Home Assistant on OrangePi 3 LTS

This guide shows how to install HA(Supervised) on the Orange-Pi 3LTS board using Debian 11. Home Assistant is a free and open-source platform for home automation that controls almost all smart devices in one place. And the most popular way to install HA is by using raspberry-pi, but now a day is almost impossible to find one board to buy. Therefore Orange-Pi is a similar single board computer with better price and availability.

Materials:

OrangePi 3 LTS
Micro SD adapter to USB
SD Memory card
USB-C Power Supply 3A
Ethernet Cable

Downloads:

Debian 11
Rasberry Pi Imager
Terminus it’s a easy way to ssh on macOS, Win, Linux, iOS, and Android

Write the Debian image:

Using RasberryPi Imager write the Debian on the SD Card:

1. On operation System click on CHOOSE OS > User Custom and then find your Debian 11 image. (Don't forget to unzip the .7z file)
2. Select your SD Card on Storage section
3. Last step make sure you have the right storage and them click on WRITE

After writing the SD card put on your orange-pi, connect your Ethernet cable to your router, and then plug in the USB-C power supply.

Now go to your router, and look for the Orange-pi IP. ) Open your terminal, and access your Orange-pi via SSH.

ssh root@<orangepi-IP>

The default password is: orangepi

This is the welcome panel

Instalation:

Update and upgrade the Debian

apt update && apt upgrade -y

Create groups

groupadd docker

Add a new user

useradd -s /usr/bin/bash -g users -G adm,sudo,docker -m <User Name>

Password to your new user

passwd <User Name>

Install the basic programs before installing home assistant

apt install \
sudo \
jq \
wget \
curl \
udisks2 \
apparmor \
neovim \
ca-certificates \
lsb-release \
libglib2.0-bin \
network-manager \
systemd-journal-remote \
dbus -y

Add Docker’s official GPG key

mkdir -p /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/debian/gpg | gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg

Command to set up the repository

echo \
  "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/debian \
  $(lsb_release -cs) stable" | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null

install docker engine

chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg
apt update

install the latest version

apt install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-compose-plugin

Fix some problems with cgroup

echo "systemd.unified_cgroup_hierarchy=false" > /etc/default/grub
echo "systemd.unified_cgroup_hierarchy=false" >  /boot/cmdline.txt

Reboot your system

reboot

Wait 1~2 min and then ssh with your new user

ssh YOURNEWUSER@192.168.0.35

Download latest agent-os and supervised

curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/home-assistant/supervised-installer/releases/latest | jq '.assets[] | select(.name|match(".deb$")) | .browser_download_url' | tr -d \" | wget -O homeassistant-supervised.deb -i -

curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/home-assistant/os-agent/releases/latest | jq '.assets[] | select(.name|match("_linux_aarch64.deb$")) | .browser_download_url' | tr -d \" | wget -O os-agent-aarch64.deb -i -

Change to super user

sudo su

Install os_agent

dpkg -i os-agent-aarch64.deb

Install supervised

dpkg -i homeassistant-supervised.deb

Select odroid-c2

If everything was installed correctly you’re going to see the boot logs.

Now your HA is booting…. Wait 2~3 min and then go to your browser and type your Orange-pi IP, and you will see your HA preparing.

This process takes some time. Take a coffee, relax and wait until the HA shows the account creation.