It won’t suit everyone. If it doesn’t suit you, don’t buy it. There are literally thousands of devices to buy and use.
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Z-Wave GPIO news and “Home Assistant Amber” now being renamed to “Home Assistant Yellow”(?)!
https://www.crowdsupply.com/nabu-casa/home-assistant-yellow/updates/z-wave-and-rename
Really great news to hear Aeotec Z-Pi 7 Z-Wave module is compatible with GPIO pins and the case!
But what was wrong with the “Home Assistant Amber” name?
Hope you keep in mind that “yellow” is American slang for a ‘coward’ before permanently change name.
https://www.google.com/search?q=yellow+coward
My first thought was: “Ah, a clash with an existing registered name…”
WOW - thats fantastic, see, we’re all happy now 
One of the difficulties with ‘Blue’ was that you couldn’t search the community for related posts and there was no sub forum created…surprisingly. Amber was more unusual but I see a similar issue arising with ‘Yellow’
Quick question: since it is far more expensive, was is the advantage of the Yellow over a Raspberry Pi? The Pi with 8 GB of RAM costs a third.
I think the appeal for a lot of people is just the form factor, but you do get a bit more than just a Pi for that price—notably, built-in Zigbee, which alone could be over $40 USD (or as cheap as $11 for the new Sonoff one, but in any case you get one built-in, which I guess feeds into the form factor concern some people have). Depending on your Compute Module, you’ll also get either eMMC storage and/or the ability to use NVMe storage (16 GB eMMC if you get the preassembled Amber/Yellow option). Either is likely to behave better, particularly long-term, than the SD card the regular Pi accepts. It also includes an RTC.
Don’t forget the things you’d have to add to a Pi, like a case (technically optional, I guess), power supply (they used 12V here, probably to avoid issues with questionable 5V USB supplies some people use on the Pi), and storage (already included if your board has eMMC).
Part of it, however, probably also goes to support the Home Assistant project itself. If you don’t care for the form factor or features, then yeah, you can roll your own hardware, probably for less with similar or better specs. This includes various CM4 IO boards that are already available, which you could use if you like the idea of a CM4 over a “plain” Pi 4 (ease of non-SD-card usage, maybe?), though of course there are tons of options. But it doesn’t seem too bad for what it is to me. 
I am completely for supporting the project and HA having its own device to make some money off of.
I was really just curious, because Pi 4 with 8 GB including power supply, case and better specs costs a total of around 100 €. Add zigbee or any other usb devices (e.g. adapter for SSD) for another 15€ each.
I personally prefer my proprietory protocols to be external devices so I can replace them when new protocols arrive (not an issue for WiFi, Bluetooth or LAN).
I think it would be far more appealing to me if it wasn’t just a 2 GB version.
But it is nice to see that people are loving it and I wish everybody involved good success 
Home Assistant is an awesome platform/software AND community! <3
Understood!
It isn’t — you can get the variety that is just the IO board (“kit”) and use any CM4 you want with it.
Between a Raspberry 4 install and the Yellow, there is not a huge price difference when you consider the following:
Home Assistant Yellow includes the Power Supply.
Home Assistant Yellow includes the Zigbee Radio.
Home Assistant Yellow includes the case.
Home Assistant Yellow has (in its “falgship” complete version) 16GB eMMC included
By the time you add a case, power supply and Zigbee radio to a standard Raspberry Pi, as well as fast storage (not an SD Card) you are pretty well spending as much, if not more than the cost of Yellow
As far as specs, Home Assistant runs quite happily on 2GB on a Raspberry CM4 and there really is not a noticeable difference in performance by upping it to even 4GB, let alone 8GB. The rest of the specs, the compute module is as good or better than standard Raspberry 4.
Having the extra RAM is more for the tinkerer, or maybe for those who just like to see bigger numbers.
That said, you can always get one of the “kits” that do not include the CM4 and get the CM4 separate in the flavour you like. the kits have everything, including the case, just not the CM4.
I got the PoE kit and a CM4 separately as I wanted the BlueTooth radio built in rather than using a USB dongle for BlueTooth. That said, becareful doing this. Regulatory approval for the radios is based on it having the one radio on board and in some areas adding a CM4 with Wireless function may void the regulatory approvals
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New to HA, but have been doing my research. I pre-ordered the Yellow kit and attempted to order the Aeotec z-pi 7 zwa025 module, but I can only find the version with the UK frequency. Apologies if this has been addressed somewhere, but a search did not help. Does anyone know where I can purchase the US version, if at all? And if not, what would be the next best solution?
Thanks!
I agree to most of your statements but not to the 2GB being sufficient.
The docker container structure of HA and its add-ons is quite memory hungry. When your system grows over time and becomes more complex it is not at all difficult to fill 2GB of RAM. This results in a system that starts to lag for no obvious reasons and typically is fast again for some time after a restart.
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Yep, no one ever got sacked for buying too much ram or too much storage. Needs never decrease.
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I totally agree 4GB is better as you get more complex, but the HA image for Raspberry Pi 3 for example runs quite happily on even 1GB for small installations. I have even tested the VM image on Synology using 1GB, 2GB and 4GB.
For sure, if you have 4GB available use it and once you get to larger installs 100% it will get a little sluggish with 2GB . In a small to modest install however, if you have a raspberry Pi 3 with 1GB or a 2GB Pi4 floating around, or you can only afford the 2GB compute module in the Yellow initially, there is no reason not to give it a go.
To be honest, once you go larger, more complex installs I think the Raspberry Pi in general will struggle a little. I ordered a computer module with 4GB to go with my Yellow, so will see if how it performs.
I think my main reason for ordering a Yellow is to support the guys really, and if it isn’t so good on a larger install, I do have a use case in a smaller install scenario that I just haven’t bothered doing so far.
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