For 2025’s Official Raspberry Pi Handbook, PJ Evans created an entire feature exploring the world of Raspberry Pi home automation projects. We especially liked this one, which shows you how to take control of your home, and your privacy, with a Raspberry Pi 4.

Home automation is not only useful but can also be a great deal of fun, particularly when setting up cool automations or connecting different devices together in new ways. It can also help boost the energy efficiency and security of your home; there are a wealth of practical reasons to start experimenting with this technology. Although there are different vendor-specific automation systems out there, we prefer one that doesn’t ‘lock’ you into one provider. One such platform is Home Assistant (home-assistant.io), a free open-source operating system designed with flexibility and independence in mind. Home Assistant is a huge topic, but here we’ll look at the basics of setting up a server to get you started on your automation journey.

Prepare your Raspberry Pi

Although Home Assistant isn’t strictly an operating system in its own right, it is available as a Raspberry Pi image that significantly reduces the work a user has to do to get up and running. Home Assistant is intended to run on a Raspberry Pi as the sole service. It is possible to run Home Assistant alongside other apps and services, but we’re keeping to the true path here. Home Assistant works with Raspberry Pi 3, but we strongly recommend using a Raspberry Pi 4 for the best performance. You should also use a wired Ethernet connection for setup and to ensure reliability. Home Assistant is headless, so no monitor or keyboard is needed.

Write the Home Assistant image

Luckily for us, you can write the latest stable Home Assistant image directly from the Raspberry Pi Imager. Insert a fast SD card 32GB or more in size into your computer. In Imager, select Choose OS > Other specific-purpose OS > Home assistants and home automation > Home Assistant > Home Assistant OS 9.5 (RPI 4/400 or RPI 3, as needed).

You’ll now get a ready-to-boot image. Insert the card into your Raspberry Pi, make sure you’ve got a wired network connection, and power up. After a few minutes, try to connect to http://homeassistant:8123 in your web browser.

Initial setup

Time to grab your favourite beverage. You’ll see an initial setup screen stating that it will take about 20 minutes before you can proceed. Soon it will be automatically replaced with the first stage of setup. Provide your name, username, and choice of password. On the next screen, there will be some questions about the server’s location. It’s important to set this accurately if you want to take advantage of sun-up/down times. Finally, Home Assistant will ‘look’ around your network for any existing smart devices and let you know what it’s found. Don’t worry if something doesn’t appear, it will probably just need manual configuration later on.

Add integrations

Home Assistant refers to smart platforms as ‘integrations’. For instance, if you have Philips Hue or IKEA Trådfri smart lights, it will add an integration for them and then a ‘device’ for each light it finds. It will also create a default dashboard for you based on what’s been found. Not all integrations can be found automatically, so you can browse available integrations and add them yourself or install third-party add-ons. Integrations include lights, security devices, media centres, printers, and mains power controllers —you can even make your own. At this point, it’s best to start exploring.

Customisation

One of Home Assistant’s greatest strengths is customisation. The dashboard system (‘Lovelace’) allows you to arrange your device control and set automations however you like them. By default, Home Assistant automates the layout, but we recommend you disable that. Click the three dots in the top right of the screen, followed by ‘Edit dashboard’. You’ll be asked if you want to take control of layout. Do so, and then you can create your perfect layout. You can resize, restyle, add graphs, tabs, and badges. Don’t be intimidated; start small and build things up as you become more familiar.

Next steps

Congratulations, you now have a running Home Assistant server. The capabilities of this service can seem overwhelming at times, but with a little reading on home-assistant.io and some digging around the menus, you’ll soon be taking control of your home. Once you’ve added the ability to switch devices on and off, or monitor things like printer ink levels, move on to Automations. These allow certain actions to happen based on events. For example, you can have a motion sensor turn on certain lights around the house. Check out Settings > Automations and have a play.

The Official Raspberry Pi Handbook 2025

Dive into the world of Raspberry Pi with this huge book of tutorials, project showcases, guides, product reviews, and much more. With 200 pages packed full of maker goodness, you’ll also find inspiration for your Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, Raspberry Pi 4, or any other Raspberry Pi model you have — there’s something for everyone.