there are a lot of topics about this comparsions, but I think, every topic is unique because of different devices, which will be managed byt this device.
Now I have old laptop, where I have installed Debian Stable as main OS and then Home Assistant in Docker. I have installed also Unifi controller on Debian.
Because old laptop consume a lot of energy, I’m looking for new device for HA.
I’m thinking about:
Intel NUC 7CJYH
Odroid (there are a lot of versions - N2+, C4, H4, H2+, HC2) - but I don’t know, what is the situation with eMMC lifetime and stability and generally with this device
Raspberry Pi4
I would like to have these devices, which will be managed via Home Assistant:
10 motion sensors (maybe Shelly Wifi, or some Zigbee devices)
Video Doorbell
Smoke detector
CO detector
Multiroom audio system (10-12 ceiling speakers)
4 exterior cameras (in future connected to Unifi Cloudkey Gen2 Plus, or another external devices, where will be cameras recorded. So Home Assistant will show output from cameras).
And software managed via Home Assistant (till now)
NodeRed
maybe MariaDB
AdGuard
It not depends, if there will be Linux distro as main OS and then Home Assistant in Docker, or HASSIO as main OS.
Which device will be good for this and why? I’m looking for something more stable, for long time, something with good power consumption and reatively silent.
I run a NUC i3 I bought used, and it’s rock solid. In fact, it’s overkill. Get a NUC Pentium or NUC Celeron for about $200 or less. Home Assistant needs reliable storage and a good CPU. It doesn’t need a LOT of CPU, or a lot of RAM.
I hate the fact that these threads turn into an intel advertisement. Any PC will take the place of a nuc. There are many much cheaper alternatives in a similar form factor.
I use a IBM ThinkCentre TinyPC. I got it cheap 2nd hand from a reputable dealer. It was way cheaper than a similarly specced NUC.
It is a Core i3 2120T with 8G RAM and a 500G SSD drive.
It runs debian 10 with HA supervised and numerous addons including MotionEYE, appdaemon, esphome, grafana, influxdb, node red, zigbee2mqtt, samba, VS code, ssh, portainer, mariadb, mosquitto. It does not break sweat.
This shop (which I have no connection to) is just one example of the stuff you can buy if you want to wait for delivery. Otherwise ebay could be a good source, https://xcyminipc.aliexpress.com/store/817796
I presume reliability would be a major preference? You might have seen this: https://www.home-assistant.io/blue/ Probably future releases of Home Assistant will be matched against this device first.
If you’re planning on adding services and perhaps virtual machines, I’d get a more powerful NUC. Then you can beef up with more DB stuff (and longer history). Perhaps run Blue Iris, or something.
You can get industrial grade SD-cards and run the Pi with. Though not something that I prefer. (Bad experience from SD.)
Note what @nickrout said about his hardware. Similar to my device. “Previously used”. Much cheaper. You don’t need a shiny new device for HomeAssistant, when fully capable devices are available cheaper.
what’s the reason? AFAIK, it would outperform all the OP’s other choices.
“way better”??? how is it better than a Pi4b? Not suggesting either…but “way better” is not exactly helpful information @nickrout
All of the OP’s systems will do the job…the NUC 7CJYH would give the most flexibility with it’s faster processor…but much more expensive. I agree with nickrout that NUC is just a trade name and there are a number of alternatives. I use a Wyse 5070 which has a model with exactly the same processor as the NUC 7CJYH…I actually have the faster 5070 with the J5005 and it cost $100 with 8gb memory and 128gb M.2 used on ebay.
For me, since I already have RPI 4 then the next thing that I added is ArgonOne M2 case which transforms RPI 4 to the next level. It’s now running very fast on 128GB SSD M2 Sata which outperform almost all microSD card.
My current setup is running Debian Supervised method with tons of devices.
It would indeed outperform, but the price per performance ratio on that model is not very good.
To put in perspective. The Celeron J4005 in that model has about double the single core performance of a Pi 4… but it also has half the cores. That does not mean it cancels out, due to better scheduling, pipelines, cache, and memory bandwidth the J4005 can be twice as fast as a Pi 4, but on average it is about 50% faster, while consuming at least that much more power under load.
I only recommend a single model at the moment, NUC8i5BEH. It has double the single core performance of the Celeron, and twice the cores, it ends up being almost 7 times faster than a Pi 4 on average, on the cpu side alone, and can support NVME drives in addition to SATA, allowing orders of magnitude faster database performance, and far less downtime during upgrades. Also it has a pro grade Intel network interface chip, as opposed to the cheap Realtek one on the Celeron NUC.
Yes it costs a lot more, but you get a lot more. It is more than 4 times faster than the Celeron at 3 times the base cost, plus ram and storage. The extra memory support and cores means it can be used as a proper virtualization host. The extra performance if unused for the initial use case means more room to grow without having to replace all the hardware again. Want to run complex flows on NodeRed, along with motion detection and local object/facial recognition on multiple camera feeds? No problem.
I am not saying “buy this or else”, but when you have dozens of devices, each with multiple entities, motion detection, camera operation, and control over power systems and lighting where instantaneous response is desired… go big or go home.
There are a lot of votes for NUC. Yes, NUC (not NUC, which I mentioned, but for example NUC, which richieframe mentioned) has many advantages above the other devices (good CPU, a lot of memory, reliable SSD (or NVM). Only for HA there is maybe overkill, but it can be good for many years stability.
And on the other side, when there is an extra performance, in the future I can add more devices, which will be more complicated (motion detection, …) and generaly, there will be a good space for grow.
With Rpi4, there will be issue with SD card and lifetime, so I should use SSD, but there will be chance, that performance won’t be enought in the future. And last but not least, in this combination the price will be higher and in this price level there is a lot of better devices.
About Odroid, there is official version Home Assistant blue with Odroid, but I don’t know, what is situation with eMMC lifetime.
eMMC is basically just an SD card that you cannot replace, and was pretty much deprecated for performance applications 5 years ago. It has a maximum capacity of 128GB, which is sufficient in many cases, and a maximum bitrate that is fast relative to a quad core ARM chip, but hilariously slow relative to a modern NVME drive (up to 70X slower).
The ARM based ODROID machines all have about the same performance as an rpi4 per core, but max out at 4GB memory. The N2 in the Blue has more cores so it is a bit faster, and has better connectivity options for an automation controller relative to an rpi4.
If the history db is written to an external drive, and using the eMMC for boot and application load, there should not be any reliability issues before the system needs to be replaced. I do not have specs on the PE cycles or write amplification levels for the controller, so I cannot say how reliable it will be if you are pushing over 1000 entities of log/history data to embedded flash… but generally it is not great.
My vote is for my setup; a TrueNAS server which runs HA in a jail or HA in a VM. You get storage, hopefully you buy server grade hardware reliability, multifunctionality, and many other plugins to use.
Not comparable to any of the other options mentioned here. I also run a big TrueNAS box and absolutely would never run HA on it. Besides being completely on your own setting it up, I don’t want my home automation tied to my NAS.
I have run most of the different methods of HASSIO, Home Assistant, etc. and ended up with a NUC on HA OS. It strikes the balance of ease of use, cost, and performance that I’m not sure much else matches.
And what does TrueNAS run on?
It is a question about which hardware is the better option. The OP can choose hardware which can be single or multi-purpose; my preference is for multifunctionality, an aspect not usually considered in most of these type threads. I’m putting another option for consideration, one which serves me well.