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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

  1. Install Raspberry Pi Imager and connect your SSD (or SD card) to your computer.
  2. Choose your Pi model under Raspberry Pi Device.
  3. Choose under Operating System: Other specific-purpose OS → Home assistants and home automation → Home Assistant → the version for your Pi.
  4. 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.