Home Assistant Home Assistant

Windows

Install Home Assistant Operating System

Download the appropriate image

Follow this guide if you already are running a supported virtual machine hypervisor. If you are not familiar with virtual machines we recommend installation Home Assistant OS directly on a Raspberry Pi or an ODROID.

Create the Virtual Machine

Load the appliance image into your virtual machine hypervisor. (Note: You are free to assign as much resources as you wish to the VM, please assign enough based on your add-on needs).

Minimum recommended assignments:

  • 2 GB RAM
  • 32 GB Storage
  • 2vCPU

All these can be extended if your usage calls for more resources.

Hypervisor specific configuration

  1. Create a new virtual machine
  2. Select Type “Linux” and Version “Linux 2.6 / 3.x / 4.x (64-bit)”
  3. Select “Use an existing virtual hard disk file”, select the unzipped VDI file from above
  4. Edit the “Settings” of the VM and go “System” then “Motherboard” and select “Enable EFI”
  5. Then go to “Network” “Adapter 1” choose “Bridged Adapter” and choose your Network adapter
Please keep in mind that the bridged adapter only functions over a hardwired Ethernet connection. Using Wi-Fi on your VirtualBox host is unsupported.
6. Then go to "Audio" and choose "Intel HD Audio" as Audio Controller.

By default VirtualBox does not free up unused disk space. To automatically shrink the vdi disk image the discard option must be enabled:

VBoxManage storageattach <VM name> --storagectl "SATA" --port 0 --device 0 --nonrotational on --discard on
  1. Create a new virtual machine in virt-manager
  2. Select “Import existing disk image”, provide the path to the QCOW2 image above
  3. Choose “Generic Default” for the operating system
  4. Check the box for “Customize configuration before install”
  5. Select your bridge under “Network Selection”
  6. Under customization select “Overview” -> “Firmware” -> “UEFI x86_64: …”. Make sure to select a non-secureboot version of OVMF (does not contain the word secure, secboot, etc.), e.g., /usr/share/edk2/ovmf/OVMF_CODE.fd.
  7. Click “Add Hardware” (bottom left), and select “Channel”
  8. Select device type: “unix”
  9. Select name: “org.qemu.guest_agent.0”
  10. Finally select “Begin Installation” (upper left corner)
virt-install --name hass --description "Home Assistant OS" --os-variant=generic --ram=2048 --vcpus=2 --disk <PATH TO QCOW2 FILE>,bus=sata --graphics none --boot uefi
If you have a USB dongle to attach, you need to add the option `--hostdev busID.deviceId`. You can discover these IDs via the `lsusb` command. As example, if `lsusb` output is: 
   Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
   Bus 003 Device 004: ID 30c9:0052 Luxvisions Innotech Limited Integrated RGB Camera
   Bus 003 Device 003: ID 1a86:55d4 QinHeng Electronics SONOFF Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus V2
   Bus 003 Device 002: ID 06cb:00fc Synaptics, Inc. 
   Bus 003 Device 005: ID 8087:0033 Intel Corp. 
   Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
   Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
   Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

You can recognize the Sonoff dongle at Bus 003 Device 003. So the command to install the VM will become:

virt-install --name hass --description "Home Assistant OS" --os-variant=generic --ram=2048 --vcpus=2 --disk <PATH TO QCOW2 FILE>,bus=sata --graphics none --boot uefi --hostdev 003.003

Note that this configuration (bus 003, device 003) is just an example, your dongle could be on another bus and/or with another device ID. Please check the correct IDs of your USB dongle with lsusb.

  1. Create a new virtual machine
  2. Select “Custom”, make it compatible with the default of Workstation and ESX
  3. Choose “I will install the operating system later”, select “Linux” -> “Other Linux 5.x or later kernel 64-bit”
  4. Select “Use Bridged Networking”
  5. Select “Use an existing virtual disk” and select the VMDK file above,

After creation of VM go to “Settings” and “Options” then “Advanced” and select “Firmware type” to “UEFI”.

Hyper-V does not have USB support
  1. Create a new virtual machine
  2. Select “Generation 2”
  3. Select “Connection -> “Your Virtual Switch that is bridged”
  4. Select “Use an existing virtual hard disk” and select the VHDX file from above

After creation go to “Settings” -> “Security” and deselect “Enable Secure Boot”.

Start up your Virtual Machine

  1. Start the Virtual Machine
  2. Observe the boot process of Home Assistant Operating System
  3. Once completed you will be able to reach Home Assistant on homeassistant.local:8123. If you are running an older Windows version or have a stricter network configuration, you might need to access Home Assistant at homeassistant:8123 or http://X.X.X.X:8123 (replace X.X.X.X with your ’s IP address).

With the Home Assistant Operating System installed and accessible you can continue with onboarding.

Onboarding

Install Home Assistant Core

Install WSL

To install Home Assistant Core on Windows, you will need to use the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Follow the WSL installation instructions and install Ubuntu from the Windows Store.

As an alternative, Home Assistant OS can be installed in a Linux guest VM. Running Home Assistant Core directly on Windows is not supported.

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 3.10 (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 libtiff5 libturbojpeg0-dev tzdata

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) [email protected]:/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==2023.3.5

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).

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 “site cannot be reached” error when accessing the web interface. This will only happen for the first time, and subsequent restarts will be much faster.