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Home Assistant is open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server. Available for free at home-assistant.io

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Remote access questions (slrpnk.net)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/homeassistant

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Hi everyone!

I’ve had my Hassio Yellow for a while and I am really happy with it – and because feck Philips and their spy-app.

However, I haven’t set up remote access yet because it seems really daunting and I’m worried I’ll make a mess. I am not bad with tech, but I’m not a computer engineer – and reading some Hassio texts makes me feel like I should, and I get easily overwhelmed…

I found the TOR add-on and I was considering that – but it mentions VPN, which I use, and to which my Hassio is connected.

My questions are:

Do I need to install the add-on if I use VPN?
If not, how do I set up remote access with my VPN?
Should I stop using VPN if I set up TOR remote access?

Thank you all in advance.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Ah. Shit (pardon my French). I understand.

I got a VPN router a while ago, and all my connections at home go through it (console, Hassio, laptop, etc.). This way I get to choose individual locations for each device.

I’m using ExpressVPN, by the way.

Would this be a first step for what you explain?

[–] nogooduser 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Unfortunately not, no.

That sounds like it is still a VPN client which is directing your outbound traffic according to how you have it configured.

You want to have a VPN server that routes inbound traffic to the relevant internal network device (hassio, NAS, printer etc) so that they can be used from outside the network.

The first step is to have a device on your network to run the VPN server software. That could be your router or it could be a computer or you can also install it on a Synology NAS if you have one.

Open VPN is free software that you can use as the server.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

@nogooduser @wildflowertea or #wireguard as a VPN server and clients for your smartphone. There is #pivpn for the Raspberry Pi which works as a VPN server instance. My Router supports #openvpn out of the box but never used it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Thank you both – and apologies. I feel I’m thick as porridge with this topic. I bought my Hassio Yellow months ago and I keep on pushing this because it is so daunting.

I finally understand the difference between what I have (connecting my device to a VPN service) and what I need (setting up a server so I can connect to my device) – so I can call myself wiser than yesterday!

ExpressVPN offers port forwarding and I’ve read about it on the Hassio website, but I am not sure that’d be the way to go for someone who baaarely knows what they are doing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

@wildflowertea No problem.
Everyone started from about zero and learned by asking or reading.
Normally your router does not support incoming connections. I can configure my router to forward an incoming port (from the internet) to my nextcloud instance. The ports would be 80 (http access) and 443 (https access). There are two modes of communication: TCP (establishes a connection) and UDP (sends data w/o connecting). Which port no (TCP and/or UDP) your router needs to forward depends on the VPN.