I’m new to the forum and looking to start my own HA build. In the past I used Smartthings but that had some limitations.
I would love it if you could recommend the best hardware for my needs. I don’t have an old computer, so I am looking for new hardware to run HA on. Also, I want to connect the following items to HA:
Tado thermostat
Blink cameras (save videos to SSD)
Light switch or bulb (to be bought, only have HUE in bathroom currently)
Door magnetic sensors (mct Visonic)
Somefy shutter
Xiaomi vacuum robot
I also have Nvidea Shield not sure if it would be useful to connect that.
I don’t know if you got any further with this but there are a lot of topics here in the forum with the same question and good advice.
As you might already know/found out: HA can run an a RPi (Rasberry Pi) which means that the requirements don’t need a beefy system.
The availability and price of the RPi has changed for worse the last years so there are better alternatives.
Have a look at the Odroid N2+, this has been used and sold for the Blue project by the founders of HA.
You could look for second hand systems, also an older laptop can do.
The things you sum up are not CPU demanding BUT the camera’s can be, depending on the situation.
As you can see from my signature, I have virtualized HA because I’m running a lot of other stuff on the same system.
HA itself also can run other systems as containers which can be interesting to consolidate different services on your network.
With Proxmox you run a Linux system on which you install containers & virtual machines, with HA you can run docker containers on top of it.
It all depends on your situation, knowledge, preferences which is the better solution for you.
@Nick4 thanks for the feedback. I’ll check out your recommendations. My main concern is that I want to make sure that my hardware setup isn’t too light. I set my Blink for 5 second videos so that might not be too draining.