Home Assistant on PC-A

The household guide

This guide is for Atiba and Alan. It explains what your smart-home system is, what was set up for you on 6 August 2026, why each piece matters, and how to use and extend it. It assumes no prior knowledge.

Everything here was checked against your actual system on 6 August 2026, not copied from a manual.

Read this first

Your address changed

Your Home Assistant lives at:

http://homeassistant.local

There is no :8123 on the end any more. If you have an old bookmark with :8123, delete it. That address is dead and will stay dead.

Why: Home Assistant version 2026.8, released 5 August 2026, moved the standard address from port 8123 to the normal web port. This is a deliberate upstream change, not a fault. Everything else about your system was fine the whole time.

The three rules

1. Keep the physical switch working. Never remove a light switch or a vendor app because Home Assistant can now do it. Automation should add convenience, never remove your fallback.
2. Never add something just because Home Assistant suggests it. A discovered device is an invitation, not an instruction.
3. Never update without a recent backup. Your backups now run automatically, so this is mostly handled, but check before a big update.

Where things are

1. What we set up, and why it matters

This section explains each thing that was done, in plain language, and what you actually get from it.

1.1 Automatic backups: the most important thing here

Status: DONE and tested.

What it does. Every day at about 5:23 AM, Home Assistant packages up its entire configuration into a single encrypted file: your users, devices, dashboards, automations, history, everything. It keeps the last 7 days and deletes older ones automatically.

Why it matters. Setting up a smart home is slow work. Every device you name, every automation you write, every dashboard you arrange is hours of effort. A backup means a dead hard drive costs you twenty minutes of restoring, instead of weeks of rebuilding from memory. Without it, one hardware failure erases everything permanently.

Check it any time: Settings, System, Backups. It should say "Backed up" with a green tick.

Settings we chose, and why:

1.2 Google Drive: your off-site copy

Status: DONE and verified.

What it does. Each daily backup is uploaded to a folder called Home Assistant in Atiba's Google Drive, in addition to being stored inside the Home Assistant machine.

Why it matters, and this is the important part. A backup stored only on the same computer is barely a backup. If the PC's drive dies, you lose Home Assistant and every backup of it at the same instant, because they were on the same disk. Google Drive means a copy exists somewhere the fire, the theft, and the dead hard drive cannot reach.

We proved it works rather than assuming: a backup was run by hand and Home Assistant reported it "stored in 2 locations."

What it can and cannot see. The connection uses a permission called drive.file, which is the narrowest one Google offers. Home Assistant can only touch files it created itself. It cannot read the rest of your Drive, your photos, or your documents.

Where to check it: the Google Drive integration in Home Assistant, or the Home Assistant folder in Google Drive itself.

The trap we avoided

Google expires this kind of connection every 7 days unless the underlying app is "published". Most people set this up, it works, and then their backups silently stop a week later and nobody notices until they need one. We published the app, so this will not happen to you. You can see that at the Google Auth Platform Audience page, it reads In production.

The Google Cloud pieces, for reference

You do not need to touch these. They exist so Home Assistant can talk to your Drive.

A separate project was created deliberately, so this can never disturb Atiba's existing Gemini setup.

1.3 The emergency kit: the key to your backups

Status: DONE. Saved in 1Password and shared with Alan.

What it is. A short recovery key. Your backups are encrypted, and this key is the only thing that can unlock them.

Why it matters. Without this key your backups are just noise. There is no reset, no support line, no recovery process. This is the single most important secret in the whole system, which is why it lives in 1Password and why both of you have it. If only one person had it, a lost phone would cost you every backup.

You can re-display it at Settings, System, Backups under "Encryption key", but only while Home Assistant is still running, which is exactly the situation you will not be in when you need it. That is why the 1Password copy matters.

1.4 Devices connected

Status: DONE, three of four.

You already had these before today: 2 Yeelight lights, a Belkin WeMo switch, weather, and sun position (sunrise/sunset, which is genuinely useful for lighting automations).

The Samsung TV's full control (power, volume, source switching) is not done yet, see section 3.2.

1.5 Two things fixed under the hood

The Hyper-V permission. Atiba's Windows account could not manage the virtual machine without special privileges. Fixed by adding the account to a single Windows group called Hyper-V Administrators. Nothing else was granted. You will not notice this day to day; it simply means the VM can be managed normally.

Automatic checkpoints removed. Windows had been quietly taking snapshots of the Home Assistant machine. This sounds helpful and is not: Home Assistant does not support the safe kind of snapshot, so Windows was taking the unsafe kind, photographing the database mid-write, on a disk that grows forever. These were disabled and the existing one merged away with no downtime. Home Assistant's own backups are the correct safety net, and you now have those.

1.6 What did NOT work

A second backup copy on the PC's F: drive, over a Windows file share. This failed and has been abandoned.

What it would have added. A third copy of each backup, on a different physical drive in the same PC. Useful only if the virtual machine's disk failed while the rest of the PC survived. It would not have protected against theft, fire, or the PC dying, Google Drive already covers those.

Why it was dropped. It never authenticated, despite many attempts. The Home Assistant host log showed the same error every time: STATUS_LOGON_FAILURE. The following were each tested and ruled out with evidence: the Windows firewall, network reachability, the Mullvad VPN, SMB signing, encryption settings, a blank password, the account flag, the protocol version, and the username format.

The most likely cause is a known Home Assistant defect: the software writes the saved password to a file without protecting special characters, so any punctuation corrupts it. It is filed as home-assistant/core#112808 and was closed without a fix, so it is still live.

Research also found no confirmed case anywhere of this Home Assistant feature successfully connecting to a Windows 10 or 11 PC. Almost every success story involves a dedicated network drive (a NAS). This is poorly-trodden ground, not something either of you did wrong.

Do you need to do anything? No. Your backups are safe. If you ever want a local copy before a risky change, just click Backup now at Settings, System, Backups and download the file. That achieves the same thing with no moving parts.

Leftovers on Windows, harmless: a local account hassbackup, a share HABackups, and the folder F:\HomeAssistantBackups. Delete them if you want a tidy machine; leaving them costs nothing.

2. Your accounts

Who has what

Both accounts already exist and are active. Check any time at Settings, People, Users.

An honest note about permissions

Home Assistant has no per-device permissions. There is no way to let someone control the lights but not the TV. Administrator versus normal user only changes whether the Settings menu is visible, it is not a security wall. Anyone with an account can operate every device in the house through search or the app.

Between the two of you that is completely fine. Just do not design around a restriction that does not exist.

Owner credentials warning

There is no password recovery for the Owner account. If Atiba's password is lost and no one can sign in, the only route is rebuilding from scratch. Keep it in 1Password. This is why Alan being a full Administrator matters: if one person is unavailable, the other can still fix things.

3. What still needs doing

3.1 Alan: turn on two-factor authentication

Atiba has already done this. Alan has not. This is the last important item.

Why it matters. Alan's account is a full Administrator, which means it controls every device in the house. Two-factor means a stolen or guessed password alone is not enough to get in. It costs five minutes once.

Alan, do this on your own device, Atiba cannot do it for you:

1. On your computer or phone, go to http://homeassistant.local while on the home Wi-Fi.
2. Sign in with your own username, alan.
3. Click Alan at the very bottom of the left-hand menu.
4. Click the Security tab at the top of the page. Direct link once signed in: Security.
5. Find Multi-factor authentication modules.
6. Next to Authenticator app, click Enable.
7. A QR code appears.
8. Scan it with an authenticator app. If you use 1Password: open your Home Assistant login item, choose Edit, then Add More, then One-Time Password, and use the QR scanner. Google Authenticator, Authy, or Microsoft Authenticator work equally well.
9. Your app now shows a 6-digit code that changes every 30 seconds. Type the current code into Home Assistant.
10. Click Submit.
11. Test it. Sign out, then sign back in. You should be asked for a code. Do this now, not the first time you need it in a hurry.

If you lose access to your authenticator, Atiba can remove and recreate your user from Settings, People, Users.

3.2 The Samsung TV: full control

Not done. This is optional. Casting already works; this adds power, volume, and source switching.

Your TV is a Samsung UN50RU7100FXZA (RU7100 series, 2019). It refused the pairing request because it does not yet trust Home Assistant.

On the TV, with the remote:

1. Turn the TV on and get to the home screen. It must be on.
2. Press Home, then open Settings (the gear icon).
3. Go to General, then External Device Manager, then Device Connect Manager.

Note: it is Device Connect Manager, not "Device Connection Manager". Samsung's own manual for your model uses Connect; Home Assistant's documentation gets this wrong.

1. Open Device List.
2. Look for an entry called HomeAssistant, one word, no space. Searching for "Home Assistant" with a space will not find it, because that exact text is built into the software.
3. Delete that entry. Do not look for an Allow switch; deleting and re-pairing is the approach that is actually confirmed to work.

If you cannot see it: on 2019 sets the entry often hides below the visible list and will not scroll into view. Delete a few unwanted entries from the top until it appears.

1. Optional: set Access Notification to First time only so the TV stops asking on every reconnect.

Then on a computer:

1. Go to Settings, Devices and services.
2. Under Discovered, find main tv (UN50RU7100FXZA) and click Add, then Submit.
3. Be standing at the TV when you click Submit. A popup appears on the TV and you have 30 seconds to press Allow.

If it still fails, the TV and Home Assistant must be on the same network segment, Samsung TVs refuse these connections across separated networks (VLANs), and that is the most common remaining cause.

Two things worth knowing: there is no PIN on this model (only 2014-2015 Samsungs use PINs), and you do not need to reserve a fixed IP for the TV, Home Assistant follows it automatically if the address changes.

4. How Home Assistant actually works

Understanding these five words makes everything else obvious.

Why areas matter more than they look. Once devices are in areas, you can say "turn off the kitchen" instead of naming four bulbs. Voice control, dashboards, and automations all use areas. Assign every new device to a room the moment you add it, retrofitting this later across fifty devices is miserable.

Manage them at Settings, Areas, labels and zones. You already have Living Room, Kitchen, and Bedroom.

5. The settings that matter, in order

You do not need most of Home Assistant's settings. These are the ones that earn their place, most important first.

6. Everyday use

The phone app: do this next

The app is how you will actually use Home Assistant day to day. Each of you installs it and signs in as yourself.

1. Install Home Assistant from the App Store (iPhone) or Google Play (Android).
2. Join the home Wi-Fi.
3. Open the app and choose Connect to my Home Assistant server. It should find the server by itself. If not, enter http://homeassistant.local manually, remember, no :8123.
4. Sign in with your own account, not the other person's.
5. Choose Most secure when asked about connection security, and confirm your home Wi-Fi name.

Notifications: a useful fact

Push notifications do not require a paid subscription. That is a common misconception. They work on the free service, limited to 500 per device per day, which is far more than a household needs.

Better still: if you set the app's Internal URL and confirm your home Wi-Fi, notifications are delivered directly over your own network. They arrive faster, do not count toward any limit, and never leave the house.

Presence, and the privacy setting that matters

Linking each phone to a person lets Home Assistant know who is home. That unlocks the genuinely useful automations: lights on when you arrive, everything off when you both leave.

In the app, under Privacy, set Location Sent to Zone Name Only. Home Assistant then records "Home" or "Away" and nothing else. You get every presence automation with no GPS history stored in a database you both share. This is the right default.

Link the phones at Settings, People by editing each person and selecting their device.

Good habits

• Use the dashboard for daily control; dive into Settings only when changing something.
• When a notification is unclear, open it and read which device it names before acting.
• Do not approve a new integration or account login from a notification without discussing why.

7. Adding devices safely

Discovery is an invitation

Home Assistant constantly finds things on your network. A discovered device is not necessarily yours, safe, or worth adding, it might be a neighbour's.

The one-device gate

For each new device, in order:

1. Identify it. Manufacturer, model, which room, whose it is.
2. Check the fallback. Confirm it works from its own app or switch first.
3. Prefer local control. If it demands a cloud account, understand what you are signing into.
4. Stop if it asks for something big. Account logins, payment, location, camera, microphone, locks, or router changes all deserve a deliberate decision.
5. Add one. Assign the room, give it a plain-English name, test one harmless command.
6. Wait a day. Check it did not flood you with notifications or noise.
7. Keep or remove. If it is not genuinely useful, remove it.

Leave these until later

Locks, garage doors, alarms, cameras, and doorbells all carry real safety consequences. So do remote internet access and router changes. None of these belong in your first months.

8. Automations that help rather than annoy

Write the sentence first

Before building anything, write it in one line:

When [this happens], and [these things are true], Home Assistant should [do this reversible thing], unless [this override].

If you cannot write that sentence clearly, the automation is not ready.

Good first automations

• Turn the living-room lamp on at sunset.
• Tell both phones if a backup has not succeeded in 48 hours.
• Turn everything off when both people leave.

Bad first automations

• Anything that locks, unlocks, opens, or arms.
• Anything that sends more than a couple of notifications a day.
• Anything relying on a sensor you have not watched for a week.

Start with Blueprints

Do not write automations from scratch. Blueprints are ready-made automations the community has already debugged, you just fill in which light and which time. Start there, always.

Build and edit at Settings, Automations and scenes.

9. Backups: how to actually use them

Check they are working

Go to Settings, System, Backups. You want "Backed up", a recent timestamp, and 2 locations.

Make one right now, before a risky change

Click Backup now, choose Automatic backup. It takes seconds.

Restore from one

1. Go to Settings, System, Backups.
2. Pick the backup you want.
3. Choose what to restore.
4. Enter the encryption key from 1Password.
5. Home Assistant restarts.

You can also restore during a fresh installation by uploading a backup file, which is how you would move to a new machine.

Test a restore once

Do this while nothing is wrong. An untested backup is a hope, not a plan.

10. When something goes wrong

Fast checks, in order

Useful detail: the clock

Home Assistant's clock is managed by two things at once, its own time service and Windows. They currently agree to within a second, so all is well. If automations ever start firing at the wrong time, that conflict is the first suspect. The fix is one command in an administrator PowerShell on PC-A:

Disable-VMIntegrationService -VMName 'Home Assistant' -Name 'Time Synchronization'

The two log pages

• Logs, switch the dropdown at the top right between Home Assistant Core, Supervisor, and Host. Errors involving the system itself live under Host.
• System health, a quick overall status.

11. One hard limit to know before buying anything

Hyper-V has no USB support, and never will.

No Zigbee, Z-Wave, or Bluetooth USB stick will ever work in this setup. This is documented Home Assistant behaviour, not a fault in your build.

What this means in practice. Many popular smart-home sensors, motion sensors, door sensors, cheap temperature sensors, use Zigbee or Z-Wave and normally need a small USB adapter. You cannot use those adapters here.

The solution. Buy a network-attached coordinator instead of a USB one. These plug into your network rather than the PC. The SLZB-06 is the common choice. Everything else works normally: Wi-Fi devices, your existing Yeelight bulbs and WeMo switch, and anything cloud-connected.

Check this before buying any smart-home hardware.

12. Where to go next

In order, once the items in section 3 are done:

1. Install the phone apps and link both people for presence. Highest payoff for the effort.
2. Assign every device to a room at Areas.
3. Build one automation from a Blueprint. A sunset light is a good first one.
4. Create two scripts you both use, such as "Leaving" and "Bedtime", and put them on the dashboard as buttons.
5. Add an automation that warns you if backups stop. Quietly one of the most valuable things you can build.

Leave these until much later: the Energy dashboard (needs a meter), voice control, and remote access from outside the house.

13. Glossary

14. Reference

Your system

Official documentation

• Home Assistant home
• Getting started
• Users and people
• Two-factor authentication
• Backups
• Google Drive backup
• Automations
• Blueprints
• Areas and organisation
• Dashboards
• Companion app
• Companion notifications
• Companion location and privacy
• Securing Home Assistant
• Samsung TV integration
• 2026.8 release notes (the port change)

Keeping this guide current

Update it after any real change: a new person, a new device category, a backup destination change, remote access, or a recovery event. Never put passwords, encryption keys, or tokens in this document.