Have to be raspberry pi?

Configuration
1

Hey all,
New here and looking to replace my current homeseer with homeassistant. Everything points to using a PI but I’m wanting something a bit more robust and redundant. I have a full DataCenter as well a cluster in my home so i’d think the best route would be something like CentOS with homeassistant on it. But it looks like everything is built to use a PI. Would I still be able to get all the features and integrations if not using a PI? Just feels a bit odd running my home off a $40 PI when i have a ton of spare power that’s redundant.

2

YES!
You can use hass.io on a generic linux server
Installation - Home Assistant
or you can run HA in a virtual environment
Installation - Home Assistant

Here’s a topic about the difference of hass.io and a venv (like hassbian)
What is the difference between Hassbian and HASS.io?

3

I use it on a micro server in a docker container (no hass.io), and it’s not a problem, everything works the same.
There is a few thing that can be plug on the raspberry gpio and that you won’t be able to use, but that’s mostly gadget (temp sensor/ IR sensor) that can be done by a lot of other ways.

I install it in my container with a very simple:

RUN pip3 install --upgrade homeassistant

4

Is there some reason you don’t just use the home assistant docker and do a docker pull? Why do you build your own container?

5

I’m running VMware, just making sure i’m not losing out on a ton of features with not using a PI.

6

What your are losing is the easy gpio ports of the pi for sensors / relays, a cheap self contained platform and mostly HA was seems to be maintained on a pi so most responses / documentation is for a pi. I use 2 pi’s / windows and a mac for HA and don’t have a problem with any for their purposes. I use the mac for the front end of HA and to run mqtt / sql servers for HA because it seems to render web pages faster. (that might not be the case lately with the front end upgrades)

7

I think at the time the docker image simply didn’t exist :slight_smile:

So yes, might be easier to just use the existing one.

I however will keep using a custom one, as I install ssh keys and a list of known_host when creating the container.
I also install some specific ffmpeg dependencies for my cameras and the websocket-client that I need for a custom Harman Kardon component.

8

Ah. For this, I just map bind mounts to my ssh directory that contains keys and known_hosts