Home Assistant on a Pi Zero W in 30 minutes
Saw the announcement yesterday for HASSbian 1.21 and got super excited?
Today we’ll flash the latest HASSbian to a Raspbery Pi Zero W. With an added bonus that besides for an USB cable for power, there’s no need for any cables!
What you’ll need:
- a Raspberry Pi Zero W (an amazing tiny computer with built-in wifi)
- a microSD card
- some source of USB power
- Wifi
- a desktop or laptop
Let’s get to it!
First, download the HASSbian 1.21 image from here.
Unzip it.
Flash it to the microSD card. If you need a flash tool, try Etcher
When the flashing finishes, remove it and plug it back in. You should see a drive called “boot”.
Right in there, not in any folders, create a file called wpa_supplicant.conf
.
The contents of the configuration file should be something like this: (You may have to adjust for your configuration, hints here )
network={
ssid="YOUR_WIFI_NETWORK_NAME_HERE"
psk="YOUR_WIFI_PASSWORD_HERE"
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
}
Next stick your SD card into the Raspberry Pi Zero W, and plug it in.
After about a minute, use your SSH client to connect to HASSbian (or hassbian.local
from a Mac), with the username pi
. The default password is raspberry
.
It’s a good idea to change the password. To do so, use the passwd
command.
Next, type the following two commands into the SSH console:
$ sudo systemctl enable install_homeassistant.service
$ sudo systemctl start install_homeassistant.service
Wait about 15-20 minutes and voilà you have your Home Assistant on your Raspberry Pi Zero W in 30 minutes.
To try it out, go to http://hassbian:8123 or http://hassbian.local:8123 if you’re using Mac.
For further details about HASSbian, take a look at the documentation.