Hello,
I am looking for information on if i can set up Home Assistant on my windows based computer at home and not using a raspberry pi setup (not much knowledge about that).
I look forward to any support and directions you may have.
Cory
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So there is no self install, click and download and install?
Home Assistant was designed to run on a Linux-based machine, not on Windows, so it’s not available as a Windows application that you can “click and download and install”.
To run Home Assistant on a machine running the Windows operating system, you have to create a virtual machine (VM) that’s able to host another operating system. Home Assistant is then installed in this VM. The link I posted above explains the steps involved.
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so pretty much i should look into a raspberry pi.
What makes you say that?
Given the absence of Pi’s on the market, a small form factor PC (plenty of them on the refurbished market) is maybe even the better option. Faster for the same money and directly available.
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You can def set up Home Assistant on a Windows computer! I did something similar last year when I was trying to avoid using a Raspberry Pi. I followed a guide online, and it worked out pretty well. One thing to keep in mind is that running Home Assistant on Windows might need you to use a virtual environment like Docker or WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux). It sounds a bit complex, but once you get it set up, it should work smoothly.
If you run into issues, you might want to check out a clean install or reset option if things get messy at How to Factory Reset PC Windows 11 - Operating Systems . It helped me out when I was troubleshooting some software problems.