How I Use Home Assistant on Unraid

One of my main use cases for my home server is running Home Assistant to integrate my various smart home devices. I use HomeKit as my daily UI, but I don’t want to be locked into a single, often expensive, ecosystem. Home Assistant provides the flexibility I need.

All of my devices are either Zigbee or Matter over Thread, and I integrate them using Zigbee2MQTT (opens in a new tab) with a Conbee 3 (opens in a new tab) USB stick that establishes the Zigbee network.

Before anything else, you need to decide how to install Home Assistant (opens in a new tab). I wanted to run Home Assistant OS so I could install Add-ons directly within the interface.

I chose HomeAssistant_inabox (opens in a new tab), and so far it’s working great. In short, it’s a Docker container that downloads, installs, and manages a Home Assistant VM on your Unraid server.

You’ll need to pass through the Conbee USB stick to the Home Assistant VM. For that, I use the Unraid plugin USB Manager (opens in a new tab). After installing the plugin, navigate to the USB tab in the main navigation and configure the device with the following settings:

• Auto connect at USB device plugin: Enabled
• At plugin start / Resume VM if not running: Disabled
• Auto connect to VM at VM start: Enabled
• Connect as serial only: Enabled

In Zigbee2MQTT, I configure the serial port as /dev/ttyUSB0.

These are the add-ons I’ve installed:

• Advanced SSH & Web Terminal (opens in a new tab). Easier for debugging/logging inside the VM than going through Unraid.
• File editor (opens in a new tab). Handy for quick YAML edits.
• Get HACS (opens in a new tab). This installs HACS; it doesn’t run it.
• Matter Server (opens in a new tab)
• MQTT broker (opens in a new tab)
• Zigbee2MQTT (opens in a new tab)

A few HACS integrations I find especially useful:

• Thermal Comfort (opens in a new tab). I use it to calculate dew point, “feels like” temperature, and absolute humidity, which helps me decide when to open windows (just looking at temperature or humidity alone isn’t reliable).
• Powercalc (opens in a new tab). Estimates power consumption for devices that don’t have built-in power meters.
• Spook (opens in a new tab). Adds a collection of advanced tools and diagnostics.

Since my apartment is on one floor, I assign each room as an area. In addition, I created two extra areas:

• Control: For entities that aren’t physically located in a specific room (e.g. the devices “Sun” or “Workday”).
• Outdoor: For any external sensors or devices.

I use the following labels to organize entities by type:

• Helper
• Light
• Manual / Button
• Notify
• Power / Energy
• Presence
• Sensor

When adding a new device, I follow a consistent naming scheme:

type_room_identifier

Examples:

sensor_bedroom_temperature
plug_kitchen_dishwasher
light_living-room_sideboard

The identifier doesn’t have to be the device type, it can be a specific function or location, too.

Some automations should only run when people are home (or not). The simplest approach is to use the Home Assistant mobile app with location tracking enabled.

However, I found the location services a bit unreliable and didn’t want the additional battery drain on my iPhone. Instead, I use HomeKit to detect presence and report it to Home Assistant.

Here’s how you can do that:

1. Create an input_boolean (opens in a new tab) helper in Home Assistant.
2. Name it something like sensor_helpers_lekoarts-present.
3. Expose the helper to HomeKit using the HomeKit Bridge (opens in a new tab) integration. It will appear as a switch in HomeKit.
4. In the Home app, create two automations:
   • When you arrive home, toggle the switch on.
   • When you leave, toggle it off.

This setup gives you reliable presence detection without draining your phone battery.

A few blueprints I use and recommend:

• Contact Sensor (Door/Window) Left Open Notification (opens in a new tab)
• IKEA E2001/E2002 STYRBAR Remote Control (opens in a new tab). Lets me control lights with an IKEA remote.
• Light Wake-Up Alarm (opens in a new tab). Gradually increases light intensity in the morning as an alarm.