homeassistant

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Home Assistant is open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server. Available for free at home-assistant.io

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Remote access possible via HomeKit integration? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by possum@lemmy.world to c/homeassistant@lemmy.world

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Dear lemmy community,

I am currently in the process of migrating my current Homebridge setup to HA OS on a Pi4 4GB, and I’m still discovering and trying to understand its possibilities and limitations.

I’m currently wondering how I would be able to access my devices remotely. I have a FritzBox Router, setup with WireGuard VPN to access my network remotely. I have been able to access HA this way before, but I’d like to be able to “see” my devices without having to turn on the VPN every time.

An idea occurred to me, although not sure if it would work: would I be able to see or get updates from my devices (even if limitedly) through the HomeKit integration in HA?

I am aware this potential solution would mean my devices connecting to apple’s cloud, but that’s a tradeoff I’m willing to take for the many benefits HA brings to the table (in my case, energy consumption logging).

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[–] walden 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I don't know anything about homekit, but the best way (albeit with some learning curve) is to use a reverse proxy. Installing Nginx Proxy Manager in docker is maybe the easiest way.

Then you forward porta 80 and 443 (http and https) to the IP of NPM.

Buy a domain or use something like duckdns. This will make a URL like "homeassistant.duckdns.org" (for example) that points to your home IP address. You can manually update your home IP(most aren't static) or have software update it automatically. You can also skip this step and just type your IP into the address bar of your browser (or the Home Assistant app). You'll have to keep it updated manually this way.

So you visit that URL, it goes through your router to Nginx Proxy Manager, and you tell NPM to forward that stuff to the internal IP of Home Assistant. NPM can create certificates to make it all secure, and the login is handled by Home Assistant as normal.

There is additional config in config.yaml to allow your reverse proxy. This adds an additional layer of security.