home-assistant.io/source/_docs/configuration/basic.markdown

layout	title	description	date	sidebar	comments	sharing	footer	redirect_from
page	Setup basic information	Setting up the basic info of Home Assistant.	2015-03-23 12:50	true	false	true	true	/getting-started/basic/

By default, Home Assistant will try to detect your location from IP address geolocation. Home Assistant will automatically select a temperature unit and time zone based on this location. You can overwrite this by adding the following information to your configuration.yaml:

homeassistant:
  latitude: 32.87336
  longitude: 117.22743
  elevation: 430
  unit_system: metric
  time_zone: America/Los_Angeles
  name: Home

Configuration variables:

• latitude (Optional): Latitude of your location required to calculate the time the sun rises and sets.
• longitude (Optional): Longitude of your location required to calculate the time the sun rises and sets.
• elevation (Optional): Altitude above sea level in meters. Impacts weather/sunrise data.
• unit_system (Optional): metric for Metric, imperial for Imperial.
• time_zone (Optional): Pick yours from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones
• name (Optional): Name of the location where Home Assistant is running.
• customize (Optional): Customize entities.
• customize_domain (Optional): Customize all entities in a domain.
• customize_glob (Optional): Customize entities matching a pattern.
• whitelist_external_dirs (Optional): List of folders that can be used as sources for sending files.

{% linkable_title Password protecting the web interface %}

First, you'll want to add a password for the Home Assistant web interface. Use your favorite text editor to open configuration.yaml and edit the http section:

http:
  api_password: YOUR_PASSWORD

If you decide to expose your Home Assistant instance to the internet and forget to set a password, your installation could be accessed by everybody.

See the HTTP component documentation for more options, such as the use of HTTPS encryption.