Hi, complete noob here, trying to pick the server hardware on which to run my first implementation of HAOS
Initial goals:
Use HA as a replacement for my existing RING security system. Planning to use contact sensors for exterior doors (7) and maybe operable windows (8), add a keypad for arming/disarming, and adding a few Reolink cameras + NVR and then ditching my old RING everythings. While I’m sure I’ll get sucked into this and maybe add more functionality later, I don’t currently plan to automate a bunch of stuff.
My home’s previous owner had Eufy cameras and left them, along with eufy branded NVR, at the house. Only reason I didn’t want to use those was I had read about some negative press on Eufy regarding security and/or them sharing my video without permission or something along those lines–but maybe if I don’t subscribe to their cloud service and just use the NVR, and pay Nabu Casa for remote access along with Home Assistant, this could be a non-issue and save me the cash of buying new cameras.
Most likely I’m going to repurpose an existing x86 computer on which to install HAOS.
I read through this thread:
…which recommends against using something with DDR3 memory. However, I have a handful of old digital signage PCs with J3455–I believe this is four (4) cores and clock speed at 1500 or 1600 MHz, 4GB of DDR3 memory at 1600 MHz, 3 HDMI ports (not that they are really needed), 64GB SSD, WLAN, and 2 Ethernet ports–not sure of speed. Since I already have these (at least two right now), and based on initial use cases above, is there any reason I should throw this thing aside and shell out cash for another computer?
It should be fine to try get it running there to see how stable that hardware is.
I have my HA instance ruining in a virtualbox VM with windows as the host OS (until I get around to moving things to proxmox and separating the two, just a matter of not being lazy about it, synolgy surveillance center is how I view my camera feeds when I turn on the monitor dedicated to it but it likes to randomly bluescreen windows when it has a fit relating to a nic issue - known software issue not anything hardware or os related lol) on an Intel NUC5i7RYH in a passive metal case from Akasa.
For remote access I just use openvpn through my main router and have a tasker automation on the phone to enable it when I am not corrected my my wifi and disconnect the vpn when I am (only time I need to manually turn it off is when I want to use android auto via bluetooth but its fine with it when I use a stable direct cable connection is not going over BT).
As for the cameras you can either use the NVR or setup an instance of frigate (i just use my synolgy nas as my NVR and to pull in UPS state vie NUT, other UPS I have it use my spare pi3 as a NUT server linked back to HA since that’s what I have and its has the integration for it).
All my current cameras have internet access blocked on the network so they only feed into the NAS since they are a mix of hikvision and hilook branded ones I got at the time before all the articles about them coming out.
The main reason I have them is that they are ONVIF capable and are high resolution for what they are so I can migrate them to any other NVR capable platform if I need to since they also don’t require any 3rd party apps to manage them just local only webadmin control.
Reolink ones are popular cause of the quality level of the intergration among most users the other option here and there are those as reviewd by Paul Hibbert (he leans more to the aqara side with his current options), Everythingsmarthome etc.
Hi. My post is a shortened version of my Ukrainian-language article in which I focused on the assumption that users would be buying on the used equipment market.
I support your idea of using what you already have. I don’t know about eufy camera problems, but they can indeed be restricted from using the internet (this depends on your router’s features, but I think it’s possible on almost all routers).
If you already own the hardware, give it a try, this is plenty for home-assistant itself. The video processing you seem to have in mind might outgrow this hardware quickly (especially the SSD, but CPU and RAM may also limit your options in terms of transcoding or object detection). Still, I would agree to give it a start with what you have, to give you a feel what works and where the shortcomings are, to give you a better perspective what kind of hardware you might need to meet your requirements.
Thanks, I think I’ll give it a try. Another nice thing is that I have probably 5 or 6 identical ones. They have a spare memory slot so could go to 8GB by robbing Peter to pay Paul, but also if I do backups like I should I could pretty easily have hardware ready to swap in rapidly in the event of a hardware failure.
I’ll give it a shot and come back with questions. Or share my experiences after getting it running if anyone is interested.