Home Assistant: useful tips and tricks

Home Assistant is running? Then the fun part begins. These are the tips that have saved us the most hassle, from backups to smart meters.

1. Backups are not a luxury

Enable automatic backups and store them outside the device itself: on a NAS, in a cloud, or on another machine. A backup on the same SD card won’t help you if that card dies. Test occasionally whether you can restore a backup.

2. Read the release notes

Home Assistant releases a new version every month, sometimes with breaking changes. Read the notes before you update and make a backup first. For critical installations, wait a few days for the first patch (x.x.1).

3. Install these add-ons and extras

File editor and Terminal & SSH to edit files and execute commands.
Mosquitto broker for MQTT devices.
ESPHome to build DIY sensors with ESP32 or ESP8266.
HACS (Home Assistant Community Store) for extra integrations and dashboard cards. It’s not an official component, so check what you install.

4. Choose local where possible

Integrations that communicate locally (Zigbee, Z-Wave, Matter, ESPHome) keep working when your internet goes down and are faster. Cloud integrations depend on the manufacturer. So when purchasing smart devices, prefer Zigbee or Matter.

5. Zigbee: ZHA or Zigbee2MQTT?

ZHA is built-in and easiest. Zigbee2MQTT often supports more devices and provides more settings, but requires extra setup. For beginners, ZHA is fine. A USB extension cable for the dongle prevents a lot of interference.

6. Network and security

Never open port 8123 directly to the internet. Use Home Assistant Cloud, a VPN like WireGuard or Tailscale, or a reverse proxy with HTTPS.
Optionally put your smart devices in a separate IoT VLAN.
Use a strong password and enable two-factor authentication.

7. Energy in the Netherlands: the smart meter

With a P1 cable in the smart meter, you can see your live electricity and gas usage in the Energy dashboard. Use the DSMR Slimme Meter integration or a ready-made P1 dongle with ESPHome. This way you’ll immediately discover your biggest phantom power consumers.

8. Keep your configuration organized

Use Areas (rooms) and Labels and give devices clear names, for example “Living room ceiling lamp”.
Start automations with blueprints and build your own later.
Use Developer tools → YAML → Check configuration before you restart Home Assistant.
Give automations a description, so you’ll still know in a year why they exist.

9. Keep the database small

Set a short retention period in recorder (for example 10 days) and exclude chatty sensors. That keeps backups small and the system fast, even on a Raspberry Pi.

10. If `homeassistant.local` doesn’t work

mDNS is not passed through by every network or router. Then use the IP address, or give Home Assistant a fixed name in your router or Pi-hole.