HA, CCTV and NAS - which platform to use?

Hardware
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Hi, I am in a process of building a new house and I would like to have as much automated and interconnected as possible, so I keep constantly digging through various options of sensors, lights, switches, etc… but first, after the whole day of reading through this forum I still can’t decide which platform to use to have solid, long lasting Home Assistant infrastructure.

I would like to have Hass.io, CCTV and NAS (FreeNAS) in one server if possible, to minimize power consumption and I would like to ask you for your experience and your insight.

The scenario:

  • 6x FullHD IP cam (motion detection on the server)
  • 15-20x smart switches and sensors (some of them Z-wave or Zigbee)
  • 10x wireless lights
  • NAS storage for media (doesn’t even have to be RAID)

Now, what I have been thinking about so far:

  1. Intel NUC i7 (or i5 if it would be enough) with FreeNAS, Hass.io in Docker and CCTV system.
    Here I was thinking about either Shinobi (which now should have MQTT support) or BlueIris running in a Windows VM (but I would like to avoid using Windows), I sorta discarded ZoneMinder because many of you here kept mentioning that it is a real resource hog.

  2. RPi 4B 4GB + my old Synology NAS which is not fast enough for camera server, so it would have to run on RPi aswell. Not sure if RPi will be able to handle Hassio and camera server. And I also don’t like how short the lifespan of SD card is, so if it’s possible now (I remember seeing some talk about it), it would have to boot from SSD connected to USB.

  3. Buying a new higher-end Synology, DS218+ for example, using their built in Surveillance station and running Hass.io in a docker on it. I really like how Synology and their Surveillance are integrated into the HA.
    Here I am not sure if Z-wave or Zigbee sticks will work when connected to USB.

  4. Buying a new Synology, using their Surveillance station and having Hass.io on RPi 4B (or 3B+ which I currently own). Here again I would like to avoid having HA on SD card.

  5. Any other option?

Sorry for the long post and I know it’s not only about HA, but I assume many of you guys are running the same setup here, so I would like to know some pros and cons of these setups and what you have tested. I don’t like much the idea of having standard ATX/ITX server or desktop as they tend to draw a lof of power.

Thank you

1 Like
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FreeNAS is an extremely poor choice of OS for a NUC. Docker doesn’t run natively, so you will have another overhead of a VM, and FreeNAS is an extremely poor Virtualization host (it’s not a hypervisor).

FreeNAS is a waste of resources on a NUC, and since you can’t have more than 2 hard drives in a NUC, it’s main functionality and ZFS would be wasted, because it could not be utilized. Please do not run FreeNAS on a NUC.

Just run Ubuntu server, or Proxmox on the NUC, and set up your VMs for hassio and blueiris and be done.

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Thanks for the response. You are right, I totally forgot that FreeNAS is not just a package but whole OS, that would be a waste of resources. I am just a bit worried that a Windows VM for the BlueIris would take a lot of resources too.

Does Proxmox (running Ubuntu VM and Windows VM) have any advantage over running Ubuntu with Hass.io in docker and with KVM hypervisor running a Windows VM? (I would have only one VM running).

And would the new Synology running Docker with HA be still a valid idea? Not sure about the performance, but maybe it’s better to keep the NAS separate.

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Only an easier interface for managing your VMs

Sure.

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OK, so I did some tests, running Shinobi and Blue Iris in VMs on our server, I purposely limited resources to more or less simulate the performance of the NUC, and I found that with 6 IP cameras and motion detection they both seem to be using a lot of CPU. So it looks like I would kill most of the performance just on the CCTV.

I then tested adding 2 cameras on our company’s DS1618+ (which has the same performance as 918+, just more bays) and with motion detection the NAS sits around 5% of CPU usage with a lot of Samba traffic.

Seeing this I decided to go for the DS918+, running the Home Assistant in Docker with my deConz stick and I will see how it goes. If it won’t work good enough, I will go for RPi4 as soon as they figure out how to boot from USB SSD.

Anyway thank you for your insight, I really appreciate it :slight_smile:

2 Likes
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Hi, I wanted to ask a quite similar question. @InToSSH what is your current expierience with DS918+? Are you using it for HA? or the RPI4?

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Hi @michcss, yes I have been using DS918+ for HA for over half a year now. Currently in a test environment (before we move to the new house), but I have a few Yeelight bulbs connected, Sonoffs, Wemos D1 Minis and also 2 switches and around 5 sensors from Xiaomi over a ConBee II Zigbee gateway. The ConBee works fine with the DS918+, only problem is that after the Synology reboots, the VM with Hass starts, but the Conbee is not mounted, I have to manually go to the VM Manager and mount it again, but I have already spoken to Synology Support, sent them some logs and they should be working on fixing this. Also I am running a VM with a Debian and here I have installed the Hass.io through Docker. Otherwise I have no problems at all… I like this solution because I am also running Surveillance Station for my IP cameras on the same server, which then are shown in the HA.

2 Likes
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Hi @InToSSH How did it end up with DS218+ ?
Would you recommend this for the same general solution ?
I would like to have:

  • Hass.io (around 20 ~ 40 sensors)
  • Surveillance station (4+ HD Cams)
  • NAS + InfluxDB

Do you think that DS218+ would be enough ?

Best Regards,
Dan

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Hi @grimmaldus, I actually have DS918+, not DS218+. The DS918+ has 4 core CPU instead of 2, but otherwise they are simillar.
I am successfully running HA instance on it, with no issues, no hiccups, it is working perfectly.

Synology has Docker package, but I don’t recommend going this route for the HA, I kept facing issues with compatibility as Synology is not a full fledged linux OS.

What I did instead is I installed Debian headless (without GUI) - (in my view it’s lighter than Ubuntu) in the Virtual Machine Manager, then I installed Docker in this Debian VM and followed the Docker Hass.io installation guide. Now I have perfect compatibility, and all is working just fine.
One problem I had, that I mentioned earlier was, that I had my ConBee II connected directly to the NAS. For some reason this got unmounted from the VM each time the NAS rebooted, so I manually had to go to the VMM and mount it. I solved this (since in needed my ConBee stick to be located in the middle of the house) by using a spare RPi 3B, installed Raspbee GW OS on it and connected the ConBee to it, so now it communicates over network.

I am running Surveillance Station with 5x 4K cameras, I don’t even know how many sensors I have in my HA (it will be somewhere around 30). I have Zigbee sensors, Shellies, ESPHome devices, Tasmota, and a lot of other integrations (Unifi, UPS - via NUT, Google Cast, Alexa, Synology DSM, UPnP/IGD, etc…)

One thing I changed is that I added a 4GB memory stick, to 8GB total.
I also added NVMe M.2 SSD, which I reconfigured via SSH not to be used only as cache drive (as is default in Synology), but actually have it as separate volume and I am running the VM from it, to have the full speed of SSD.

With the HA running, all cameras recording and also having Kodi stream movies from the drive I still have only about 30% of CPU usage on average and 40% of RAM used.

TLDR: I am quite happy with this setup, it works perfectly and I also have a Debian machine to use for my other programming-related stuff :slight_smile:

2 Likes
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Also going with the surveillance software that the NAS’s provides will probably double the cost for the NAS 8 camera license is well over $300 but if money isn’t a problem then you should be fine. Also you can cluster your Raspberry Pi’s pretty in expensively just my 2 cents. I’m looking for the right NAS myself and hopefully after reading a while in here I’ll go away ready to buy! :+1:t2:

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My experience with DS918+ have been great. So far the synology is totally standard no extra memory or nvmes. Currently streaming 6 cam to my motioneye (did not used synology since its requires extra $$$) Furthermore I did skip using Hass.io and just used docker only and it work without any problem. I believe @InToSSH unmount can be solve using synology scripts which force the nas to mount it everytime it reboot.

Anyway DS918+ is recommended.

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After about 8 months running this setup on the DS918+ I can report that I haven’t had single problem with HA. After overcoming initial issues with the Conbee on RPi, where the entire gateway got disconnected about twice a week (this was due to having the RPi as DHCP-client, after setting static IP I haven’t had problems since), the whole set up has been incredibly stable.
Still running the Hass.io docker image on the virtual Debian install on the NAS, with Surveillance station for cameras.

Back then I spoke with Synology support and they said they will fix the unmounting issue of the Conbee stick which is directly connected to the NAS and mounted to the VM (even the support tech said he has his own Conbee stick to test), but I haven’t tested if it is already fixed since, because I keep the Conbee on my RPi, because I need it in a different location than the NAS itself.

1 Like
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Hi @InToSSH,
Do you have lovelace cards that are showing camera streams in HA? If so, do you have any lag? What is the framerate?
Also, one more question re Conbee stick on Synology, do you have to use rear usb port or front is also fine? I would like to connect Conbee II and Aeotec Zwave stick to Synology.
Thanks!

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Hi,
yes I do. I use standard picture-entity set to live mode so I get realtime image - otherwise you only see a snapshot once every 10s I believe.
The live view lag is around 8sec (comparing the OSD time in the image from HA with the one from Synology Surveillance Station), which is around 10sec total.
I have 5 camera feeds on one dashboard, it runs pretty great, but there is an occasional dropout for a sec or two, but this uses a lot of bandwidth, so if you don’t have fast networking I would suggest using the snapshot preview and only loading live feed after maximizing the entity window.
Otherwise my framerate set on those cameras is 15FPS, resolution 2592x1520, and each camera uses around 5Mbps of bandwidth.

I don’t use Conbee stick on the Synology now as I said in the previous post, but before I had it plugged in the rear port, but I think it should be the same, they should share one internal USB controller.
Just make sure to use an USB extension cable, at least 1m long. When the Conbee is plugged directly into the USB port it is known to have problems with Zigbee connectivity dropping out.

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Perfect, thanks for answers!
That’s what I need. So basically if you set picture-entity to live mode you get realtime pictures without lag?

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No, that’s not what I meant, sorry for the confusion.

  • Synology Surveillance Station Client itself has about 2sec delay.
  • If you set the picture-entity to live view mode, even in the small widget thumbnail on your dashboard you get a video feed with FPS that is set on the camera, but the delay is about 10sec against real-time, or 8sec against Synology Client
  • If you set the picture-entity to “auto” mode, you get a snapshot update every 10sec for the thumbnail (the picture you see in the widget on your dashboard), but actually this has only about 4sec delay against realtime, however as stated earlier, you only get one picture update every 10sec - this grabs the snapshot image directly from the camera so it is faster than processing the live video feed. Then after you click on it to maximize the image, you get a live feed with FPS set on the camera, but also with 10sec delay.
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Ok, I get it now :slight_smile: thanks for explanation :slight_smile:

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Hi all :grinning:

Could you help me please :pray:t2:? I’m looking for the best :ok_hand:t2: option for video surveillance with motion :wave:t2: sensor and video stream recording for eSP32 cam and why not another type of commercial camera as well as the Arlo Ultra K.

I am in a bit of fog because I have a Synology RS818RP + on which I could run Surveillance Station.

However:
- I’m not sure that we can integrate ESP32 Cam (only cameras I have for the moment) and Arlo that I will buy :smirk:
- it bothers me to keep it running because I only use it when I need it (videos in the evening, office automation from time to time on the w-end, etc.) :smirk:

I have Hassio available on Rpi4 and it is used for home automation. I saw that there were Hikvision type Video Recorders rather well supported by Hassio to record video streams (I believe it supports ESP32 cams).

An other way, MotionEye looks to do the works also.

Does anyone have a quick fix on Hassio to fix this or is it best to run Surveillance Station on the NAS all the time and get the info from RPI?
If so, can I integrate the ESP32 cams on Video Surveillance or should I buy commercial ones please? :money_mouth_face:

Thanks a lot for your help! :+1:t2: