I’m making a project in a friend’s home. He passed from a zero tech house to a new one, and he wanna all the stuff. Actually I had installed 40 smart light switch, 10 Arlo pro camera, 2 nest hello, 6 broadlink rm mini and 12 occupancy sensors. It’s pending 6 Google home max, 4 Google hubs and a bunch of chromecast. I’m doubting the pi 3b+ can manage that amount of stuff.
In my projections I used a pi to manage all of it but now I’m installed all and the first projections grown up, I’m doubting. The other option is a Nuc i3, but that pass a $60 pi to $500 Nuc.
Judging from the money you’ve spent (6 Google Home Max?!), you should go with an NUC so you don’t have to worry about performance issues. If you want to save money, then a Pi3b should be fine, but don’t expect camera feeds to load quickly on Home Assistant. Camera feeds are not that useful on Home Assistant anyways.
I think the Pi 3b+ can handle your light switches, sensors, Chromecasts/Google Homes fine. The Google stuff operates independently and doesn’t rely on Home Assistant much, besides sending commands and cover art. I have never installed 40 light switches so I cannot comment on PI3 performance.
I have a Nest indoor and Nest Hello camera connected with Home Assistant, but I use the native Nest app for viewing real-time video and recordings. HA/Nest video feed is not real-time, so you don’t really need to integrate with HA. Arlo/HA integration is not a live feed either. There are Nest binary sensors like ‘motion detected’ or ‘sound detected’ created in HA that you can use in automations, and these work well on my Pi 3B.
Like Dixey said, make sure your router can handle a high number of devices. Some routers can cause problems like wifi disconnect when too many devices are connected to the 2.4ghz radio.
If you really want to view all your Arlo and Nest cameras in Home Assistant, then a NUC would be better. The video is not real-time
Thanks for your comments, I’m expecting to use in the server node red and influx.
The bandwidth can be a issue… In this case all the smart switch’s are insteon (don’t use wifi itself), only wifi are used by the nest hello, and all the Google speakers and chromecast. I installed 6 Google wifi in mesh and hard wired.
Thank you for comment, yes I’m with you with the Nuc, may be not now but in the future HA accepts Arlo live feed or nest and I prefer to be prepare for that.
A NUC is just a computer in a tiny form factor. Save a bunch of money and get a used tower or laptop. I run my system on a used optiplex from dell. HA really flies with a SSD and a decent processor.
You’ll want to pay attention to the processor though. Laptops should be low power but desktops can suck some juice. I use a 3470T which is 35 Watt TDP vs a 3470 which is 65 Watts. Big difference in the power draw which adds up for a 24/7 server.
Also make sure there is no graphics card or other add on cards installed, these can draw quite a bit of power at idle
I was thinking of buying a used computer that was somewhere between the Pi and the Nuc, but I’m afraid I’m going to have problems with the components’ lifetime.
I have this concern too. My server is a used PC that my wife’s work was discarding. I have a spare that I want to setup as a quick swap should anything go south. Given that you can get these optiplexs for ~45 shipped on eBay it still a pretty cost effective solution.
That being said mine has been solid for about two years. (Knocks on wood)
I went with a NUC (Ubuntu Server 18.04 Hassio docker) after maxing out my PI. (Well the PI started acting real slow and took too much maintenance to keep up with it). Tried an old laptop (Ubuntu Server 18.04) but also had minor problems.
I would not suggest a rPI for a “production” system. Many will argue that’s not the case; but they also likely don’t have a ton of devices running; and likely have not run HA on a NUC (or other real system) to realize how significantly faster it is.
An old laptop is also a good option as build in UPS and screen/monitor for debugging. Ideally one that you can disable sleep when the lid is closed so it can be hidden away doing it’s thing.
DRUMROLL… my server it’s here, 8gb RAM, i5 3.2ghz intel graphics, now the Question! i’m always had worked on RPi, how to install Hassio in this “complete” machine? Virtual Env over ubuntu or Docker over Ubuntu?