be installed on your system. If not, you can manually install it.

    As the Docker command becomes more complex, switching to docker compose can be preferable and support automatically restarting on failure or system restart. Create a compose.yml file:

      services:
        homeassistant:
          container_name: homeassistant
          image: "ghcr.io/home-assistant/home-assistant:stable"
          volumes:
            - /PATH_TO_YOUR_CONFIG:/config
            - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
            - /run/dbus:/run/dbus:ro
          restart: unless-stopped
          privileged: true
          network_mode: host
    

    Start it by running:

    docker compose up -d
    

    Once the Home Assistant Container is running, Home Assistant should be accessible using http://<host>:8123 (replace with the hostname or IP of the system). You can continue with onboarding.

      Onboarding

    Exposing devices

    In order to use Zigbee or other integrations that require access to devices, you need to map the appropriate device into the container. Ensure the user that is running the container has the correct privileges to access the /dev/tty* file, then add the device mapping to your container instructions:

    docker run ... --device /dev/ttyUSB0:/dev/ttyUSB0 ...
    
    services:
      homeassistant:
        ...
        devices:
          - /dev/ttyUSB0:/dev/ttyUSB0
    

    Optimizations

    The Home Assistant Container is using an alternative memory allocation library jemalloc for better memory management and Python runtime speedup.

    As the jemalloc configuration used can cause issues on certain hardware featuring a page size larger than 4K (like some specific ARM64-based SoCs), it can be disabled by passing the environment variable DISABLE_JEMALLOC with any value, for example:

    docker run ... -e "DISABLE_JEMALLOC=true" ...
    
    services:
      homeassistant:
      ...
        environment:
          DISABLE_JEMALLOC: true
    

    The error message <jemalloc>: Unsupported system page size is one known indicator.

    Install Home Assistant Core

    Caution

    This is an advanced installation process, and some steps might differ on your system. Considering the nature of this installation type, we assume you can handle subtle differences between this document and the system configuration you are using. When in doubt, please consider one of the other installation methods, as they might be a better fit instead.

    Prerequisites

    This guide assumes that you already have an operating system setup and have installed Python 3.12 (including the package python3-dev) or newer.

    Install dependencies

    Before you start, make sure your system is fully updated, all packages in this guide are installed with apt, if your OS does not have that, look for alternatives.

    sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt-get upgrade -y
    

    Install the dependencies:

    sudo apt-get install -y python3 python3-dev python3-venv python3-pip bluez libffi-dev libssl-dev libjpeg-dev zlib1g-dev autoconf build-essential libopenjp2-7 libtiff6 libturbojpeg0-dev tzdata ffmpeg liblapack3 liblapack-dev libatlas-base-dev
    

    The above-listed dependencies might differ or missing, depending on your system or personal use of Home Assistant.

    Create an account

    Add an account for Home Assistant Core called homeassistant. Since this account is only for running Home Assistant Core the extra arguments of -rm is added to create a system account and create a home directory.

    sudo useradd -rm homeassistant
    

    Create the virtual environment

    First we will create a directory for the installation of Home Assistant Core and change the owner to the homeassistant account.

    sudo mkdir /srv/homeassistant
    sudo chown homeassistant:homeassistant /srv/homeassistant
    

    Next up is to create and change to a virtual environment for Home Assistant Core. This will be done as the homeassistant account.

    sudo -u homeassistant -H -s
    cd /srv/homeassistant
    python3 -m venv .
    source bin/activate
    

    Once you have activated the virtual environment (notice the prompt change to (homeassistant) homeassistant@raspberrypi:/srv/homeassistant $) you will need to run the following command to install a required Python package.

    python3 -m pip install wheel
    

    Once you have installed the required Python package, it is now time to install Home Assistant Core!

    pip3 install homeassistant==2024.10.4
    

    Troubleshooting: If you do not see the above version of Home Assistant package in your environment, make sure you have the correct Python version installed, as defined under the Prerequisites.

    Start Home Assistant Core for the first time. This will complete the installation for you, automatically creating the .homeassistant configuration directory in the /home/homeassistant directory, and installing any basic dependencies.

    hass
    

    You can now reach your installation via the web interface on http://homeassistant.local:8123.

    If this address doesn’t work you may also try http://localhost:8123 or http://X.X.X.X:8123 (replace X.X.X.X with your machines’ IP address).

    Note

    When you run the hass command for the first time, it will download, install and cache the necessary libraries/dependencies. This procedure may take anywhere between 5 to 10 minutes. During that time, you may get a site cannot be reached error when accessing the web interface. This will only happen the first time. Subsequent restarts will be much faster.