Home Assistant Secure Remote Access For Free (Tutorial)

Setting up Home Assistant with Remote Access and Alexa Integration

In this video, the speaker discusses how to set up remote access and Alexa integration with Home Assistant. The easiest way to do this is by signing up for a monthly Home Assistant cloud subscription. However, there are other ways to set up secure remote access without paying for a subscription.

Using Dynamic DNS and NGINX Proxy Server

• Use dynamic DNS to provide a hostname on the internet.

• Install a special proxy server add-on in Home Assistant which listens for external encrypted connection requests.

• Forward a port through your router externally to allow access to Home Assistant.

• Install NGINX add-on in Home Assistant and configure it by typing in the hostname that was registered before, changing the 'active' value from false to true, and changing port 443 to 8126.

Configuring Duck DNS Add-On

• Sign up with Duck DNS and create a subdomain.

• Install the Duck DNS add-on in Home Assistant, go to configurations tab, add the domain that was registered earlier, paste in the token from your account, change accept_terms value down in Let's Encrypt section from false to true.

• Start Duck DNS add-on.

Editing YAML Configuration File

• Install file editor add-on in Home Assistant.

• Turn off 'Enforce Basepath' option under configuration tab of file editor add-on.

• Add a little bit of YAML configuration editing to the configuration yaml file.

Conclusion

Setting up remote access and Alexa integration with Home Assistant can be done easily by signing up for a monthly Home Assistant cloud subscription. However, there are other ways to set up secure remote access without paying for a subscription. By using dynamic DNS and NGINX proxy server, configuring Duck DNS add-on, and editing YAML configuration file, you can set up secure remote access to your Home Assistant server.

Setting up External Access

In this section, the speaker explains how to set up external access for Home Assistant and ESPHome.

Enabling Advanced Mode

• To set up external access, you need to enable advanced mode in Home Assistant.

• Go to your profile at the bottom and tick the option that says advanced mode.

• This will open up more options for you in settings system and network.

Configuring External Hostname and Port

• Scroll down to settings system and network.

• Paste in your new external hostname and port.

• Click on save.

• You should now be good to go.

Testing External Access

• Open a new tab and paste in the new URL.

• You should now be logged in using a secure certificate on port 8126.

Configuring ESPHome

• If you're an ESPHome user, there is one more bit of configuration that you need to perform before you can get that add-on working properly externally.

• Visit the file editor plug-in again and back out from config.

• Find the folder called share, and in the share folder upload a file with this exact file name.

• Restart the NGINX proxy server after saving this file.

Conclusion

There's a lot to cover when setting up external access for Home Assistant and ESPHome but hopefully this guide has made it easier for you.