Hello
I have been happily running Home Assistant OS preinstallled on a Home Assistant Blue Odroid device simc Feb 2021. I am considering an “upgrade” to an HA Yellow. Even gone so far as to order the HA Yellow PoE with kit version with a Pi CM4 with 32GB eMMC.
However I just realised that my space used for my current setup is about 36GB (inckuding presumably nearly 4 years of data) . I have backups on a NAS share on my network, however it seems I cannot install this backup on the new Pi CM4 as the target eMMC is too small.
Am contemplating buying a CM5 with 64GB eMMC, but this is a) currently out of stock, b) getting pretty expensive and c) more complicated to install ie no USB 2.0
Any advice? Not sure now if worth the hassle and expense.
Main reasons for considering this path are
a) A lot of Zigbee sensors now on my system. Have a SkyConnect dongle which does not appear to work well without repeaters and is quite inelegant trailing down from the server rack (to avoid wifi interference)
b) Starting to use Google AI Integration quite a lot for motion detection
c) Soon installing a ESP-32-S3 box for voice control with the above
d) A growing fleet of Shelly WifI devices
Is it wirth doing and , what would be the best way to accomplish the migrstion\
I’d skip the CM5 on the Yellow and go with a CM4. You can use USB for the install, and it should be cheaper. You gain nothing going with a CM5 at this point. If you need more space than you can get using the built in eMMC, you can also get an NVMe for the Yellow and during install just shove everything on that. I got this NVMe when I setup my Yellow.
It’s 128GB, and was like $20 US. If you go that route, you don’t have to worry about how much storage there is on the CM4 module and focus on finding one with the RAM you want. I got a CM4 with 8GB of RAM because I didn’t want to worry about ever running out of RAM, but a 4GB one would probably be plenty.
Thanks, that was more or less my original intent, but got sidetracked by the space constraint of the 32GB eMMC on the CM4, which is too small to take my current install (36GB including historical data) Any thoughts on how to get around that? Historical energy usage is valuable so I don’t want to ditch
Yeah, not sure. On single core performance it is better, but the Yellow has native Zigbee and allegedly better multicore performance (which is probably not relevant)
Hello, you can simply add the NVMe that pkscout mentioned and move the DataDisk to it, that way you would keep the OS running on the CM4 eMMC but the rest of the data will be moved and stored on the eMMC. If you cannot move your installation to the Yellow because the 32GB eMMC is too small, I would think you should be able to move the DataDisk to the NVMe from the Blue using an USB adapter to make the main setup smaller, but I’m not sure if then the Yellow would detect the NVMe as a DataDisk right away. You could maybe install the HA OS for the Yellow on an NVMe, and then recover from a backup, that way you would have all your data and OS running from the NVMe without needing to worry about the CM4 eMMC at all as pkscout mentioned.
I think some of the ODROID’s are more powerful than the Yellow, the N2+ which was what the Blue used, I think has a more powerful CPU than the Yellow, it has 4 USB ports where you could add Zigbee, Z-Wave or any other needed protocol, or you could even use one of the USB to add external storage for the DataDisk, there is also up to 256GB eMMC now. Other ODROID’s like the ODROID-M1S would be more similar to the HA Green, the M1S has the same CPU as the Green, same number of USB, but double the eMMC on board storage and NVMe Support. The ODROID-M1 would be a half way point in my opinion, more powerful than the Green/M1S and almost as powerful as the Yellow/N2+, the advantage is that it has 4x USB Port and NVMe support. Based on the reasons that nneilboss mentioned, I think switching to the Yellow is the best way to go.
Home Assistant hardly uses any CPU load of my Blue lucky to be 6%. HA seems more memory hungry than CPU hungry, I see around 60% to 70% memory utilisation. I use a Conbee II ZigBee stick, which works flawlessly with zigbee2mqtt. The yellow and green are designed to be a cost effective, plug and play solution for beginners. If you already have a blue, I would just stick with that, more power and more storage.
Andrew, personally I would think the Green is a cost effective Plug and Play but, most distributors only offer the Yellow Kit without CM4/CM5 so you will need to install it (assemble it and install HA), ameriDroid offers some ready to go kits for the HA Yellow which should make it plug and play. I also have a an ODROID-N2+ with a SONOFF Zigbee Plus E module running Zigbe2mqtt, I agree that works flawlessly.
I agree yellow probably not as plug and play as green. But compared to some other installation options a lot easier.
I am considering an x86 install with an HP elite desk 800, i5 and 32mb of RAM, using proxmox. Some of my dashboards get a bit laggy when loading especially when using the 3D Home Digital Twin Card. I have loaded quite a bit onto my blue in 4 years, including Graphana, Influx DB, Node-Red, Arlo Camera’s, 309 devices and 1100 entities, the blue seems to be quite busy.
I am unsure if the upgrade will be overkill or improve my dashboard speed on other devices or if the lags I am experiencing is down to the device I am trying to use the dashboards from.
Thanks all , for the perspectives. On balance, I think I am going to stick with the Blue Odroid N2+ for now and return the CM4 and Yellow. Will see how the hardware stabilises before trying to migrate again. Wish the Blue had come with more memory. Darned itchy buy-trigger finger…
Nick! There is a few ways to add more memory to the Blue! eMMC’s are now available up to 256GB (256GB eMMC) If you get one from us (ameriDroid) make sure to ask us not to send a Kingston Brand unit. Alternatevely if you do not want to deal with the switching the eMMC you can get an NVMe and an NVMe Enclosure, then you can connect that to the N2+ via USB and move your HA OS DataDisk to the external storage. If you meant RAM memory I think the 4GB RAM on the Blue should be more than enough for Home Assistant.