Speed Test Tracker in Home Assistant

Home Assistant dashboards aren’t just great for controlling your smart home—they’re also perfect for monitoring your homelab. When I set up my Raspberry Pi Touchscreen Dashboard at my desk, I wanted a page that displayed real-time network and server metrics—including internet speed test results. That way, when I hear my wife yell down to my office, “Why isn’t the internet working?!” I can quickly glance over and see exactly what’s going on with our services and connection.

Homelab Dashboard

Why Not Speedtest.net?

I initially used the Speedtest.net integration. While it works, the documentation warns about high resource usage. Eventually, I ran into a memory leak that severely slowed down my Home Assistant instance.

Rather than risk system performance, I turned to Speed Test Tracker, a self hosted tool I was already running elsewhere in my homelab.

What Is Speed Test Tracker?

Speed Test Tracker is a self-hosted internet speed monitoring tool that runs in a Docker container. It offers:

• Scheduled speed tests
• Clean, informative graphs
• An accessible API for integrations

Speed Test Tracker

To get started, follow the installation guide. After setup, log in and generate an API token from the API Tokens page. This token allows Home Assistant to securely pull your latest test results.

Creating RESTful Sensors in Home Assistant

We’ll use the RESTful integration in Home Assistant to display download speed, upload speed, and ping latency from Speed Test Tracker.

Step 1: Configuration Files

In your configuration.yaml, include:

rest: !include rests.yaml

Then, in your rests.yaml, add the following YAML. Replace <speed_test_tracker_ip> with your server’s IP or domain.

You’ll also need a unique UUID for each sensor. This ensures Home Assistant doesn’t duplicate entities after restarts and allows for more customization. Use uuidgenerator.net or Visual Studio Code to create them.

- resource: https://<speed_test_tracker_ip>/api/v1/results/latest/
  headers:
    Authorization: !secret speedtest_token
  method: GET
  scan_interval: 3600
  sensor:
    - name: "Speedtest Download"
      value_template: ""
      device_class: data_rate
      unique_id: "<generate_UUID>"
      unit_of_measurement: "bit/s"
      state_class: measurement
    - name: "Speedtest Upload"
      value_template: ""
      device_class: data_rate
      unique_id: "<generate_UUID>"
      unit_of_measurement: "bit/s"
      state_class: measurement
    - name: "Speedtest Ping"
      value_template: ""
      device_class: duration
      unique_id: "<generate_UUID>"
      unit_of_measurement: "ms"
      state_class: measurement

Step 2: Add the API Token

In secrets.yaml, add your token:

speedtest_token: Bearer your_api_token_here

Step 3: Restart Home Assistant

1. Go to Developer Tools
2. Click YAML
3. Click Check Configuration
4. If the message says Configuration is valid, click Restart Home Assistant

Once reloaded, go to:

1. Settings → Devices & Services
2. Entities tab
3. Search for “speedtest”

You should see your new REST sensors.

Improving Readability: Mbps Instead of Bits

By default, speeds are reported in bits per second—which isn’t exactly human-friendly unless you’re still rocking a 2400 baud modem. For easier readability, you can update the display to use Mbit/s instead:

1. Click the Download entity
2. Click the gear icon (⚙️)
3. Change Unit of measurement to Mbit/s
4. Set Display precision to 0
5. Click Update

Repeat for the Upload entity.

Visualizing Data on Your Dashboard

I use the Mini Graph Card via HACS to display network performance.

Download Graph

type: custom:mini-graph-card
name: Download Speed
icon: mdi:speedometer
line_color: cyan
decimals: 0
entities:
  - sensor.speedtest_download

Upload Graph

type: custom:mini-graph-card
name: Upload Speed
icon: mdi:speedometer
line_color: green
decimals: 0
entities:
  - sensor.speedtest_upload

These graphs are perfect for quickly identifying speed drops or ISP issues right from your Home Assistant dashboard.

When you first set up the graph, it may look a bit off. This happens because the initial value is in bit/s, which can skew the scale with a very large number. Once that value ages out of the graph’s display range, things will look much more accurate.

Conclusion

Having real-time access to my internet speed data on a touchscreen at my desk has been a game-changer. I’ve caught several overnight outages from Quantum Fiber where speeds didn’t recover until I manually restarted the modem.

Most importantly, this approach offloads speed testing from Home Assistant, keeping my server responsive while still giving me all the insights I need.