Hi everyone,
I’m the author of openport, a tunneling service I’ve been running since 2014. I run Home Assistant at home and wanted to reach it from anywhere without opening ports on my router — so I packaged the openport client as a proper add-on and I’d love your feedback on it.
What it does
- Your Home Assistant becomes reachable at a stable address like
https://abcde.u.openport.io— https out of the box, no port forwarding,
no firewall changes, no dynamic DNS, no certificates to renew. Works
behind CGNAT. - WebSockets are fully supported, so the frontend and the companion apps
work normally. - The address is tied to the add-on’s stored key and session, so it stays
the same across restarts, reboots, and updates. - Builds for aarch64, amd64, armv7 and armhf.
Setup (about five minutes)
-
Add the repository in Settings → Add-ons → Add-on Store → ⋮ →
Repositories:https://github.com/jandebleser/home-assistant-addons -
Install the Openport add-on and paste your key registration token
from my devices page into its configuration. -
Add this to
configuration.yaml(the tunnel reaches HA through a local
proxy) and restart:http: use_x_forwarded_for: true trusted_proxies: - 127.0.0.1 -
Start the add-on — the log prints your public address. Set it as the
External URL and point the companion apps at it.
Security notes
Your login page becomes reachable from the internet, so strong passwords
and ideally MFA. If you want a gate in front of the login page itself,
there’s an ip_link_protection option: visitors must first open a secret
link before anything is served (it can get in the way of the companion
apps, so it’s off by default).
Pricing, upfront
openport has a free plan that’s fine for trying the add-on, but it has a
small bandwidth cap and short session limits. For permanent remote access
you’d want the Home plan: $5/month or $50/year, with a 30-day free trial.
And to be fair: if you want remote access that also funds Home Assistant’s
development, Nabu Casa’s Home Assistant Cloud is the canonical choice —
openport is for people who want an alternative, or who also tunnel other
things (SSH, a printer UI, other self-hosted services) with the same
account.
This is the first release — bug reports, feature requests and blunt
feedback are all very welcome.