The ZimaBoard might be a cheap alternative with quad-core x86 and dual NICs. Plenty of performance for lots of devices, automations, and even a few add-ons: Building a Portable Server- Zima Board
That is a great price. Let us know how it works out. My brix with the same chipset is fantastic.
I’ve a mini PC (under the telly) for streaming services, photos and occasionally showing the wife my spreadsheets to justify my motorbike and gadget expenditure.
Can I install HA and continue to use the PC for the other things?
Also, I had a Phoscon Conbee 2 dongle that I tried and was happy with but sold it as HA was taking up too much of my time. I intend to replace it with the best dongle out there now ( and available in the UK) . Anyone know what is the best one to buy now
I bought a used Dell Wyse Thin Client Zx0 AMD G-T56N 1.65GHz 4GB RAM No HDD w/ Feet on ebay for $9.99 plus $10.23 shipping.
I was surprised when it arrived because it actually did have an SSD installed in it (64GB)
I installed Home Assistant OS NUC version on the SSD and it worked perfectly. Best 20 bucks I have spent in a while. Dell Wyse Thin Client Zx0 AMD G-T56N 1.65GHz 4GB RAM No HDD w/ Feet | eBay
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I think a user would have to be drunk to willingly confuse an operating system vendor with a supplier of IoT integration software (Home Assistant).
I use server grade hardware and the up time of the hardware is the same as that of the grid (which is very stable). The Internet is down more (due to idiots with excavators) than Home Assistant…
All those low power solutions sound nice in theory, but when you want to actually use a system, it’s nice when things are snappy.
For a new installation, Home Assistant - NixOS Wiki would be much more reliable than this project will ever create.
Whoever thought providing a specific operating system was a good idea clearly has no clue about business.
I have been actually using HA on my RPi 3B+ for going on four years now. It’s snappy, it does everything I want it to do, and connected to an inexpensive RPi UPS battery board it has survived a number of power outages and grid perturbations.
I understand the joy of running a server farm at home. Been there, done that. And if you want to do that, HA is a great excuse. Go for it.
But if you just want a simple, inexpensive device to run some home automation and monitoring, it’s certainly not necessary.
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And there is lots of hardware in between the ‘server grade’ and ‘raspberry’. I got down to a HP minidesk for not that much. Runs a little more then HA and consumes 25Watts which is very acceptable for the things it does. Server Grade consumes mostly way more energy, which is a bit against my whishes. And a raspberry experience is also i had and didnt like.
My migration from a pi4 to an upgraded ancient laptop which was collecting dust has really done wonders.
CPU seemed to be my main bottleneck which was killing my ESPHome compile times.
Runs at ~ 20-25W.
I bought a N5105 box on aliexpress that runs my home routing and my home assistant on debian 11. Few hundred bucks and low power usage.
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I see multiple recommendations for Odroid N2+. I’ve run HA on multiple platforms. Raspberry pi works, but its performance is lacking. The intel stuff takes too much power for a smart home controller. I support multiple family member all using Odroid N2+ with USB dongle for zigbee/zwave integration and have had no issues over multiple years. I believe the N2+ 4G memory is the best option when power, cost and performance are used to drive the decision. While I’m partial this is the route I’d go to get a debian bullseye image. The guys on the site that support that distro are very helpful. It has an integrate script to fully install HA supervised version. If you can’t figure out how to build the image file they will usually post one for you. A great platform with a great bullseye distribution. The Odroid also gives you standard GPIO pins, which can be used to integrate hardwired security sensors from an existing alarm system. You can even use a cell phone connected to USB to provide Cellular backup communication.
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Often I see the power draw of a Pi or similar board being stated as incomparable with a Intel x86 platform.
Well, i think, looking at my own setup, that when smart choices are made, this does not need to be a big difference.
I’m running HA on a SFF PC with Intel Celeron J1900 quad core and 4 GB RAM.
The PC + Zwave dongle + RfxTrx dongle + Sonoff 433 MHz hub + 3x MiLight hub is running on continuous 9W of power.
The processor runs at 7-9 % of its capacity.
So in my eyes, the computing power / electric power draw ratio is very satisfying and really worth a consideration. And, you can actually buy those everywhere 
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YouTuber Andreas Spiess did this recently.
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How you did home routing? Something like pfsense?
Can you summarize what that 18-minute YouTube video recommended for a direct RPi replacement?
Skipping through, I saw a comparison with a Lenovo M75n Nano, which I found listed on Newegg for almost $500, so not really a good replacement.
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try ebay vendors Lenovo ThinkCentre M72e – about $50 USD
I got my SFF PC for free from the ICT department on my job, they had a lot of them replaced for newer… I can’t make it cheaper
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As stated, most of those videos afe talking about using older, used thin client PCs.
If you a want new Intel based unit it will be more than $50. In fairness, so was a full Pi setup by the time you added case, power supply, storage etc.
Pretty much any low price Intel Celeron mini PC is more than sufficient, pretty commonly available new for under $150, with countless options under $200. A quick Amazon search renders plenty of matches.
I’d avoid the units with eMMC storage, they may be fine, but can sometimes be tricky to get an alternate image installed and running.
Most (not guaranteed) units with an SSD should boot the haos image. Just make sure you have return options. Power consumption for those units should also be pretty good at around 10w or less.
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odriod N2+, 4G RAM, 32G emmc, 3A power supply and case comes in at $139 from ameridroid. You also need to little sd adaptor to write the emmc so that’s a couple more $. You can get it cheaper if you buy directly from hard kernel, just takes longer to show up.
No. I’m a sadist.
I use the Linux kernel. This is what I based it on.
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This only works if you buy used. Still worth it compared to pi.