I am looking to upgrade my existing RPI3 install in order to use a higher performance HW platform also for other tasks (Plex, etc…).
I am then considering something like intel NUC or CompuLab Mint box mini pro.
I would also like to move my existing Hassbian based installation (i.e. debian based) to Hass.io as this has obvious advantages in terms of less effort needed to set up add-ons and so forth (being a quite basic Linux geek).
I saw reference about Hass.io image being available for Intel NUC too in the forum and somewhere in the documentation but can’t find that image: has it been removed while switching to Hass OS from ResinOS?
You can install add-ons, just like in a raspberry pi version of hassio. There are a few add-ons that don’t work (obviously anything that allows use of GPIO pins or the Pi’s bluetooth)
What you gain is the ability to run other things in Docker should you choose later. If you were running hassio/hassos directly on the NUC, you would not have that capability and you would not have access to the host OS to do anything else that may come along in your future.
I’ve begun thinking the same thing, about moving my hassio off my RPi. My main motivation is restart time.
So my first question is, or should I say, I am looking for confirmation that restart performance on a ‘grown-up’ machine would improve considerably (for me that would mean 90 seconds or less).
Secondly, Docker: What is the learning curve for that for someone with no Linux background?
When I restart my Home Assistant container, it is back up and running in under 30 seconds.
I don’t know what the learning curve is for someone with no Linux background. I have been using Linux for 18+ years, so I tend to forget what it was like being new to Linux.
Personally I don’t think Docker is a very hard thing to grok. Once you try a few Docker containers out and figure out how the bind mounts work, it is super simple.
I would suggest considering the fact that many users graduate from a raspberry pi to an Intel NUC. I get the feeling that there is a growing group of us. So, similar to having a Pi, when you run into issues, you have a large group of fellow users to ask for advice. I wasn’t comfortable with the possibility of SD card corruption, so I’m glad I made the switch. The only thing I miss is the bluetooth tracking, but that might be developed for the NUC in the future (fingers crossed).
I got the low-spec Celeron-powered NUC, and the performance (reboots, automations, etc) are all significantly quicker than the Pi 3b+. My reboots are around 70 seconds and I have a fairly high number of integrated devices (cell phones, chromecasts, google homes, z-wave switches throughout, motion sensors, TVs, amplifier, thermostats, IP cameras and harmony hub). Gosh… I might have a slight additiction.
I got a NUC7CJYH barebones kit and got 8gb RAM and a 240gb ssd. I am sure it would easily stream plex 4k.
snapshots are the same as a Pi - or any hassio system. Full addon backup etc.
I am sure there are cheaper options… arent there always… but it cost me around the cost of 3 Pi3B+'s with power, case and sd-card… They are cheap in my opinion and totally fit for purpose.
I was using Hyper-V virtual machines with Ubuntu on a older machine it when I upgraded it to run Serve 2016 (just to run docker) my machine crapped out. Something about W10/2016 this hardware doesn’t like. So I just got this nuc a few days ago:
It’s fast as hell. It boots up in seconds. I was able to copy my VMs over to the NUC easily. I was going to install Docker for Windows, but I’m not going to bother for now. I can run at least 4 VMs simultaneously under Hyper-V right now, and they start up quickly. And I take lots of VM checkpoints, so if I don’t like a config change I just apply the checkpoint instead of restarting hassio and waiting.
Maybe I’ll try docker one day but for hacking around with configuration.yaml, using a VM is a far, far superior solution.
Just chiming in here. I started on a Raspberry Pi 2 and updated to a Pi 3B+ but was still disappointed with performance, particularly the restart time.
I had an old Core i5 (Gen 2) laptop that wasn’t being used so I ran that up using the Virtual Env method. That was a huge improvement, and I don’t know a lot about linux myself.
Recently I noticed there is a VM image that I decided to try, so I ran that up in Virtual Box and have been quite happy with that performance also. Most Add-ons work fine. I use SAMBA, SSH, MosQuiTTo, Node-Red and the Configurator.
Boot times from cold (not a restart) are about 70 to 90 seconds. I use a few integrations, Philips Hue, Chromecast / Google Home, ZWave, ZHA, uPnP.
A restart of the HA service takes under 30 seconds, with ZWave taking about 20 seconds longer to finish initialising.
I would never go back to a Raspberry Pi now.
I did look at the NUC as an option, but they are way too expensive and do not give me much power saving benefit over the laptop, plus the laptop has the advantage of its battery still being good so I have a kind of inbuilt UPS too.
Could you tell me how you got Samba, SSH and Zwave working? I’m having the same setup with a VM on VirtualBox (though on a NUC). I have trouble getting those components to work.
I already found the correct USB path for the Zwave usb. I also found the correct network interface for the Samba config. What other steps do I have to consider?
I use HassIO with HassOS. The SAMBA and all other addons work exactly as they would on a Pi out of the box. ZWave and ZHA I use USB adaptors. ZWave is the AEOTEC Z-Stick 5 and I have an Elelabs USB dongle the Zigbee(ZHA). I just found the relevant USB Passthrough in the USB config section for Virtual Box and they are deteced exactly the same as on a Pi, ACM0 for tor the ZWave and USB0 for the ZHA.
In order to keep the same IP address, I did set a static IP Address via the CLI, I found some information on the Dev pages, but can’t find the link now. I’ll post when I find the information I used to set the static IP.
But out of the box, it pretty well just worked with the USB pass through.
I recently migrated my VM to an Intel i5 based Lenovo M93p because I had to repurpose the laptop, and moving the VM was completely painless. Also, I did manage to score an old MGE (now ACP) UPS that just needed a new set of batteries. Setup of the VM didn’t need changing at all.
The M93p has a 500GB SSD and 8GB RAM, so way over kill, but I plan running up several VM’s for other functionality I want.
I will most likely move the VM to ProxMox soon as this has less overhead for the host than Virtual Box.
