15 Home Assistant Tips You MUST Do

In todays video I give you my 15 tips I always do when installing a new Home Assistant server, from settings and zones, to security and storage! These are my go to first steps for getting Home Assistant setup the right way!

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[CaptZenPetabyte]

I have been watching your channel for the last year and I have learned quite a lot; in fact I am currently working on an Automation system for a special project car I am working on and youre videos on home assistant have helped me 'customise' for this project, thank you.

[christianhinkel]

0:22 General Settings
0:58 Zones
1:16 Dairy Liquid
1:43 Advanced Mode
2:03 Static IP
4:06 Enable SSH
5:15 Enable 2FA
6:12 Install Apps
6:57 Backup
7:31 File Editor
8:22 Create Areas
9:27 NAS Media Storage
10:10 HACS
11:10 Watchman
11:42 Remote Access
12:52 Enable Analytics

[citizenq]

Just getting back into HA. This was very helpful to remind me of a few things, plus some new stuff. Thank you.

[kombicruiser]

Awesome Lewis. Thanks again for taking the time to produce such an informative video.

[bennylloyd-willner]

Great video, I'm about to restart my HA journey during this winter (been off it for over a year), and this is perfect for a smooth installation👌

[KimmoJaskari]

Tailscale seems to me like the sweet spot for accessing this from outside the home. You don't have to open any ports and you leave your firewall guarding your home network, while still having full access to the HA. But thanks for this video, as a guy just starting out with HA there were several great tips in here I implemented right away. Now if someone could just explain to me why changing your home zone radius is borderline impossible, whereas you can easily do so on added zones, I'd be thrilled. Sometimes, the open-sourciness of the whole thing slaps you in the face, with inexplicable weirdness.

[wscottfunk]

Thanks Lewis! I always look forward to and appreciate your advice and tips.

[LaneLarson]

Great video! I've been using home assistant for years and didn't know about Watchman.

[fredarmstrong]

Great Video as always Lewis. Thanks for all your work here on this channel. Well timed for me as I am moving from a container install to full vm install of HA. There were one or two that I had missed. :-)

[NotRubyTuesday]

Thanks for sharing. Very much education to soak in.

[twizshiz]

Watchman, loving it. I really appreciate this plugin. Thanks for sharing it.

[junkins]

Thank you so much Lewis! I always look forward to your videos. 😊Nice Shirt!!

[WoottonRivers]

Great video. All your items are good choices for a newbie list

[diedrichg]

Thanks for the Watchman suggestion, I hadn't heard of it until I recently saw a video from Mostly Chris and he walks through the setup. Watchman is exactly what I needed after a recent OS migration and addition & removal of some devices!

[gerryf]

Perfect timing, I'm about to go down the HA rabbit hole. Thanks Lewis.

[WNdry]

I am using argon one case for my rpi 4. Amazing thing for cooling and storage on rpi4 I just found integration that allows control of the integrated fan based on cpu temp while using HA. I do recommend

[toddtitson]

Can you go into more details about the back door entry possibilities in future videos, please? Thanks, Lewis!

[bfitz]

Lewis, great video! I wasn't aware of Watchman - very useful! Is there any chance you can do a video explaining the benefits of Frank's SSH? I've now got both installed and working, but having read Frank's readme, I don't know what Mosh, or ZSH are, never mind their benefits!

[ReaperSilently]

Great video! well covered! You mentioned backups, well, I can attest to that!!! I made a catastrophic failure in my proxmox nodes about a month ago, and due to that failure, the only way forward was reinstalling proxmox on my 3 nodes again, redo all the vm's, litterally everything. Now, when it came to home assistant, I had my backups, however, they where on one of the servers that bricked, so I had no choice but to completely redo HA from scratch. My own stupid mistake, and it took me from 7Pm till 4AM in the morning to get the house back up to a "working", but basic state. It was a nightmare to do, and even today I still clean up due to that disaster. I wouldn't have had any problem, if i just kept the backup off site, like all the others. Worst part, I had my zigbee network backed up, and it was off site, but it was the wrong zigbee config. It was the one from my apartment, not my Anyhow, BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP PEOPLE, and next to that, keep at least 1, if possible 2 backup's off site, and reachable at any given time! I do now, but it was a very bitter pill to

Al always, great tips, great video, keep it up!

[josiahspackman]

Very cool, and some great tips. Have you tried any of the M5Stack gear? I know you've made the Ep1 with an ESP32 base, but I'd love to see a video on things like their M5Core (Or PM2.5 Air Quality Kit) and some of the nifty creations you could come up with for the built-in display etc!