5 ways to use a Raspberry Pi with Home Assistant (aside from running your server)
A Raspberry Pi is a solid choice for taking your first steps into the world of Home Assistant. The single board computer is reasonably affordable but powerful enough to meet the needs of most beginners. When the upgrade inevitably kicks in and you buy something more powerful to run Home Assistant, your old Pi doesn’t need to go to waste; there are many ways to use it in your smart home.
HTG Wrapped 2025: 24 days of technology
24 days of our favorite hardware, gadgets and technologies
A dedicated Zigbee2MQTT coordinator
One of the benefits of using Zigbee devices in your smart home is that certain devices can act as routers that transmit information between your smart home hub and other devices in your mesh network. This can help extend the range of your Zigbee network so that devices on the other end of your home from your Zigbee coordinator don’t keep disconnecting from the network.
The problem is that not every Zigbee device can act as a router; Typically only mains powered devices are capable of doing this, as battery powered devices can drain quickly if they are still transmitting data. If you don’t have any powered devices in the appropriate locations, some Zigbee devices may be too far from your Zigbee coordinator to maintain a solid connection.
You can solve this problem by running software like Zigbee2MQTT on your Raspberry Pi. You can then connect your Zigbee dongle to the Pi and place it in the optimal location in your home. The Pi publishes data from your Zigbee devices to an MQTT broker, which Home Assistant can read. This means you no longer need to limit yourself to plugging your Zigbee dongle directly into your Home Assistant server.
A Bluetooth gateway
Zigbee devices can often communicate over a reasonable distance, even without routers to transmit the signal. The same cannot always be said for Bluetooth devices. Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is designed to be a low-power communications protocol and is generally intended to communicate over shorter distances.
This means that if your Home Assistant server is too far from your Bluetooth devices, they won’t be able to communicate. This limits where you can place Bluetooth smart home devices in your home.
You can configure your old Raspberry Pi as a Bluetooth gateway to help alleviate this problem. If you have a Bluetooth device in a room that is out of Bluetooth range of your Home Assistant server, you can place your Pi in that room by running software such as Theengs BLE MQTT Gateway. Your Pi can then communicate with the Bluetooth devices in that room and transmit the information to your Home Assistant server via MQTT.
You can achieve the same result with a microcontroller such as an ESP32, which uses less power and easily integrates directly into Home Assistant through ESPHome. However, if you have a Raspberry Pi lying around, this is a great way to put it to good use.
A voice satellite
Another way to reuse your Pi in Home Assistant is to turn it into a dedicated voice satellite. You can then control your smart home using voice commands, just like you would with Alexa or Siri. Creating your own voice satellite gives you the ability to manage everything locally, so you don’t have to worry about big companies listening in on everything you say or do.
One of the easiest ways to create your own voice satellite from a Raspberry Pi is to use the Wyoming Satellite software and connect a mic to your Pi. There is now a newer option called Linux Voice Assistant, which uses the ESPHome protocol. You can run this software on a Raspberry Pi and create your own voice assistant with wake words like “Okay Nabu” and “Hey Jarvis.”
An audio endpoint
Audio equipment can last a long time. For years I used a 1970s Goodmans stereo with wood panel speakers that my dad had passed down to me, and it still sounded great. You may still have an old stereo in your home that sounds way better than your smart speakers could ever deliver.
The problem is that old stereos weren’t designed for smart homes. There’s no AirPlay or Bluetooth connectivity, no DLNA or UPnP. There is no direct way to stream music to your old stereo.
This is where your Raspberry Pi can help you. You can set it up as an audio endpoint, such as an AirPlay receiver or Snapcast client. You can then stream music to your Pi using a Home Assistant media source (such as Music Assistant). Connecting your Pi to your stereo is possible using the 3.5mm jack (if your model has one), or for better sound quality, using a USB digital-to-analog converter (DAC) or a Pi-dedicated DAC HAT. You can then stream all your music to your old, great-sounding stereo.
A Home Assistant dashboard
If Home Assistant dashboards are your thing, you can use your Raspberry Pi as the brains to power a display, using a method like running a browser in kiosk mode. By connecting your Pi to a touchscreen, you can create an interactive wall-mounted dashboard that can control your smart home. You can also use an e-ink display for a simple always-on dashboard that displays key information.
The Raspberry Pi’s small size allows you to create your own wall-mounted dashboard that won’t take up too much space. You can even integrate your Pi and display into a photo frame and use it to display images when it’s not displaying your Home Assistant dashboards.
A Raspberry Pi is a great device to start your Home Assistant journey, but there may come a time when you’re ready to upgrade. If so, your Raspberry Pi doesn’t need to go to waste. There are plenty of ways to use it to complete your Home Assistant setup, or hundreds of other ways to use it if you don’t need it for your smart home.
