🚀 CoreBox – A faster, offline-friendly way to boot HA over iHost

[Kway99]

Hey folks,

Just wanted to share something we’ve been working on in the iHost open-source community — we call it CoreBox.

If you’re running HA over iHost (on RV1109 / RV1126), you probably know the first boot process involves pulling HA Core from GitHub, which can be a pain if your network is slow or flaky. We’ve seen a lot of people get stuck there, or wait forever just for HA to start.

So we decided to make an image that includes HA Core (2025.5.3) pre-installed, right inside the image.

No need to fetch it on first boot. No waiting. No failed installs.

We tested it — cold boot to a working HA instance takes under 3 minutes now, even with zero internet.

Why we made it:
People kept running into install failures or asking for help just because their network dropped out halfway through setup. CoreBox is our attempt to make it easier for everyone, using SONOFF iHost— whether you're offline, testing, or just want a smoother experience.

Once booted, you can still update to newer HA Core versions from the Settings page like usual.

We’d love for more people to try it out and give feedback. Here’s the repo and image if you're curious:
👉 [CoreBox]
Installation Guide
https://github.com/iHost-Open-Source-Project/ha-operating-system