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Home Assistant

Home Assistant logo

An automation hub for building and facility devices, on a node at your site.

Category: Automation and Workflow

Home Assistant is an open source home automation platform with a large library of device and service integrations. The App Store runs Home Assistant 2026.9.4 in a single pod with its own persistent volume, on x86-64 and ARM64 nodes.

What it does​

  • Connects building and facility devices, such as lighting, HVAC controls, sensors, and smart plugs, through Home Assistant's integrations.
  • Runs automations, scripts, and scenes on the node, next to the devices.
  • Gives facilities staff a dashboard of those devices in the browser.

When to use it​

Deploy Home Assistant to bring building and facility devices into one automation hub at a site, alongside your industrial systems.

First visit: claim it right away​

Finish onboarding as soon as you deploy

Home Assistant has no default login. The first person to open a new install runs its onboarding and creates the owner account, an administrator that can change everything. Until someone does, anyone who can reach the app can claim it. Open it right after you deploy and finish onboarding. Home Assistant cannot recover the owner's password, so keep it somewhere safe.

No host networking: discovery does not work​

The App Store installs Home Assistant on the cluster's own network, not on the node's host network. Other apps can reach it by name, but nothing on your plant network that relies on broadcast or multicast can reach it. These features do not work:

  • mDNS and zeroconf discovery, and with it most automatic "new device found" prompts
  • SSDP and UPnP discovery
  • DHCP discovery
  • HomeKit Bridge (iPhones cannot find or pair it) and HomeKit device pairing
  • Google Cast discovery, and DLNA renderers that announce themselves over SSDP
  • Wake-on-LAN
  • Bluetooth and USB radios, such as Zigbee and Z-Wave sticks, because the app has no access to the node's hardware

Devices you add by IP address or hostname work normally. Many integrations that discover a device also accept its address by hand, and Cast takes a list of known hosts. Radios that sit on the network and talk to Home Assistant over TCP/IP, such as Bluetooth proxies, are reached like any other device.

Running on EmberNet​

  • It needs app subdomains. Home Assistant only works at its own app address, not through EmberCORE's built-in proxy. Its interface opens inside EmberCORE from that address. If your EmberCORE deployment has no app subdomains, the App Store says so before you install it.
  • Proxy settings are done for you. A new install already trusts EmberCORE's proxy and allows being framed in EmberCORE. To change those settings later, use Settings > System > Network in Home Assistant. Don't add an http: block to configuration.yaml; Home Assistant ignores it once those settings exist.
  • One instance per node. Home Assistant keeps its configuration, history database, and backups on its own volume, 2 GiB by default.
  • No privileged mode. Home Assistant's image needs to run as root, so it does, but without privileged mode, privilege escalation, or extra capabilities.

Learn more​

EmberNet packages and deploys this application; it is developed by the Home Assistant project. Product names and logos are trademarks of their respective owners.