Good luck with that. The original firmware is not available anywhere I am aware of.
With the right hardware a Pi3B + Samsung EVO/high endurance + 3amp 5v power will be very reliable and will run for years.
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I have been running a RPi3 (not the plus model) using a Samsung EVO SD card and genuine RPi power supply for almost 18 months with the only dramas being caused by my own coding faults. Iām migrating to a NUC simply so I can run CCTV recording on the same device, plus have the advantage of not worrying about SD cards (not that I have had any problem with the Samsung). Donāt ditch HA due to hardware
For the time being, until you decide on a more permanent solution, you could spin up a linux VM on whatever computer you are using now, install HassIO on it, and restore your backup to it. Thatāll get you up and running until you decide what you want to do.
Completely agree with this.
If you continue to have failures, it is not the fault of HA, it is poor a quality SD card, poor quality PSU or user error (pulling out the power cord to reboot as an e.g.)
That aside, I do believe there is probably some benefit for the base HASS.IO image, for beginners, to come default with config that limits writes to the SD card somewhat. Recorder and purging should be set to a low time frame to assist a new user who doesnāt know how to achieve this, or that it will help reduce SD card failure rates. Anything to prevent excessive logging by default I believe would be a good starting point for a new user on basic hardware.
Iām sure there may be other avenues to reduce writes that can be enabled by default, that a more experienced user can adjust/remove should they wish.
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One such option is to completely relocate the Database to another device like a NAS, using something like this
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Yeah, well aware of this. I am talking things that can be done by the HA team for entry level hardware and config for a new user. Have it predefined, from install.
Make it idiot proof to reduce ranty posts from people like the OP.
I copied each of my devices before I flashed them. I had read that one devicesā firmware might not go on a different device type (not as generic as Tasmota) so I backed up each device.
For future reference, how would I take a backup? I have snapshots, but theyāre saved onto the card.
My config only had four devices. Shouldnāt take long. Besides, I want to try the configuration.yaml route instead of auto discovery this time.
This. You can look online to find how to have the critical bits of the OS for the Pi be read only on the SD card and the rest of the file system on an HDD or SSD. But, although I have never had an SD card failed and ran multiple 3D printers, a sprinkler controller, a PiHole and HA for a while on Piās, eventually I also went to a NUC and now use Docker to run all of the above as containers on the NUC. Itās been running for ? 1.5 years or so with maybe one failure, which I think was a power issue with my surge protector strip.
Having said all of that the large team working on HA seems to work on a huge number of things that, at least to me, seem like a waste of time. Not the devices, but Hass.io, the data science thing, the cloud thing, lovelace, etc. To me I wish bluetooth would work reliably, that scenes would reliably paint all of the conditions, that groups and visibility would work properly, that zwave could be configured properly. You know, the basic basics. When Iāve gotten frustrated itās more for those things than SD cards - that problem is very fixable.
Oh, and the login and users! That is super annoying. Do you want to save this login? Lol
Once you take the Snapshot, transfer / copy it to another device (ie: off the RPi) using either:
- SSH (WinSCP or similar)
- Samba
- Google Drive or Dropbox backup uploader add-on
As soon as I do a Snapshot and the backup file is created, I run a script to upload it to my Google Drive. Prior to setting that up I would just copy it to my laptop using WinSCP, but I see Google Drive as āsaferā in that my laptop could fail and Iād be in trouble, whereas Google Drive shouldnāt lose my filesā¦
I see a lot of people complain about these problems and while I have had 1 substandard SD card fail in the last 2 years, I have run my pi on an Apple phone charger (the 1A model). Yes it throttled, but it was well behaved. There must be some really crumby chargers out there.
Iāll be interested to hear if that works as Iām pretty sure it wonāt.
You run an RPi3/+ on a 1 amp PSU? Surely you mean a B+
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Its n-1 - So, not the latest 3B+. It sits right next to my router, plugged into a UPS.
I did decide this week to find a 3A PS to git rid of the throttle messages, but I will say it is a testiment to Appleās phone charger. Itās been rock solid since ~v.25
Iām honestly surprised it works at all that under powered.
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Ok, so I havenāt installed this add-on but looking at the docs I donāt see anywhere that says you can relocate the HA database (so reducing wear on the SD). Have I mis-understood?
I dont have it installed yet but my ubnderstanding is that the add-on is a viewer, but if you follow the component instructions, you can run the server on another machine. I should have linked this in the first place
I agree with this. The very aggressive logging is killer for the database on the RPi. Itās the root problem behind slow reboots and SD card deaths. I donāt understand why the default config is setup this way.
Where / what is āitā? I donāt know where the snapshots are stored.
By default, when you take a snapshot using the Hass.io/Snapshot menu, the backup will go into the /backup directory/folder. It is a tar file.
I normally just drag and drop it using Samba from a files window of my PI to a files window of my laptop.
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