What is HomeAssistant and how can I use it in my van?

What is HomeAssistant and how can I use it in my van?

Home Assistant is an open-source home automation platform that lets users manage and automate smart home devices from a single interface. It’s highly customisable, supports numerous devices, and runs locally, typically on a raspberry pi. However, due to the vast flexibility it can seem complicated and hard to understand but it doesn't have to be. SmartVan.io aims to make life easier by supplying specialised peripherals and add-ons.

 

Why would I want HomeAssistant in my van?

Your van will likely have some of the following, if not all of these items installed:

  • Lighting such as LED strips or spotlights
  • Boiler, heater or both combined such as a Truma Combi
  • Water pump etc
  • Water  / gas tank level sensors
  • Fuse box
  • Battery Shunt
  • DC/DC charger
  • AC charger (electrical hookup)
  • Solar charger
  • Max fan

You'll also likely have a load of other stuff installed too but the items above in particular tend to come each with their own control panel. Obviously, if your electrical system is primarily Victron based then you'll be able to use a Cerbo GX to consolidate these but that still leaves a number of other control panels remaining, taking up valuable space, Heater controls, switches for relays etc. They generally don't look great either.

How great would it be if you could:

  • Manage your entire electrical system, such as the state of charge, solar power input, DC/DC input as well as power incoming power from the electrical hookup
  • Control all your lighting individually as well as in groups using scenes either manually or on timers or other triggers
  • Turn appliances on/off as well as monitor current draw. Wouldn't it be good to know how much current your lights a drawing and how long your battery has left?
  • Know when a fuse is blown 
  • Monitor your tank levels and receive alerts
  • Control your hot water and heating - Imagine being able to remotely control your vans climate so you can come back to a nice warm van after a long cold hike!
  • Control your Max fan, yes you heard that right. 
  • Empty your Waste / fresh water tank through the use of solenoid valves
  • Control the behaviour of your switches e.g what lights they control etc.
  • Use sensors to detect doors open/closed
  • Integrate security cameras

You can do all of this from a single dashboard or even your phone! You can even do this without even being near your van if you have 4G or 5G set up. However in this article were just going to focus on setting up Home Assistant

How do I install HomeAssistant in my van?

Fortunately for you it's pretty straight forward to install and I will show you exactly how in this tutorial!

There are a number different hardware setups you can use to run HomeAssistant, but for simplicity, compactness and value the Raspberry Pi is hard to beat. 

For the most simple setup here's what you'll need:

  1. Raspberry Pi 5 (with at least 4GB of RAM is recommended)
  2. MicroSD Card (16GB minimum, 32GB recommended, Class 10)
  3. Power Supply for Raspberry Pi (at least 5A for stable performance)
  4. Ethernet Cable (at least for initial setup, you will be able to configure wifi after you've finished setting up HomeAssistant)
  5. MicroSD Card Reader for flashing the OS
  6. Wifi router for your HomeAssistant hub and peripherals to communicate with each other

 

Flashing the SD card

The easiest way to flash the SD card is to use the official Raspberry Pi flashing tool which you can download here

Once thats installed, launch it and click on "Choose Device"

Select "Raspberry Pi 5"

Now we need to select the Operating system we want to flash the SD card with, which will be HomeAssistant in our case.

So after clicking on "Choose OS", another window will open with some options to select. Scroll down slightly and click on "Other specific-purpose OS"

 Then click on "Home assistants and home automation"

Then click on "Home Assistant OS XX.X (RPI 5)" 
note: You'll notice in the screen shot that the version is 13.2. This might be different to what you see depending on how far in the future you're reading this but don't worry too much. Just make sure you have selected the version compatible with RPI 5.

Now you need to select the SD card that you want to flash the OS to, so make sure its plugged in and then click on "Choose Storage" and you should see your device show up in the window.

 

Once you've selected that, you should see a confirmation prompt letting you know that you will delete everything on the SD card. Click yes. It will then begin the process of flashing the device. This might take a while so go ahead and stare at a wall for a bit.

If everything went well you should see the following

Click continue and you're done! You can now eject and remove the SD card from the computer.

 

Setting up Home Assistant

Thats everything sorted for the install.

All you need to do now is

  1. Insert the SD car into the raspberry Pi
  2. Plug in an Ethernet cable and make sure the Raspberry Pi is connected to the same network as your computer and is connected to the internet.
  3. Power up the Raspberry Pi

You'll need to wait a few minutes for it boot and configure itself but eventually you'll be able to access it via `homeassistant.local:8123` or `homeassistant:8123`. 

If it's been longer than 5 minutes and you cant access Home Assistant your install may be corrupted and you will need to repeat the steps above again. If you have a monitor try plugging that in to see the output logs.

 

If all goes well you should see a setup screen.

 

 

Click on Create my smart home to proceed with the setup wizard. Once you've done that you will be taken to your overview dashboard which is where you would expect to see your peripherals. 

 

 

Congratulations, you have setup Home Assistant! 🎉

 

    Back to blog