I am rebuilding my system and I have a few questions related to network set up. I have installed a new Unifi system, set up IoT VLAN and opened port for HA. That part I THINK is right. My questions lie with setting up DuckDNS and Let’s Encrypt. I plan on doing more self hosting stuff in the future. Can/Should I be doing things like Dynamic DNS and certificates via an entity outside of HA such as my router or some other container in the “system” or is it better to handle HA’s requirements inside of HA itself?
Additionally, in my current config I can only reach the HA brain via the DuckDNS URL. What sort of set up is required to have the unit accessible when the internet is down? Seems with the mobile app it is the URL or nothing. What do I need to be doing for internal access when on local LAN?
I am running it on the HA Blue hardware and I plan to rebuild from scratch if that matters. I am sketchy on the network set up and making sure things are all secure. Bit paranoid lol. So if you have any good set up guides on this portion it would be appreciated. Thanks.
To set up local and external network access:
Go to settings -> companion app (or just settings if you don’t have an admin account)
Select your server
And enter the external IP (or duckdns url) in the URL section, the network(s) where home assistant is locally accessible in the “Home network” section, and the local IP in the internal URL section.
I’m still working on making external access to my home assistant secure, so I don’t have enough experience to make suggestions there.
I have never had it work with a URL and an internal connection. Never connects on internal. at least it used to not. If I remember there was some reverse proxy requirement or something I was never able to get set up. So I was reliant on the duckDNS which had quite a bit of outages for me. I eventually gave up on the companion app.