Install Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi
The Raspberry Pi is still the most popular way to run Home Assistant: energy-efficient, quiet, and ready within ten minutes with the official image. In this guide, you’ll install Home Assistant OS, the recommended variant with add-ons, backups, and updates from the interface.
What do you need?
- Raspberry Pi 5 or Pi 4 (4 GB RAM is more than enough). A Pi 3 works, but feels slow.
- A good power supply: the official Raspberry Pi one. Cheap adapters cause voltage drops and strange issues.
- Storage of at least 32 GB. An SSD via USB (or NVMe on a Pi 5) is much more reliable than an SD card, because Home Assistant continuously writes to the database.
- A network cable. Wi-Fi works, but wired is more stable, especially with Zigbee and Matter.
- A computer with Raspberry Pi Imager to write the image.
Step 1: write image to disk
- Install Raspberry Pi Imager and connect your SSD (or SD card) to your computer.
- Choose your Pi model under Raspberry Pi Device.
- Choose under Operating System: Other specific-purpose OS → Home assistants and home automation → Home Assistant → the version for your Pi.
- Choose the disk and start writing. Note: everything on that disk will be erased.
Step 2: boot up
Connect the disk, network cable, and power supply to the Pi. The first boot takes a few minutes to over fifteen minutes, because Home Assistant downloads updates in the background. So be patient.
Step 3: onboarding
Open http://homeassistant.local:8123 on a computer on the same network. If that doesn’t work, look up the Pi’s IP address in your router and use http://IP-ADDRESS:8123. Create an account, fill in your location, and let Home Assistant discover your devices on the network.
Helpful tips for the Pi
- Give the Pi a static IP address via a DHCP reservation in your router. That way everything stays accessible at the same address.
- Use an SSD instead of an SD card if you want the installation to run for a long time.
- Zigbee dongle? Use a USB extension cable. A dongle directly next to the Pi or a USB 3 port can cause interference.
- Cooling: a Pi 5 benefits from a cooler or passive case.
- After installation, immediately enable automatic backups (Settings → System → Backups) and copy them to a NAS or cloud.
Not working?
No connection after 20 minutes? Check the cable, try a different power supply, and rewrite the image. If needed, connect a display: you’ll see the IP address and any error messages there.