I want to start out with Home assistant and I’m looking for help. I tried running HA on a raspberry pi 3A+ and let’s say it wasn’t great. So I’m looking for a great alternative. I looked into the raspberry 4 but they are expensive at the moment. And was thinking that for that price there have to be even better alternatives. Can you guys help a noobie?
Some requirements are:
Low energy
Max 150 euro
Future proof for more demanding tasks (don’t want to upgrade in 1 or 2 years)
Can buy via amazon or other bigger eshops (had bad experiences with ebay and small eshops)
Are you looking for unused devices?
Maybe an Odroid N2+ (has been advised and sold, as blue, by HA founders)
Used:
Intel NUC or a thinclient (these can be low power)
An obsolete laptop might do as well and give you the benefit of the battery when there is a power failure.
I’d recommend a beefy Intel NUC - there’s lot of versions out there. Great deals on eBay. I’d suggest going a little stronger than you’d think you’d need bc once you start playing with things like cameras and other media, it can put some strain on the RAM.
Yes, I have browsed, but find it hard to find the answer I was looking for. Most say a raspberry is ideal but for that price I think there are other alternatives.
I will look into Intel NUC also, but what I find online is that you need to buy extra stuff with it for it to work like RAM and SSD. Or am I reading that wrong?
No, you are not reading wrong: there are NUC’s that are ready to use or there are barebones in which you can choose your own amount/brand of RAM & SSD.
I don’t think though that you are settled for 150€ with a beefy system.
Somehow, kksligh is right: if you go for something more powerfull you could also run some other stuff on it but that will make it more expensive.
A mini PC or NUC with some sort of virtualization software is an incredible solution for Homeassistant.
The hardware does not even need to be particularly modern, a 4th gen intel i5 will be about 3-5 times more powerful than a raspberry Pi and similar power usage since it will idle most of its life.
I use Proxmox as my software virtualization layer and it allows for a full supervised OS install with backups. I have not had an issue running it for years!
For those curious, I saw a refurbished HP EliteDesk 800 G3 with an i5 and 256GB SSD on Amazon for 90 euros and decided to order it. I will update how it went to get HA running on this.
I have just gotten myself an Orange Pi 5 with 8GB. I also added a 256GB NVME m.2 SSD. I didn’t have need for WiFi or BT, so that worked out well. The recorder database is sitting on my QNAP NAS, so that does not add load. And with about 20 Shelly devices, about 60 Zigbee devices, and various other odds and ends, but not too much (yet) in the way of automations, it’s currently running at about 1.5% CPU usage (with an occasional peak to 15%, apparently, though I haven’t seen that happening myself).
I ordered it from Aliexpress and had it sent over to Luxembourg (where I live). It was about 115 Euros including shipping at the time, but you can get the 4GB version for less than that. The SSD was around 39 Euros, but if you look you might be able to get that a bit cheaper too.
Note that with it being an Orange Pi, it’s a little fiddly to get working, but it’s been working flawlessly for about a month now.
I bought a mac mini 2011 and installed ubuntu on it and HA in docker. Works great, but after connecting the camera, you can hear the cooling operation when motion is detected in the frigate. Otherwise satisfied, takes up little space, stylish, power supply inside.
Hey guys, I was reading this thread. What would be a better option, assuming price was the same . This
HP Elitedesk 800 G3 Mini Business Desktop (Intel Quad Core i5-6500T, 16GB DDR4 RAM, 512GB SSD) Type-C, DisplayPort DP, WiFi, WiFi, Ethernet, Keyboard+Mouse, Windows 10 Pro 64-bit (Renewed) https://a.co/d/ajt8RfG
Or this.
ACEMAGICIAN Mini PC, Intel N5095(up to 2.9GHz) Mini Desktop Computer, 12GB DDR4 RAM 256GB SSD, Dual HDMI 4K Screen Display, 2.4/5G WiFi & BT4.2, Gigabit Ethernet with VESA Mount for Daily Use/Office https://a.co/d/hMdR0Z6
Looking to begin my home assistant journey. I already have about 20 hue bulbs/accessories, and I have many smart switches and plugs connected to my Google home network with 6 speakers and 1 display. Will either of these be enough to add in say all this as well as3 or 4 camera feeds, and another 30 sensors or so?
The Intel N5095 is a Celeron process and an i5 will kick its butt. You, also, get more RAM, larger SSD, and the EliteDesk has 1Gb ethernet (I looked it up) as well.
That is based on those 2 options.
For me I would look at an Intel NUC. My NUC is a i5, 8GB RAM and a 128GB SSD and it cruises along without a hitch (Note I do not have Frigate on my HA which is AI for cameras-I use Blue Iris on a separate system)
Hi Thomas - Stephen (and Rick) recommended neither of your options, and instead recommended an Intel NUC (assuming price was the same). The option you listed were both kind of overpriced (at least on Amazon), so if you are OK with a $250 - $300 box, you might as well go directly to Intel NUC.
N5095 boxes could be had around at roughly $100 on eBay.
And if you have to pick between the two, as Rick mentioned, go with HP with i5.