Getting Started with Home Assistant and Docker

By Community / Developer
Jun 20, 2023

This post was written by Theophilus Onyejiaku. Scroll down for the author’s bio.

In this post, we’ll be looking at how to get started with Home Assistant and Docker. First, we’ll look at the prerequisites for getting Docker installed on your system depending on your OS, and run through how to install and run your Home Assistant on Docker using the CLI. Then, we’ll discuss solutions to common issues experienced during the installation process.

What is Docker?

Docker is a software platform that allows system administrators and developers to create, deploy, and run applications in containers. In this context, a container is an environment containing all the dependencies, libraries, code, system tools, and more that are required to run a specific application in the host OS. A container is created from an image, which is a template used to define what a container should contain.

Regardless of your system’s OS and infrastructure, Docker allows you to run any application in a specific environment. Plus, it makes it easy to manage and scale your environments. With Docker, building and deploying your applications become consistent and efficient.

What is Home Assistant?

Home Assistant is a flexible platform that allows you to control and automate your home devices, like your cameras, thermostats, lights, and sensors. It’s open source and fully integrated with over 1,000 services and devices, such as Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. Home Assistant comes with a user-friendly, unified web-based user interface that allows you to create complex automation. Or, in another way, our home devices can also be interacted with using Python scripts via a built-in Python API in Home Assistant called Home Assistant Python API.

Home Assistant on Docker

Docker is a common way of running Home Assistant in a containerized environment. A key advantage of running Home Assistant on Docker is that the software is isolated from the host system and from other containers that might be running on the same host system. Furthermore, it’s very portable and consistent. The software can easily be moved from one host system to another, keeping the container environment completely intact as long as the target system has Docker installed. The ease of deploying your software is also very simple and secure.

Prerequisites for installing Docker

Depending on your machine’s operating system, your system must meet some minimum requirements.

Windows 10 system requirements

• Windows 11 64-bit or Windows10 64-bit

• 64-bit processor

• 4 GB or higher system RAM

Additionally, WSL 2 features and BIOS-level hardware virtualization support must be enabled.

macOS system requirements

• macOS version 11 or higher

• 4 GB or higher system RAM

Additionally, make sure the virtualBox below version 4.3.30 is not installed. It’s not compatible with Docker Desktop.

Linux system requirements

• 64-bit kernel and CPU

• KVM virtualization support

• system init system

• Gnome, MATE, or KDE desktop environment

• 4 GB or higher system RAM

Additionally, ensure that configuration ID mapping is enabled in the user namespaces.

How to install Docker

To install Docker, you first need to visit the Docker website.

Now, how to install Docker depends on the OS of your machine. The general steps for installing Docker on Windows, macOS, and Linux are below. You’ll find more information about Docker installation on the official website.

Windows installation

1. On the Docker website, download the Docker Desktop for Windows installer.

2. Once downloaded, double-click on the downloaded installer to commence Docker installation.

3. Follow the prompts to complete the installation.

4. After successful installation, Docker Desktop will become accessible from your system tray.

macOS installation

1. On the Docker website, download the Docker Desktop for Mac installer titled Apple Chip.

2. Once downloaded, double-click on the downloaded installer to commence Docker installation.

3. Drag the Docker icon to the Application folder to complete the installation.

4. After successful installation, open Docker from the Application folder.

Linux installation

The process of installing Docker on Linux OSes varies with regard to the distribution or platform. However, for the most part of it, here are the general steps:

1. On the Docker website, click on the Docker Desktop for Linux installer.

2. Follow the instructions regarding which platforms are supported (Ubuntu, Debian, and Fedora).

3. After successful installation, open your application menu and search for Docker Desktop. Select Docker Desktop and start your Docker.

Installing Home Assistant on Docker

There are quite a few ways to install Home Assistant on Docker. We’ll go over a very simple way of installing Home Assistant on Docker, which is by using the CLI on your machine.

• If you’re using Windows, just type cmd into the search bar and click on the command prompt from the search result.

• If you’re using Linux, open the application launcher, type Terminal into the search bar, and click on the terminal icon to open the terminal application.

• If using macOS, type Terminal into the spotlight search bar. Then click on the terminal app icon from the search results to open the terminal.

Now that your terminal is open, all we need to do is to run some Python code to help us install Home Assistant on Docker. Before running the following commands, ensure that your Docker has started running. To do this, open your Docker application.

Step 1: Download the latest stable release of Home Assistant container image from Docker Hub

First, run the code below in your terminal window:

docker pull homeassistant/home-assistant

The code above is a command to pull the latest stable version of Home Assistant container image from Docker Hub. Docker Hub is a popular container registry for Docker images.

After running the code, you’ll get the following output:

Step 2: Install and start the Home Assistant container

To install and start the Home Assistant container, run the command below:

docker run -d –name = homeassistant -v your_home_directory:/config –net=host homeassistant/home-assistant

• docker run -d: docker run is a run command to launch a container. The -d means that the container will run in a detached mode. In other words, while you’re busy with the terminal, the container runs in the background.

• –name = homeassistant: This specifies the name of the container, in this case, homeassistant, which you can use to refer to the container in the Docker commands.

• -v: This sets up a volume for the container. This -v flag is followed by the directory where you would like to store your Home Assistant configuration files as well as the container directory. So, I quickly create a new folder named homeassistant in my root directory. In this case, I’ll replace your_home_directory with C:\homeassistant. At the end of the day, the complete directory after the -v flag will be C:\homeassistant:/config.

• –net=host: This sets the container to use the host network rather than creating a separate namespace.

• homeassistant/home-assistant: This is the name and tag of the Docker image we already downloaded.

After completing this step, you’ll have the following output:

Step 3: Open your Docker to confirm your Home Assistant container

To confirm that you successfully started the Home Assistant container in your Docker, when you open your Docker, you’ll find a similar output in the figure below:

Step 4: Open your Home Assistant

Right under the Actions tab is a three dots menu, as shown in the figure below. Click on it.

After clicking on it, you get the output result as shown in the figure below. Click on Open with browser to easily open your webpage.

Bravo! Now your Home Assistant is up and running as shown below. Now you can proceed to create an account.

Running Home Assistant on a Docker and standalone

There’s a huge difference between running Home Assistant inside Docker and running it as a standalone service.

Running Home Assistant as a standalone service simply means that you’ve installed it directly on your machine and you don’t need Docker to run it. In contrast, running Home Assistant on Docker simply means that you’re running it in a containerized environment. In other words, it’s isolated from the host system and other containers, and it has its own required resources already in place.

The advantage of running your Home Assistant as a standalone is that it’s simpler to set up and manage, as the software itself and the host system will have no additional layers of abstraction. However, the downside is that it’s less portable and may require more effort to maintain.

The advantage of having to run your Home Assistant on Docker is the fact that the installation and management processes are simplified. Also, all the required resources, dependencies, and configurations are already made available in the Docker image. However, the downside is that it can be more complex to set up. Also, it can be more difficult to troubleshoot since the container environment may be different from the host system.

Common issues

Here are common issues encountered when setting up Home Assistant on Docker.

Issue 1: Docker taking forever to start

After installation, you need to start your Docker engine; however, it’s taking forever to load. To fix this, first close and restart your Docker using administrator privilege. Then run the code below in your terminal window to start Daemon:

cd C:\Program Files\Docker\Docker

./DockerCli.exe -SwitchDaemon

Issue 2: Error message “Error During Connect”

This error can be solved by running the same command in the previous issue.

Issue 3: Not sure if your container is up and running

If, after starting your container in step 2, you’re not sure if your container is up and running, you can run the code below:

docker inspect homeassistant

This code will return all necessary information about your container.

Summary

Home Assistant is software that allows a user to control and automate home devices, like cameras, thermostats, lights, and sensors. Docker, on the other hand, is a software platform that allows a user to create, deploy, and run software such as Home Assistant in containers. Docker makes it easy to set up the software without any problems arising from the incompatibility of the host system and the software.

To get the Home Assistant up and running on Docker, we make use of the host system’s CLI by writing some code. Here are the steps to take to get the Home Assistant running on Docker:

• Step 1: Write the code to download the latest stable release of Home Assistant container image from Docker Hub.

• Step 2: Write the code to install and start the Home Assistant container.

• Step 3: Open your Docker App to confirm your Home Assistant container.

• Step 4: Open your Home Assistant.

About the author

This post was written by Theophilus Onyejiaku. Theophilus has over 5 years of experience as data scientist and a machine learning engineer. He has garnered expertise in the field of Data Science, Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Deep learning, Object Detection, Model Development and Deployment. He has written well over 660+ articles in the aforementioned fields, python programming, data analytics and so much more.