in today's video we're going to be installing home assistant
on the raspberry pi with an ssd check it out
so in today's video we're doing another install of home assistant on an ssd but it's going to be a
bit more in-depth so if you watched yesterday's video and you're looking for a bit more
information or maybe you just want to know more about the whole installation process hopefully
this video has got you covered or if you're after a quick snappy installation and you're familiar
with setting up the raspberry pi images and home assistant installations then check out that video
from yesterday because that's a bit quicker and it just brushes over some of the steps we're going to
take a bit of time with today so before we start i just want to say a massive thank you to everyone
that's like the videos subscribed we just hit 400 subscribers today which is huge can i say thank
you to everyone that's given me feedback on ways to improve just any of the constructive criticism
it's all helped me a lot if you have given me feedback hopefully you've noticed that i've
incorporated what you've suggested and tried to improve on those things and tomorrow i should have
a video coming out that's gonna recap my first week of youtube how i felt it's gone what i've
learned i'm also just gonna talk about a couple of things that i've got planned for the channel
so be sure to check that one if you're interested in some of the upcoming content
so enough rambling let's go with that installation just a little note if you are watching this video
after watching yesterday's quick installation video there might be a couple of differences
between them um and that's just because i've had a bit of feedback so i've tried to change up some of
the steps just to simplify them a bit more um just to make it more approachable for everybody else
and i'll try and highlight those changes as they come up they are very tiny changes but
i'll point them out anyway okay so why run home assistant on an ssd over an sd card so the ssd
runs a lot faster than the sd card especially if you're using a pi 4 which has the usb 3.
and the same is true with other versions of the pi it's much faster to use an ssd over the
sd card the other big one is reliability so sd cards with a raspberry pi are notoriously known
for either becoming corrupt or for just dying sd cards have a right life and what this means is
that over time after a lot of rights the card will start to degrade and when that happens that's when
your corruption or card failure happens now this doesn't mean that if you run your home assistant
on an sd card it's suddenly just gonna die but there is an increased chance of it happening
i've had raspberry pies and still have raspberry pies in the house that are running other things
and they're on 24 7 and i've never had an issue with them but as this pie is going to be running
your home assistant which is going to be managing and controlling various devices throughout your
house you probably want to increase that reliability and again increase that speed
so to do this installation we're going to need a bit of hardware and a bit of software
let's have a look at what we need so first up we're going to need a raspberry pi in this
video we're using the raspberry pi 4 now the pi 4 comes in a couple of different versions there's
a two gig four gig and an eight gig in this video we're going to be using the 8 gig version but this
tutorial will work on those other versions now i don't know if this tutorial definitely works
with old versions of the pie i haven't yet had a chance to try this on my raspberry pi 3b that may
be something i have a go at in a future video if enough people are interested in that but if you
do know if it does work on the pi 3b then let me know in the comments below next up we want an sd
card now any old sd card will do this just needs to install the raspberry pi image onto the pi so
that we can use that then to update and tweak the pi a bit before we put the home assistant image on
you're going to need an sd card reader unless you've got one built into your computer already
again any old brand one will do an ssd for this video we're using the kingston 240 gig
ssd a sata to usb 3 cable now i have read some articles stating only certain sated
usb cables are working at the minute but this particular one does work and this is a star tech
satellite usb 3 cable and you'll want it to be usb 3 in order to get those better speeds
you're also going to need a power supply that's capable of powering the pi and the ssd in this
video we're using the official raspberry pi power supply now if you are using one of the
more cheaper power supplies just make sure it's output enough power for both the pi and the ssd
in order to not run into any issues with that and the final bit of hardware you're going to
need is an ethernet cable now you can set up home assistant to be run wirelessly from the pi
but it's not recommended and i'm not going to be showing that in this video
so that's all the hardware we need now let's have a look at the software we need so there's a slight
change in the software needed if you're coming here after watching the quick installation guide
and that change is just that we're going to make better use of one of the pieces of software
which actually eliminates one of the downloads we need so less downloads better for you guys
now if you're currently watching this thinking this is a bit too slow for me
then check out that quick installation guide it might be a bit more up your street and if
you're currently watching this and you're not subscribed then hit that subscribe button below
so we're going to need the pi imager and this is going to allow us to write the pi image onto
the sd card it's then also going to allow us to flash the ssd with the home assistant image and
thank you to adam on reddit for suggesting this this eliminates the need to use etcher
next up we're going to need an ssh client for this video we're going to be using x term so
you can use any ssh client you like i personally like mobrex terms so i'm going to use that another
popular one to use is putty and there's a bit of background for people that aren't familiar with
this what this bit software will allow us to do is essentially remotely connect to the raspberry
pi through a console and we'll be able to enter a few commands then to manipulate the raspberry pi
we're also going to need a blank ssh file and while this isn't a bit of software
it is a file that we're going to need for the installation so let's just create that now
so if we hit the windows icon and type cmd and just hit enter that'll
open up our windows command prompt and then from here we want to just type cd
which will change our directory to be our desktop and then from here we want to just type ssh
ssh with the little bracket in the middle and hit enter on that and what that will
do is it will create this blank ssh file here which we'll need later on in the installation
so the last bit of software we're going to need is going to be the
home assistant image and you can get this from the home assistant website
and for this video we're going to be downloading the 64-bit version for the raspberry pi 4. so go
ahead and download that and just save that on your desktop still following along so that's
all the software and all the hardware that we're going to need for this installation
so i'll have links in the description below for the hardware that i've used in this video
so check those out if you want to buy the same things or just have a look at the specs of what
i've used there's also going to be links in the description below for all the software that you're
going to need if you want to check those out now and download and install them ready to go
and uh while you're down there grabbing those links click that subscribe button
okay so at this point you've installed the pi imager and you've chosen your preferred ssh client
so now we're going to put our sd card in the card reader and plug that in
next we're going to open the pi imager and then from here we're going to go choose os we're
going to choose the pi os choose the sd card and we're going to select our sd card and click write
that's then going to start writing the pi image to the sd card and it might take a few minutes
once that's finished you'll get a pop-up to say it's complete and that the sd card can be removed
we're just then going to hit continue on that and close down out of the pi imager
okay we then want to open up the file explorer in the file explorer you'll see two partitions
for your sd card one of the partitions should be labeled up as boot now if you can't see the boot
drive if you just take your sd card reader out and plug it back in the boot drive should then appear
so open your boot drive and then we want to take this ssh file that we made earlier on and just
drag that into the root directory you can then close that and we're going to safely eject the
sd card so the installation that we're doing now is known as a headless installation so this is
where you install everything without the need for a keyboard mouse and monitor plugged into the pi
so super handy and what that little ssh file does is it gives us that ability to start that
remote connection to the terminal okay so now we're going to put in our sd card put in our
ethernet cable and our power and we should see the pi come to life while we wait for the pi to
boot up we're going to just carry on and flash the ssd in order to save a little bit of time
now we're going to take our ssd and sata to usb cable and plug that in
we're then going to open up the pi imager again and we're going to go choose os use custom and we
just need to find the home assistant image that we downloaded earlier on select that and open
we then need to click choose sd card and we're going to select our ssd and then click right
and we want to press yes to confirm to erase the disk that should then start writing this should be
a lot faster than the sd card but we'll just need to sit and wait for that as well again we'll get a
pop-up to say that's complete we can just click continue and then safely eject that as well so
now we have both the ssd and the sd card flashed we're going to pop into our ssh client and start
modifying the raspberry pi okay we're then going to want to open up our preferred ssh client in
this case we're using moba x term so once you've opened your ssh client there's two different ways
we can use to connect to the pi you can either use the pi's ip address or you can use the pi's host
name which is raspberrypi.local okay so we're going to use the localhostname and we're going
to start a new session and it's an ssh session and we're going to enter raspberry pi dot local
and ok to that okay that will take us to the login page then and we're going to log in as the user
hi and the password for this is raspberry it's not we're here logged into the pi there's a few
commands that we're going to need to run through once we've done that we can get home assistant on
the pi okay first up is the command sudo raspy config and what this will allow us to do is go
into the configuration menu in order to configure various settings for the pi and we want to go to
option three which is interface options and we want to go to the second one down then ssh
and enable that just press yes and what that's going to do is allow us to ssh into the pie
so we had to add that file in before but what happens is after the first boot of the pie that
file is removed so if you accidentally turn your pi off before enabling this setting you'd then
have to manually drag that file back on again so this is going to allow us to do that ssh without
needing to drag that file over each time we then want to just hit enter on that and go to finish
we're then going to want to enter our second command
and with this one we want to change the word critical to be stable
so let's change that to the word stable
and then you want to hit ctrl x the key y and then enter so this is going to update the boot firmware
and tell it to use all of the latest stable versions of the software when it does all of
its next updates we're going to carry on with our third command sudo app update you'll know
once that's finished because you'll see your username there with the little dollar on the end
okay we're going to run our next command now this one's going to take the longest probably
you'll see a message saying do you want to continue you'll need to enter y and hit enter
in order for that to carry on this is then going to run through updating all the packages on the pi
and again once that's done you'll see your username there with the little dollar symbol
okay next command we're nearly done with these commands now so we're going to want to enter sudo
reboot and what this is going to do is it's going to restart the raspberry pi so give that a minute
to reboot you will then need to reconnect your ssh client if you're using mobile x term you can just
hit r then to restart that session and then you'll need to log in again okay next command and this
one's going to check the eep rom version so here we want to check so we've got the current version
that we have installed and then the latest version if these both match up then we're good to go
we're then going to want to open the config tool again by doing sudo raspberry config
and then we're going to want to go down to number six advanced options
choose that then we're gonna click boot order and we're gonna say usb boot that will enable
usb boot click okay then so just hit enter we're then gonna go back into advanced
options and we're going to say bootloader version and we're going to say latest version
and it's going to say do you want to reset and we need to make sure that we hit no here and okay
we can then go to finish
and it's going to ask us if we want to reboot just hit yes there and again just give that a
second restart the terminal and log in so this one's an optional one but it's a handy command to
find out what your ip address is and you can use this ip address then to connect to home assistant
so we want to type ifconfig minus a and hit enter and you'll then see your pi's local ip address
and that'll be the address that we can use then to access home assistant
you can also use this in the future for connecting to your pi instead of using raspberry pi dot local
okay and then the final command is going to be sudo shutdown minus h now and that's just going
to shut the pi down we can then close down the ssh client unplug everything from the pi
take out the sd card then we're going to plug in the ssd plug everything back in and boot the power
so the same deal here as before plug all the cables back in plug in the ssd
and the pi should start booting up we're then going to want to open up a web browser and we've
got two choices again for how we can connect we can either use the pi's ip address or we can go to
homeassistant.local.colon8123 once that has loaded you'll get a page like this and from
here we can create a user account so just fill this in with your name username and password the
credentials that you set here are going to be the credentials that you use to log into your
home assistant instance so fill those in and hit create account it's then going to ask you to name
your home assistant's instance set your location choose your time zone and set your unit system so
fill those in again once you hit next it's going to ask you if you want to add any integrations
if you wanted to add these now you could hit the more and then choose your integration type
in this run-through we're not going to do that we're just going to hit finish and it will take
us to our first dashboard so there we have it guys that's been another run-through of installing home
assistant on an ssd i hope those of you that wanted this more descriptive version have found
this helpful and you've been able to follow it better if i missed anything or you're still
unsure of anything let me know in the comments below and i'll try and help you out as best i can
in the future we're going to be navigating around this dashboard to learn where everything
is we're then going to start adding our own integrations and automations and
get started with the fun stuff of home assistant and for those of you that have been asking about
porting over your sd card build to this new ssd version i will also have a video
of that coming out where i'll be moving my home assistance instance from the sd card
to the ssd so thank you for watching if you found this helpful please give the
video a like drop a comment below and consider subscribing and i'll catch you in the next one