HI ! I want to install Home Assistant, but because of the global shortage I can’t buy a Rabserry Pi. I found a Banana Pi, BPI-M2 BERRY, that seems suitable. It runs, Raspbian, too. What do you think, can I use it instead of a RPI ? Thanks !
1GB of ram will most likely be a bottleneck in the future for you, so find one with more ram.
Most people are turning towards second hand small laptops or tiny PCs instead, since they are often dirt cheap.
Lenovo Tiny PC or Dell Wyse is two examples.
Personally I have found a newer fanless laptop with an intel CPU to run HA on. The touchscreen was broken and too expensive to replace for the former owner, so it was just garbage for him, but it is a nice HA server and the battery acts as a built-in UPS.
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Yes, I heard many things about RAM. For that I tried a VM with 2GB of RAM, and it was using just 600 MB with all of my plugins set. Unfortunately, in my region it’s very hard to find old laptops and the price is not worth
In the daily run it might be fine, but when updates come, then the compilation of code and database updates can pull on the resources.
It is one of the worst times to run out of resources and cause a crash, because you never really know what state the server is in after that.
True, but I fell like for start, it is ok 1GB. After 1 year, I will replace the board and the global shortage will end probably
HA is growing all the time and there are post about people running 1Gb boards having issues today, so it is a quite risky step to take, IMHO.
I do not think I run a big setup, yet, I still have used 2.4Gb of my 8Gb ram.
I want to use just EspHome
But at least will work on the Banana Pi ?
Like it would on a RPI ?
Compiling the code on a 1Gb board will often fail, but if you compile the code elsewhere, like your desktop machine, then you might be good.
compiling on another machine put a few extra steps in the process, but it is doable.
The process should by like using A Raspberry Pi 3B+, no ?
The ESPHome addon require a lot of ram when compiling the firmware code to be uploaded to the ESP device.
This compiling fails on low ram devices, but the compiling can be done on other machines and then just uploaded to the addon before being uploaded to the device.
A Raspi 3b+ also only have 1Gb and will generally also be hard to get running properly.
See this thread also: HA Hardware Requirements CPU vs RAM - #3 by krumbi
I run HA on a RPi 3B+ with 1G. My processor is sitting at around 6%, maxing out around 9%. I’m using 0.5G of my 1G pretty consistently.
I used to compile my ESPHome stuff right on the Pi, but lately I’ve been doing so on my laptop because it’s noticeably faster.
That said, I don’t use high-demand features like voice recognition, video or streaming audio. I’m mostly doing monitoring and controlling, with relatively simple automations.
Sometimes I think we (people who like to tinker) get carried away, doing things because we can and not because the effort and expense is justified. I’m concerned by all those who are trying to dismiss the RPi and similar platforms, and push users toward more powerful (and expensive) hardware.
The one thing which draws people to projects like HA is its ability to run on a platform like a RPi.
Please don’t ruin that!
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True ! Very nice what you said wright there !
But because is should be the same like a Raspberry Pi 3B+, can I use the same metod of installation?
RPis are a fabulous series of hardware devices, but at the moment they seem to somewhat more vaporware devices.
But whether a RPi or a PC is chosen, then 1Gb of ram is still on the very edge.
I have no idea if Banana Pi is as compatible as the vendors claim. The claim is is fully replacable as drop-in for a Raspberry Pi.