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Comment by echoangle | Hacker News Reader

One question about remote access: Currently, it looks like there are 3 methods (https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/configuration/remote/):

- Home Assistant Cloud (paid) - VPN - Port forwarding

Is there any plan to make something like Home Assistant Cloud available for self hosting? Like a simple docker container to put on a VPS?

I don't want to deal with DynDNS to expose my home network but would prefer a Server component on a VPS with a static IP which connects to my home server and allows remote control.

Or is there already a way to do this?

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Proxying home assistant is no different from any other http based service.

You set up a reverse proxy (including websocket proxying) for your HA subdomain on your VPS and you're done.

The problem is that my home server isn’t reachable from the internet, so there’s nothing for the proxy to forward. I would need to set up some kind of VPN for that, right? But this functionality already exists in HA, that’s why I asked.

VPN is the right solution here. Each app shouldn’t have to develop its own remote access method when a generic solution already exists.

It would be an issue if you’re stuck behind double NAT, but I think tailscale can help with that.

You can install wireguard or tailscale from the addon store.

Tailscale solves this, and a few other things. Amazing product with an amazing free tier for personal use. Super easy setup, too.

Just adding another voice for tailscale. It's an awesome product with a very generous free tier.

The biggest problem with Tailscale and/or WireGuard is that I can’t inform IOS to only connect to VPN when home assistant app is running or when notification comes in.

I have to run it on my phone all the time effectively routing all mobile traffic through my home VPN which is not ideal for bandwidth and battery life.

I end having to manually turn it off and on.

Instead I wish home assistant had a way to make mobile notification resources easily accessible without VPN - say behind a short lived access token so that I could quickly view the notification media without having to expose local HA install or having VPN always on

Tailscale doesn’t route all your traffic by default. It routes only traffic destined to Tailscale IPs, which in your case should be near zero.

You can use an exit node. In that case it will route all your traffic to your home network.

Just put tailscale [1] on all of your devices and forget about the problem. It may be technically a vpn but it's much easier to use.

[1] https://tailscale.com/

I run a very small vps running caddy and tailscale. Then just expose any service I need externally through that. Very easy to setup.

seems completely out of scope for HA? if you want to proxy it from the internet then you can just do that using any of the tools used for this - NGINX, wireguard, rathole, etc etc etc.

But this functionality already exists in HA. There’s a simple login page where I can connect to the HA cloud. The idea would be to start a docker container, set up a domain name where it’s reachable, enter the domain name on the HA cloud screen and connect to it. It would be much simpler than setting up everything yourself.

What would be the correct way to DIY it? You would need a VPN to connect you home network to the Proxy and then expose the web interface on the proxy, right?

There is a tailscale addon. Simple install it, then install on any device you want to connect, phone, etc. Could not be easier.

Cloudflare Tunnels is what you're looking for. Or ngrok maybe.

Whole bunch of alternatives too - https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-tunneling. I will advocate for zrok.io as I work on its parent project, OpenZiti. zrok is open source and has a free (more generous and capable) SaaS than ngrok.

set up wireguard at your home network and connect to it from the outside. you need a single port open for it

Author here. I just use Tailscale. I’ve documented my setup here: https://vpetersson.com/2022/12/23/securing-services-with-tai...

But tldr is that you don’t need any cloud VM or other service for remote access. Works great.

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