Installing Home Assistant on a RPi 4b with SSD boot

Using the built in raspberry Bluetooth. How can I switch to 2.4GHz does it help?

My 2+mth old setup now has some issue… It goes into a boot loop. Not sure what is happening.
Anyone might know?
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I assume you have your SSD connected via Usb3?

Then there’s literally nothing you can do with software, as the connector seems to be badly shielded on the Raspberry (or everyone in this thread buys the same unshielded chinaware).
You can attach the SSD to an Usb2 port or you can try an Usb bluetooth adapter with a well shielded extension cable.

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Updated the guide (it was about time!):

  • SSD boot and Pi4 with up to 8GB are now officially supported.
  • Updated adaptor recommendation from ELUTENG to StarTech.
  • Added hint to and recommendation for ODROID-N2+ and Home Assistant Blue.
  • Added info about a sufficient power supply.
  • Added info about different boot EEPROM versions.
  • All HA OS version references updated to v5.10.
  • Added warning about HA OS versions 5.6 to 5.8 with boot EEPROM update code.
  • Updated references to current stable boot EEPROM to 2020-12-14.
  • Added general warning about Pi4 boot firmware problems and link to release list.
  • Added warning about USB3 interference with Zigbee, Zwave, …
  • Added section “Compilation of facts” to sum up details and infos.
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Yes. As indicated in the last update of the guide.-

A warning about USB3
USB3 signal frequencies can greatly interfere with WLAN, Zigbee, ZWave, Bluetooth, enOcean.
Use a USB male to female adapter cable to move your radio devices away from the Pi.
Connect your USB sticks to USB2, not USB3.

Check this Installing Home Assistant on a RPi 4b 8GB with SSD boot

I have made a feature request for this: RPi4 EEPROM version information in HA
If you believe it make sense, please vote.

I think the last suggestion “Connect your USB sticks to USB2, not USB3.” wouldn’t help at all, because the issue here is Usb3 devices connected to Usb3 ports. If you connect a Usb2 device to a Usb3 port there will be no issues. Same as with Usb3 devices on Usb2 ports.

Only Usb3 devices with established Usb3 communication operate in the 2.4 Ghz range, so the suggestion would be to attach your Usb3 devices (e.g. your SSD adapters) to Usb2.

I think connecting the usb3.0 adapter to a 2.0 port could solve the problem, but the transfer speed would be slower and therefore not the best option in my opinion.

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this is dam confusing, I just update the eeprom (2021/1/8) to latest and it show up to date with 2020-12-11, there 2020-12-14 - Promote pieeprom-2020-12-11.bin to stable - STABLE. So you expect 2020-12-14 or later and sudo rpi-eeproom-update return 2020-12-11, enought to lost your head around …

well, will continue your tutorial from here with 2020-12-11 (up to date)

EDIT: Happy end ;-)) restore my 2020-12 snapshot on latest 2021-1 and it’s up and running thank you all.

Eluteng USB 3.0 to SATA Adapter 90 degree(X0016R5VW1) & YUCUN 480GB (for media)

no problem with 2020-12-11, booted my rpi4 with this update 2 weeks ago

You are so right:
2020-12-11 is the current stable (NOT 2020-12-14).

The release list is a bit confusing:
On 12-14 the version 2020-12-11 was promoted from beta to stable. But the version number is still 2020-12-11, so that is the stable version now.

I fixed that in the guide.

I just installed ESPHome on HA 5.10 64-bit.
Then I compiled, downloaded and flashed the first binary.
Then I changed the node, compiled and uploaded OTA.
All without problems. Entities appear in the ESPHome integration. Everything fine.

I encountered two pitfalls but they had nothing to do with the version of HA: Nodenames have to be all lowercase and there is a problem with the download of the bin file that is solved by reloading the HA page in the browser before starting to compile. These are generic problems not related to 64 bit.

Just Installed HA 5.10 using the steps on top of this thread.
I used a SSD adapter that is stamped ‘Delock’ and a Kingston A400 240GB SSD and got it to work flawlessly on USB-2
USB-3 won’t work unfortunatly.
I’m not sure its worth to buy a StarTech adapter just for USB-3?

Some hints from this noob for other noobs…
Upon the first boot on SSD I kept checking my IP over https…the vanilla HA install isn’t listening there, so use http:// ;).
Restore can take a while, it took 20 minutes to restore my 48MB snapshot.

Thanks Jörg, this was holding me back to switch to a 8GB RPI 4b with SSD boot but with your confirmation that Esphome should work I’ll will give at a go.

Hi everyone, just bump into this document from Intel explaining the USB3.0 interference in 2.4GHz. It also suggesting the way to mitigate the interference (starting at page 13 -17) which I think it’s worth to try for those having issues.

Just for sharing.

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This is now the 4th time this document is mentioned, might be nice to include it in the first post.

The problem with the Raspberry is the USB3 port being so close to the Wifi chip (it’s a single board computer after all). It might also well be that the USB3 connector itself is badly shielded.

It might be worth a few minutes to experiment with tinfoil as suggested, though. I personally only had problems with Wifi, which were easily resolved by using a wired connection (generally a smart idea). Zigbee works perfectly fine here with my Aeotec stick being not attached directly - would be too wide anyhow.

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Hi everyone, and especially @Jpsy thanks for this guide. Based on the steps provided I’ve installed HA 5.10 / 2020.12.7 on the following list of hardware (I’ve added EAN for reference):

  • Raspberry Board Pi 4B 8Gb (RPI4-MODBP-8GB / EAN: 0765756931199)
  • Raspberry Pi 15.3W USB-C Power Supply (T7730DV / EAN: 0644824914886)
  • Startech SATA to USB Cable with UASP ( USB3S2SAT3CB / EAN: 0650308546962)
  • Kingston SSD 120 GB (SA400S37/120G / EAN: 740617261196)

One small comment on the guide, are the instructions related to “Use raspi-config to set boot config to SSD boot

Both options for Boot Order and Bootloader Version are found under “Advanced Options” (in the main menu) of raspi-config.

Advanced Options --> Bootloader–> latest … etc…
Advanced Options --> Boot Order–>… etc.

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With this SSD setup, would you suggest using locally saved MariaDB as recorder or stock recorder?

I tried Maria on my Pi3 when I thought that HA choked because of DB performance bottlenecks. (I did not realize at first that my system was running out of memory.) With the Pi4 with 8GB the standard Sqlite DB of HA is so fast that I see no reason to replace it. My recorder is set to hold 30 days of history. The DB file is approx. 4GB in size. And it stays fast and responsive.

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Thanks @Egon, guide updated.

Added to the guide. Thanks @tldp, @KCYeoh and all the others who mentioned it.