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Home Assistant
A dedicated Home Assistant installation on a Raspberry Pi 5, replicating a proven reference setup.
Status: reference documentation — hardware not yet ordered/assembled.
Architecture at a glance
Home Assistant OS runs bare-metal on a dedicated Raspberry Pi 5 (no containers). Daily backups go to a Synology NAS. Access from the internet is handled by Pangolin — a self-hosted alternative to Cloudflare Tunnels — running on a small VPS, so no ports are opened on the home network.
The key property: the home network makes only an outbound tunnel connection to the VPS. Nothing on the home router is port-forwarded or exposed.
Key decisions
| Decision | Choice | Why |
|---|---|---|
| HA install method | HAOS bare-metal on a dedicated Pi 5 (8 GB) | Appliance-style, fully supported, full add-on ecosystem; deliberately not containerized |
| Storage | Official SSD Kit 256 GB (M.2 HAT+ + NVMe SSD), direct NVMe boot | SD cards are the classic HA failure mode; NVMe is faster and far more durable |
| Backups | Daily HA backups to Synology NAS (RAID6 volume) | Off-device copies; NAS survives two simultaneous disk failures |
| Remote access | Pangolin on a cheap VPS | Self-hosted replacement for Cloudflare Tunnels — no exposed home ports, identity-aware access, own infrastructure |
| Cooling | Active Cooler on the Pi + 30×30×7 mm fan on the top plate | Pi 5 + NVMe under continuous load needs active airflow |
| Timekeeping | Official RTC battery, charging enabled via config.txt | Correct time survives power outages — important for automations and history |
Pages
- Hardware — bill of materials (electronics, standoffs, 3D-printed plates) and mechanical assembly
- Software & Backups — installing HAOS onto the NVMe, and the backup strategy
- RTC Backup Battery — enabling battery charging on HAOS
- Remote Access — Pangolin, the VPS, and the Docker/ufw firewall gotcha
Open questions
- [ ] The source notes list the 5 mm standoffs as "4×" but also "16 ks" (16 pcs) — probably a purchase quantity with spares; confirm how many are actually needed.
- [ ] Could Pangolin run under Podman instead of Docker? Would remove the ufw-docker workaround entirely (see Remote Access).
- [ ] Power the Pi over PoE+ instead of the 27 W PSU? Combo PoE+/NVMe HATs would replace the M.2 HAT+ too — see the alternative option on the Hardware page.