---
title: '45-Minute Project: Home Assistant on a Tailnet'
date: 2026-05-30T09:41:06.702Z
slug: 2026-05-30-45-minute-project-home-assistant-on-a-talent
author: Thomas Wilson-Cook
tags:
  - home-lab
  - home-assistant

---
I've been running Home Assistant from a [Home Assistant Green](https://www.home-assistant.io/green/), which I rather cleverly purchased before [Ramageddon](https://www.theverge.com/tech/880812/ramageddon-ram-shortage-memory-crisis-price-2026-phones-laptops) made everything increase in price forever.  

Apart from setting up the summer and winter lighting automations, some heat&humidity sensors, and some home security bits and bobs, it's been left a little un-loved.  It's been absolutely perfectly serviceable.  My favourite automation is to turn on the downstairs lights if the lights are already off, and it's past sunset.  Coming home in the pitch black of 4pm in mid January, to have the house light up… honestly.

One of the reasons I've left it alone is because I only have access to my Home Assistant machine when I'm on my home wi-fi.  I can't check lights, or security info, from outside the house, and sometimes you want to.

 Or rather, I only _used to have_ access locally.  

It's one of those things I've been putting off forever (read: a year), and I finally convinced myself it was worth doing by calling it a 45-minute project.  A single self-contained thing that I could get done, write a smug blog post about, and then _forget about forever_ (read: probably not more than a year).  

I set up a [Tailscale](https://tailscale.com/) account, used the sanctioned HA Add On, and the official iPhone app to connect both devices to the same Tailnet (i.e. an encrypted VPN using the WireGuard protocol).  The whole setup process was seamless, less than 45-minutes from start to finish.  

The most frustrating part of the whole process was Safari's *tiny* notification that it was blocking a Pop Up so I thought the integration was broken, and ended up digging around the dev console.  

45-minute projects.  Get stuff done.
