Installing Home Assistant on a RPi 4b with SSD boot

If you are using the Argon active cooling addon…You can set the temp levels and the fan will kick in at different % depends on the temp. You can check the documentation.

can’t find any documentation now, at Argon

only Cools the Raspberry Pi as a heatsink and comes with a 30mm software controllable fan

which made me wonder how one can control the software if using HA OS…

I’m referring to the documentation here:

1 Like

Hello
Thanks for your guide I could start Hassio from SSD.

You may want to update the power supply? Minimum recommended is 3A.

ok so Ive been steered away from this method, because it is not officially supported, but also because the described process seems so very complicated.

However, in another thread this was mentioned to work by @milford64:

just replace writing to SD with SSD in the install steps; no need for anything more so its as official as it gets. First boot will take care of all partitioning and everything else. You dont need SD anymore after you saved your snapshot to your computer.

this seems so very simple and elegant, I cant imagine why it wasn’t suggested here?

Could that really be?

If you update the EEPROM firmware, it’s really easy. Just write a HaOS image to SSD mount and run. If you look at the first post in this thread and you have a supported sata adapter it will run in a few minutes. You copy the backup, restore it, and you’re done. Rpi4 8GB boot SSD for almost a year and I did not have a single problem.

1 Like

thanks. the first post is exactly what steered me away from this topic in the first place… :wink:

as I’ve learned today, it can be done in 3 lines too.

only warning from the dev’s: boot issues on OS updates might arise. You haven’t seen that at all?

I have boot issues only if I leave SD card in; without it, boot is fast and without problems.

1 Like

Used your guide Jörg some time ago, worked great after some inital issues.
Now I have this setup with RPi4, Startech and Sandisk SSD running at my summerhouse and I have noticed one strange issue with this installation; it seems to go into a sleep or hibernation state after a few days.
I have very little hardware setup so far, basically just a door open / close sensor (Aqara) same that I use in my regular home.
Seems that as long as I spend time in the summer house everything works fine but as soon as I spend a few days away and there’s no activity the HA goes into sleep or something.
I can’t access the HA web instance and I need to reboot to get it working again.
My feeling of the behaviour is that if there’s no activity that keeps HA “alive” then it goes into sleep or hibernation.
At on instance I had pushbullet send me notfications when someone opens the door (the Aqara switch) and things worked fine as long as I was there, after a few days of me not being there I could not log into the web interface anymore.
Seen that twice now.
I guess I could schedule some activity in Node Red to keep it alive but feels like a bad workaround.
Been using HA in different forms (Hassio OS on RP3/4, Docker on Ubuntu etc) for a number of years but only seen this behaviour on the RPi4 on SSD.
Any thoughts?
Anyone seen the same?
Any settings that I should look at?

How do you reboot when you can not control it via UI?

Mostly when HA is not responding is when the SD card is defect which can not be the case here. The other thing is a bad power supply. Are you sure that the power supply has the correct voltage (5.1V) for the Pi and it is not getting lower when more current is needed?
Is it the original Raspberry Pi power supply?

Rebooting by pulling power supply.
There’s ample of power from the supply (2.5 A I think) but it is not an original Pi supply and as I said, as long as there is activity on the HA everything works fine. It’s after a few days of inactivity I that I can’t connect to it anymore.

2.5 A is not enough. Need 3A minimum. First check your power supply. There is a group of people with your issue (myself included) that posted since November on GitHub. I have two fixes that worked for me. Both are very stable. Either down grade to HA OS 5.4 or below or install Debian with HA as supervisor. The majority of people do not have any issues following the directions as written.

And that can also be not enough! As I wrote the voltage should not go under 5.1V! This can be seen when the red LED of the Pi is off.
The power supply can deliver 10A, but if the voltage is not high enough the Pi is doing strange things!

OK, thanks, but no one is considering the fact that this only happens when there’s no activity on HA.
As long as there are stuff happening, sensors triggering, all is fine!

No outside activity, but maybe Home Assistant is doing internal things then?

I doubt that your HA is really doing nothing when you are away. Have a look into the Logbook menu entry. I bet that you still find activity there. If it really is missing activity: add the sun integration to your configuration.yaml. This should create state change events at least twice a day (above horizon / below horizon).
But I would rather think that something else is happening. Like your internet router going down without external traffic or your housekeeper cutting the power supply when you are away.

Yes, there’s some small activity, I have some weather integrations but still, the pattern is very clear.
Been away 3 times this summer and it happened every time after a day or two. During 2 weeks of consecutive stay all worked fine.
I will for the sake of troubleshooting not login to the web interface for a few days and I will disengage the aqara door sensor while I’m here and observe if it happens a fourth time.
No housekeeper here and the router was replaced a few weeks ago since it was old and I thought it was the culprit. Now there’s an Asus RT AX 56U.
Regarding USB voltage, has the RPi manufacturer really decided to divert from the specified 5.0 volts as dictated by the USB standard?

@bschatzow , what is it in HA OS 5.4 that makes it less power hungry?

The original Pi 4 power supply delivers 5.1V and 3A.
But I think the low-voltage warning with the red LED going off is somewhere at 4,63V. And if you have a bad (for the Pi) power supply the voltage goes below this when the power supply needs to deliver 3A.
Most of the power supplies for smartphones are such bad ones. When they should deliver high current they drop the voltage.
Or it is possible that the SSD is drawing more than 1.2A (I am not 100% sure about this value) which is the maximum the USB 3 ports of the Pi 4 can deliver. So the SSD is switching off and the Pi is getting disk i/O errors.