{"id":14650,"date":"2026-09-18T01:01:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T05:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/?p=14650"},"modified":"2026-09-14T19:49:24","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T23:49:24","slug":"setting-up-home-assistant-with-podman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/?p=14650","title":{"rendered":"Setting up Home Assistant with Podman"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\r\n \r\n <\/i>\r\n <\/a>\r\n <\/span>\r\n<\/div><\/div>\n

One of my friends lives at a retreat center with a large solar array that powers a large house, chapel, and five separate smaller cottages, all with full electric service. The solar array connects to power inverters, then to a power panel, which feeds all the separate buildings on campus. No one would ever confuse me with an electrician or anyone who knows much other than how to flip a switch. My friend wanted to know whether a computer program could monitor the solar array, the storage batteries, and all the other components integral to the system\u2019s operation. An internet search led me to consider Home Assistant<\/a>, an open-source application I\u2019d heard of but had no experience with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I quickly skimmed the documentation on the project website and discovered that I could run Home Assistant as a container on my Linux desktop using Podman<\/a>. I used Google Gemini to help with the initial configuration. First, create a directory for Home Assistant. Copy the code supplied below to accomplish that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

mkdir -p ~\/homeassistant\/config<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
I am using Podman for container management. The following code came from Google Gemini, and it worked very well:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
podman run -d \\\n  --name homeassistant \\\n  --network host \\\n  --privileged \\\n  -v ~\/homeassistant\/config:\/config:Z \\\n  -v \/run\/dbus:\/run\/dbus:ro \\\n  -e TZ=America\/New_York \\\n  --restart unless-stopped \\\n  ghcr.io\/home-assistant\/home-assistant:stable\n<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The instructions I followed suggested waiting a short period of time and then pointing a web browser at http:\/\/localhost:8123<\/code> You can add your own IP address if you prefer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Screen Picture by Don Watkins CC by SA 4.0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Next, I needed to create a user. I clicked on the \u201cCreate my smart home\u201d button and was presented with the following display:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Screen Picture by Don Watkins CC by SA 4.0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
After creating the user account, the next screen asks you to geolocate your device. I entered the retreat center\u2019s address. You can choose how much data you want to share with Home Assistant. The data is anonymized to protect you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Screen Picture by Don Watkins CC by SA 4.0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
After I completed the new-user setup and finished answering how much data I wanted to share with the project, I saw an overview of my home, which currently has no devices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Screen Picture by Don Watkins CC by SA 4.0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Home Assistant has lots of in-app help and extensive\u00a0documentation<\/a>. It is an extremely powerful application, and I\u2019m looking forward to using it to help my friend at the retreat center. If containers aren\u2019t your thing, there are many other ways to deploy Home Assistant. The project provides extensive documentation for a wide variety of\u00a0installations<\/a>\u00a0on Linux, macOS, Windows, and Home Assistant OS. You can also purchase a Home Assistant Green, a preconfigured appliance. Home Assistant is open source and licensed under\u00a0Apache<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of my friends lives at a retreat center with a large solar array that powers a large<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":2815,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-linux"],"modified_by":"David Both","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14650"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14659,"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14650\/revisions\/14659"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}