To me a fundamental part of having a home automation system is to be able to interface it through my mobile devices. The natural way to access hass.io is through the web interface but I also wanted to use a dedicated app. After some research and testing I ended up with Home Assistant Companion (which is still in beta) but works really nice.
I have so far only tested apps for iOS (iPhone/iPad) but there is also an official Android app available.
To get started download the TestFlight app from Apple AppStore and then (on your device) follow the link to Home Assistant Companion Beta. The rest of the process is fairly easy and the app should guide you through it.
As a first step I would recommend to get the app working on your local network since the app will then automatically locate and connect to your hass.io instance. Allow the app to access the data it requests and provide your hass.io username and login to get started. The app will give you access to everything that you can access on a real computer.
The next step is obviously to get the app to work over the Internet. That is a bit more tricky but not connected to the app or hass.io in itself but rather how you open up your Raspberry Pi to the outside world.
In short you need a service that connects your external IP address to a DNS service like DuckDNS which will give you a name on the Internet; myhassio.duckdns.org. That name will always point at your external IP, even when it changes. Internally in your network you must also make sure that there is a connection between your external IP and internal IP (and port) of your Raspberry Pi. That configuration is done in your Router/Firewall through port forwarding. There are plenty of references out there that deals with this setup.
Hass.io is available on port 8123 which locally would be http://192.168.1.65:8123 or through DuckDNS http://myhassio.duckdns.org:8123.
I might return to this topic in a later post.
Please let me know in the comments field if you have any questions or comments.
I have so far only tested apps for iOS (iPhone/iPad) but there is also an official Android app available.
To get started download the TestFlight app from Apple AppStore and then (on your device) follow the link to Home Assistant Companion Beta. The rest of the process is fairly easy and the app should guide you through it.
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| Figure 1. Home Assistant Beta App for iPhone. |
The next step is obviously to get the app to work over the Internet. That is a bit more tricky but not connected to the app or hass.io in itself but rather how you open up your Raspberry Pi to the outside world.
In short you need a service that connects your external IP address to a DNS service like DuckDNS which will give you a name on the Internet; myhassio.duckdns.org. That name will always point at your external IP, even when it changes. Internally in your network you must also make sure that there is a connection between your external IP and internal IP (and port) of your Raspberry Pi. That configuration is done in your Router/Firewall through port forwarding. There are plenty of references out there that deals with this setup.
Hass.io is available on port 8123 which locally would be http://192.168.1.65:8123 or through DuckDNS http://myhassio.duckdns.org:8123.
I might return to this topic in a later post.
Please let me know in the comments field if you have any questions or comments.
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