Total newbie here - I have a Home Assistant Green with Zigbee connect on the way.
I was wondering if it was possible to setup the home assistant without having a wifi/internet/router connection at the house? And if so, what are the steps to do this?
The setup will only include Zigbee devices.
Mobile data is available.
Thanks
Do you have any kind of lan at home, or is this your first device ever, mobile phone excluded?
Excluding the mobile phone, this would be the first device
Home Assistant has no user interface on the device that it runs on, other than a command line interface. for configuring it, you would need to go to a webpage that Home Assistant provides.
But if Home Assistant does not connect to anything else, your mobile phone would not be able to reach it.
While in theory you could create a wifi hotspot on your mobile, and have Home Assistant connect to it, Home Assistant would be on the internet fully unprotected, so you would not ever want to do that. But also, Home Assistant runs 24/7, so that too would be a challenge when HA connects to your phone. It would expect the phone to be always there.
So getting a wifi router and connect the Home Assistant green to it would be the way to go. It could be a pretty cheap one. I would connect HA green with an ethernet cable. Then your mobile could connect to the wifi to access Home Assistant.
But there’s another thing I’m not sure about, and that is that Home Assistant might want to reach out to get the current time on boot, so I think that the wifi router should also provide an ntp server. I’m not sure how it reacts when that is not available. EDIT: I see HA green has a real time clock, so that may only be the very first time, or maybe not at all.
And you won’t be able to update the device without internet.I doubt if you can get that working through a mobile phone in such a setup.
Once setup, you might be able to convert your HA instance itself to a wifi hotspot using an addon like this one, and do away with the external wifi hotspot:
So if you’d be able to set things up in a place with a lan and wifi, and then move it to where you want it, it might be feasible. The wifi would allow you the access the ui on your mobile to configure it when you are near.
Note that I have never tried anything like this, so I might get some of these things wrong. It is not your typical installation, so it is hard to get experienced help I guess.
Thanks so much for the elaborate explanation!
Once the system arrives i’m going to test the option of setting it up somewhere with wifi and then moving it to the house.
If not, i will be getting a router.
Many thanks!
Just chiming in, if you are starting your home automation journey a local network with internet connection and wifi is one of the cornerstones.
Hi, welcome to the forum.
Even though @Edwin_D has given you a good explanation I have the impression that you don’t understand something crucial: if you don’t connect your HA (Home Assistant) to a network, there is not much you can do with it.
You need another system to be able to customize HA in the first place.
If you don’t automate everything, you will need another system to control HA, which in turn controls your devices.
So either you customize HA and use it as a fancy dashboard to control it, with another device, linked over your home network to your HA instance or you customize HA to automate everything so it becomes a smart home which runs by itself and if you have no issues at all, you don’t need a system to control HA.
Then, there are ways (zigbee/zwave/bleutooth/…) which can be used without having a local network but still, you need to set all up… with a device that has access to your HA.
Don’t you have a connection at home at all, except mobile, to the internet so no other devices that connect to the internet?
A router is mostly combined with a modem and you get that from your internet provider with subscription over a ‘landline’.
The most basic/cheapest device to connect your HA is a network switch which is only wired.
If you also want to use your phone with HA, a WiFi Access point can do the job.
A router has some functionality that you might not use/need when not having a wired internet connection.
So, you cannot do much just with a device that runs HA and if now things are still not clear: be ready to get your hands dirty, a lots of reading, trial & error, patience, persistence if you want to make this work and even if it’s clear, you will still need lots of those.
Have fun!
If he can use the addon I referenced to, then the HA green itself will become that wifi access point. So what he’s going to try might be possible.
But then there won’t be updates until you take the device to a place with internet. A mifi router might also be an option to give HA internet access, but that will require another mobile internet subscription.
That would be cool though, if you would also be able to switch mobile internet on and off with HA. But I do not know if there is a mifi router with a HA integration that can do that.
You’re right, the point is: is that feasible and of course, what/how after that if he e.g. buys WiFi devices.
I just wanted to add some info about basic things for achieving a good user experience