Mathieu Abati

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Installation of HomeAssistant with RaspBee II as a Home Automation and Alarm Hub ​

In this tutorial, we will see how to install HomeAssistant on a Raspberry Pi 3 as a home automation hub. Zigbee connectivity will be provided by a RaspBee II extension board. Finally, we will add a home alarm feature to this setup.

Installing HomeAssistant ​

Install HomeAssistant on your Raspberry Pi by following the official documentation.

Once the installation is complete, access your instance at http://homeassistant:8123.

image Warning: If you have forced a DNS server address on your PC that is different from your Internet box, this may prevent you from discovering your HomeAssistant instance via Avahi.

In the user settings, enable advanced mode.

Go to Settings, Add-ons, and install Terminal & SSH. Check Start on boot and Watchdog.

Go to the module configuration, in the Network section, check Show disabled ports, and enter port 22, then save.

In the Options section, enter either a public SSH key (recommended) or a password.

Start the module. In the Log tab, after a few moments, you should see that SSH is listening on port 22.

To access a terminal, you can now either use the web interface of the module or, directly from your PC:

ssh root@homeassistant
ssh root@homeassistant

image Note: It is recommended to configure your Internet box so that HomeAssistant has a fixed IP.

Installing RaspBee ​

Connect the RaspBee II board.

From your PC, access the SD card to edit the config.txt file. It is located on the first partition of the SD card. If your SD card is /dev/sda:

sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt

Edit the file /mnt/config.txt, and add at the end:

enable_uart=1
dtoverlay=pi3-miniuart-bt
enable_uart=1
dtoverlay=pi3-miniuart-bt

Unmount the SD card:

sudo umount /mnt
sudo umount /mnt

Start HomeAssistant, go to its web interface, then Settings, Add-ons, and install Mosquitto Broker. Check Start on boot and Watchdog.

In the add-ons, use the menu at the top right then Repositories, to add the repository https://github.com/zigbee2mqtt/hassio-zigbee2mqtt, and then install Zigbee2MQTT. Check Start on boot, Watchdog, and Show in sidebar.

Complete the configuration, in the serial section, add:

port: /dev/ttyAMA0
adapter: deconz
port: /dev/ttyAMA0
adapter: deconz

Start Zigbee2MQTT.

Go to Settings, Devices & Services, the MQTT integration should have been auto-detected, click on its Configure button to complete its setup. If the MQTT integration does not appear, restart HomeAssistant.

From the icon in the sidebar, you can access the Zigbee2MQTT interface. From there you can pair your devices.

Alarm ​

For the home alarm, we will use Alarmo.

To install it, connect via SSH and run:

cd config
mkdir custom_components
cd custom_components
cd config
mkdir custom_components
cd custom_components

Get the link to the latest ZIP version here: https://github.com/nielsfaber/alarmo/releases, and install it (using the latest version):

mkdir alarmo && cd alarmo
wget https://github.com/nielsfaber/alarmo/releases/download/v1.10.9/alarmo.zip
unzip alarmo.zip
rm alarmo.zip
mkdir alarmo && cd alarmo
wget https://github.com/nielsfaber/alarmo/releases/download/v1.10.9/alarmo.zip
unzip alarmo.zip
rm alarmo.zip

Restart HomeAssistant.

Go to Settings, Devices & Services, and add the Alarmo integration.

Alarmo now appears in the sidebar. Add the different sensors to the Alarmo area, and configure the various actions and notifications.

Accessing HomeAssistant from Outside ​

Configure your Internet box to expose port 443 of HomeAssistant to the external port of your choice. Below, we will use port 12345.

Create a domain on https://www.duckdns.org. We assume below that your domain is myha.duckdns.org

Install the DuckDNS add-on in HomeAssistant. Configure the token and domain, and in the Let's Encrypt section, modify the line as follows:

accept_terms: true
accept_terms: true

Check Start on boot and Watchdog, then start DuckDNS.

Now you need to configure HomeAssistant to use the Let's Encrypt certificate. We could configure the HomeAssistant HTTP server to use these certificates, but then we would no longer have access with the mobile app to the service locally with the local domain; we could no longer connect either via HTTP or HTTPS, as the certificate would not match. So we will configure a proxy.

Connect via SSH, and edit the file config/configuration.yaml to add:

http:
  use_x_forwarded_for: true
  trusted_proxies:
    - 172.30.33.0/24
http:
  use_x_forwarded_for: true
  trusted_proxies:
    - 172.30.33.0/24

Go to the developer tools in the HomeAssistant interface, at the top area we can check the configuration and restart HomeAssistant.

Install Nginx Home Assistant SSL proxy, and in the configuration provide the DuckDNS domain. Check Start on boot and Watchdog. Start the proxy.

Local access via HTTP is at http://homeassistant:8123, remote access via HTTPS is at https://myha.duckdns.org:12345.

In the mobile app settings, set the URL to https://myha.duckdns.org:12345. Allow the app to always have access to the location.

image Note: Setting the internal URL in the app causes notifications to not work well when changing networks. Leave this field empty.

Some Customizations ​

By editing the configuration.yaml file, you can remove default_config: and add what it includes by default but excluding what you don't want. See: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/default_config/.

You can find the default content of default_config in the HomeAssistant sources.

Troubleshooting ​

In Case of SD Card Corruption ​

After a few years, the SD card may show signs of wear due to frequent writes.

Start by reinstalling HomeAssistant on a new SD card. Use the latest backup to have a functional system again.

On your PC, mount partition #8 of the corrupted SD card.

Copy home-assistant_v2.db and zigbee2mqtt from the supervisor/homeassistant directory of the partition.

Also copy all the supervisor/homeassistant/.storage/lovelace* and supervisor/homeassistant/.storage/local_todo* files.

Check if the database is corrupted and try to repair it with:

cd /root/config
sqlite3 "home-assistant_v2.db" ".recover" | sqlite3 home-assistant_v2.db.fixed
cd /root/config
sqlite3 "home-assistant_v2.db" ".recover" | sqlite3 home-assistant_v2.db.fixed

On your new installation, copy this file via SSH to /root/config. Stop the HomeAssistant core:

ha core stop
ha core stop

Rename home-assistant_v2.db.fixed to home-assistant_v2.db, and copy the lovelace*, local_todo* files to /homeassistant/.storage/.

Restart the service:

ha core start
ha core start

Source