Start here: installing Home Assistant from scratch

If you simply want the lights to turn on by themselves and have no plans to become a server administrator, this is the shortest route. The goal of this page is to take you from "I have nothing" to "my first automation is running", without decisions you will regret in six months.

1. Choose where Home Assistant will live#

Home Assistant needs a computer that stays on 24/7. The three sensible options:

Option	Best for	Watch out for
Ready-made appliance (Home Assistant Green and similar)	Plug in and use	Less expandable; fixed storage
Raspberry Pi 5 + NVMe SSD	People who like tinkering	Never use an SD card as the main disk
x86 mini PC (N100 / Ryzen)	Cameras, local AI, Frigate	Higher power draw; install via Proxmox or HAOS directly

Details of each option, with power draw and cost, are in the hardware guide.

2. Choose the installation method#

There are four ways to install, and they are not equivalent:

• Home Assistant OS (HAOS) — a dedicated operating system. It has the add-on store, one-click updates and built-in backups. This is the right choice for 95% of people.
• Home Assistant Supervised — on top of a Debian you maintain. Only if you know exactly why.
• Home Assistant Container (Docker) — light and flexible, but no add-ons; you install Mosquitto, Zigbee2MQTT and friends yourself.
• Home Assistant Core (Python venv) — for development. Avoid it day to day.

3. Flash the image and boot#

1. Download the HAOS image for your hardware at home-assistant.io/installation.
2. Flash it with Raspberry Pi Imager ("Use custom image") or balenaEtcher, onto the SSD or eMMC.
3. Connect the device to your router with an Ethernet cable for the first install — Wi-Fi at this stage only makes troubleshooting harder.
4. Power it on and wait 5 to 20 minutes on first boot: the system is expanding itself and downloading components.
5. In a browser on your Mac or PC, open:

http://homeassistant.local:8123

If the .local address does not resolve (common with mesh Wi-Fi or VLANs), find the IP in your router and use http://192.168.x.y:8123.

4. The first 10 minutes that matter#

When you create the administrator account, the wizard discovers much of your network automatically. Before clicking around, do these four things:

1. Set the correct location and time zone. Half of all automations depend on sunrise and sunset.
2. Create the first backup under Settings → System → Backups and enable automatic backups.
3. Reserve the IP in your router (static DHCP lease) so Home Assistant never changes address.
4. Rename everything, calmly. sensor.bedroom_temperature ages well; sensor.0x00158d0004f2a1 does not.

5. Add your first device#

The order that causes the least frustration:

1. Something already on your network: your TV, AV receiver, printer, robot vacuum. Go to Settings → Devices & services and accept the automatically discovered integrations.
2. A cheap Zigbee sensor (temperature or door contact) with a USB coordinator. See Zigbee2MQTT or ZHA to pick the radio and the software.
3. A Matter device, if you already own an Apple TV, a HomePod or any hub that can act as a Thread border router.

6. Your first automation (one you will actually use)#

Forget elaborate scenes. Start with something that solves a real annoyance — the hallway light at night:

alias: Hallway - soft light on motion at night
description: Turns on at 20% between 10pm and 6am and turns itself off
triggers:
  - trigger: state
    entity_id: binary_sensor.hallway_motion
    to: "on"
conditions:
  - condition: time
    after: "22:00:00"
    before: "06:00:00"
actions:
  - action: light.turn_on
    target:
      entity_id: light.hallway
    data:
      brightness_pct: 20
  - delay: "00:02:00"
  - action: light.turn_off
    target:
      entity_id: light.hallway
mode: restart

mode: restart is the detail that makes the automation feel intelligent: if motion happens again during those two minutes, the timer restarts instead of switching the light off in your face.

7. Checklist before expanding#

• [x] Automatic backups enabled, with an off-device copy
• [x] IP reserved in the router
• [x] Remote access solved (Nabu Casa, router VPN or Tailscale — never by opening port 8123)
• [x] Zigbee coordinator on a USB extension cable, away from the case and from USB 3.0 ports
• [x] Names and areas organised

With that in place, continue with the guides in the library — they are currently written in Portuguese and translate well in the browser while the English versions are being written.

• Home Assistant
• Installation
• Raspberry Pi
• Backup