Installing HA on a Raspberry Pi 1

Configuration
1

Alright hear me out. I know this device is way too old for Home Assistant, but.. Its a very small setup that is going to be used by my father to monitor his weather station, which has an intergration to Home Assistant. One dashboard showing the different weather station values and thats it. No webcams, no automations.. Just that one integration, and no need for it to be available from outside the LAN, so no duckdns etc. It doesn’t even need to run that well.

IS this possible or is it a complete no-go ?

2

Pi 1,2,3 are all nogo. As well as any Pi less than 2g

Minimum system required is listed here Installation - Home Assistant

3

It’s absolutely doable — just not with full Home Assistant OS. For a single weather station dashboard and zero automations, you don’t need the heavy HA stack on the Pi 1 itself. Here’s a much smarter approach:

1. Pick the lightest Linux you can find

For a Pi 1, go with DietPi or piCore (Tiny Core Linux for ARM). Both are extremely lean — piCore’s base image is only ~32–40 MB and idles at ~100 MB RAM, which is perfect for the Pi 1’s 512 MB.

  • If you want to connect a display → install DietPi with a lightweight desktop like LXDE or Openbox. DietPi lets you tick a checkbox during setup to add a minimal GUI without bloat.

  • If it’s headless (just sending data over LAN) → go with the CLI-only version of DietPi or piCore. No desktop, no overhead.

2. Install RPiEasy

RPiEasy is basically ESPEasy ported to Raspberry Pi. It’s tiny, runs great on old hardware, and gives you a clean WebUI to configure all GPIOs without touching code. You can set up your weather station data in minutes through the web interface.

3. Connect it to Home Assistant

RPiEasy talks to HA in two ways — pick whichever suits you:

  • MQTT : Install Mosquitto on your HA instance, point RPiEasy at it, and your weather station sensors will show up in HA automatically as MQTT entities.

ESPEasy-P2P: If you already have other ESPEasy devices, RPiEasy can mesh with them via P2P and relay data into HA.

Why this works on a Pi 1

You’re not running the full Home Assistant Supervisor, add-ons, or database on the Pi 1. The Pi just runs a lightweight Linux + RPiEasy, pushing sensor data to HA (which can live on any other device — an old phone, a cheap thin client, or even a free cloud instance). The Pi 1 handles that just fine.

Bottom line

Don’t try to install Home Assistant on the Pi 1. Use the Pi 1 as a dumb sensor gateway with RPiEasy + a minimal OS, and let HA do the heavy lifting elsewhere. Your dad gets his dashboard, and the Pi 1 stays within its comfort zone.

4

You say yourself you can’t run HA on the pi itself…

If the weather station already has an integration the rest is redundant. They need something to run HA. Not connect to electronics as a microcontroller as an excuse to use the Pi 1.

5

I would think it may still be there in DietPi. Worth checking out their site.

6

i use my rpi1 on this way.
rpi1 is to nice to waste him

7

Op doesnt need to bin it - but it’s not appropriate for this use case to pretend otherwise does disservice to the op and leads them down an unnecessarily complicated path.

8

For me Raspberry 3B with zwave and some plug, it’s ok.
But ESPHome does not compile, not enough memory.

System Information

version core-2026.7.4
installation_type Home Assistant OS
dev false
hassio true
docker true
container_arch aarch64
user root
virtualenv false
python_version 3.14.6
os_name Linux
os_version 6.18.34-haos-raspi
arch aarch64
timezone Europe/Paris
config_dir /config
Home Assistant Cloud
logged_in false
can_reach_cert_server ok
can_reach_cloud_auth ok
can_reach_cloud ok
Home Assistant Supervisor
host_os Home Assistant OS 18.1
update_channel stable
supervisor_version supervisor-2026.07.5
agent_version 1.9.0
docker_version 29.5.3
disk_total 109.3 GB
disk_used 5.4 GB
nameservers
healthy true
supported true
host_connectivity false
supervisor_connectivity false
ntp_synchronized false
virtualization
board rpi3-64
supervisor_api ok
version_api ok
installed_addons Terminal & SSH (10.3.0), File editor (6.0.0)
Dashboards
dashboards 3
resources 0
views 0
mode storage
Network Configuration
adapters lo (disabled), docker0 (enabled, auto), hassio (enabled, auto), vethc0638e3 (disabled), veth59876e5 (disabled), veth7fb1392 (disabled), veth457c720 (disabled), veth77e541b (disabled), veth3314d68 (disabled), veth2358b1d (disabled)
ipv4_addresses lo (127.0.0.1/8), docker0 (172.30.232.1/23), hassio (172.30.32.1/23), vethc0638e3 (), veth59876e5 (), veth7fb1392 (), veth457c720 (), veth77e541b (), veth3314d68 (), veth2358b1d ()
ipv6_addresses lo (::1/128), docker0 (fd6f:273e:2768::1/64, fe80::6c69:61ff:fec3:614d/64), hassio (fd0c:ac1e:2100::1/48, fe80::6809:19ff:fe56:ab10/64), vethc0638e3 (fe80::bc38:2aff:fe98:b4a0/64), veth59876e5 (fe80::e41e:eff:fe76:9ef4/64), veth7fb1392 (fe80::c4fb:cbff:fe55:c86c/64), veth457c720 (fe80::7caf:e8ff:fe4f:b1aa/64), veth77e541b (fe80::4cf7:11ff:fef1:10f9/64), veth3314d68 (fe80::8474:90ff:fe76:a84c/64), veth2358b1d (fe80::80db:4cff:fe5c:e561/64)
announce_addresses 172.30.232.1, fd6f:273e:2768::1, fe80::6c69:61ff:fec3:614d, 172.30.32.1, fd0c:ac1e:2100::1, fe80::6809:19ff:fe56:ab10
Recorder
oldest_recorder_run 28 juillet 2026 à 16:15
current_recorder_run 31 juillet 2026 à 17:04
estimated_db_size 3.94 MiB
database_engine sqlite
database_version 3.53.2
9

I think you posted in the wrong thread. You’re talking about a Pi 3 - they are talking about a Pi 1.

If the original request was if you could run a spare Raspberry Pi 1 as a dashboard display for an existing weather station already connected to an existing HomeAssistant server. The answer to that is yes.

If the question was could it run the HomeAssistant headless server (64bits only) and the dashboard display on the same Rpi 1, then I would say no, as the Raspberry Pi 1 was 32bits only and only 512Mb of RAM, significantly below the specifications needed to run a recent Homassistant server.