Hi all, new to HA but not new to home automation. I’ve decided to take the plunge and move from Hubitat to HA. When I first started with home automation about 5 years ago I would have preferred to start with HA straight away but it looked a bit daunting back then. Things have progressed tremendously in the meantime so congrats and thanks to all who made this such a mature and appealing open source concept!
I’ve been reading up as much as I can to be ready for when my Beelink S12 pro arrives but still have a few questions so hope this community is as great as the Hubitat one has been.
My main question is a determination of HW in combination with virtualisation:
I am on the fence on running HAOS in a VM (Proxmox) or bare and I’m not familiar enough with virtualisation to make the judgement so hoping someone can help me make the choice. I’m not afraid to get stuck in on the virtualisation side though as it’s something I’ve been meaning to get into for a while.
The goal for my system (just bought a Beelink S12 Pro which as many here know is an Intel N100 with 16GB of DDR4 and 500GB SSD) is mainly to run HAOS, Snapcast server and Zigbee2MQTT for starters. I believe Snapcast is supported via an integration (but have read conflicting info on whether it’s playing nice when running as an integration) and of course so does Z2MQTT, so really no need to run virtualised if snapcast works. However, I like to future proof in case something comes up that I’d need to run in parallel and the Beelink should be able to handle quite a few things if needed.
IF I stick with the Beelink then I believe the choice is made.
However, it just dawned on me last night that when I ordered the Beelink I had lost sight of the fact that the touchscreen tablet that I’ve been using as a dashboard interface in the main area of my house is basically a minipc in itself!
I needed a big touchscreen for that spot and android tablets didn’t cut it back then. At that time this is what I bought: Specification AP16 Flex | MSI Global - The Leading Brand in High-end Gaming & Professional Creation
and this MSI tablet wasn’t more expensive than the Android tablet options out there with smaller screens.
This is of course a lot older than the Beelink and runs an Intel Celeron N4000 with same TDP as the N100. It only comes with 4GB of DDR (which I should be able to increase to max 8GB) and 256GB SSD, but I reckon I could still at a minimum run HAOS without virtualisation without too many issues.
The real question then becomes: which option do I go for? I can save quite a few $$$ by returning the Beelink and sticking with the MSI tablet. But would the MSI also be able to run Proxmox or would I have to basically allocate pretty much all the resources to HAOS basically making the whole virtualisation redundant?
Or do I just keep my tablet as the ‘remote control’ for a headless proxmox HAOS install on the Beelink?
Currently I’m leaning towards returning the Beelink but that’s assuming that, even if I run HAOS bare on the MSI tablet, I can still use the tablet in a kiosk type mode with a full screen browser so that it remains the main interface in running the house.
Thanks in advance for any insights you’re able to share. Look forward to becoming part of this community!
I can’t comment on your real question, as I know nothing about your MSI tablet. But I can state that I run HA on Proxmox on a Beelink S12 Pro and it works fantastic. I’ve been using the HA/Proxmox environment for a while now on an old laptop and recently refreshed the hardware to the S12, and it runs fast, cool, and efficient with plenty of headroom for other options as I wish.
Proxmox was not a difficult learning curve, and it provides a very useful layer for things like backups that go well beyond what just HA can do. I have no hesitation recommending it for all but the most complexity-averse users. Especially since there are great guides here that can make the installation a snap.
From what I gathered from it, you can’t run HAOS bare and also run the kiosk mode on the same device. That is possible if you use supervised (which is a bit of a hassle to set up and seems to be discouraged by the devs) or if you use a VM. I did this before, running supervised on a Pi 3B with 1 G of RAM. It worked but it was stretching the hardware to its limits.
I am now doing it with Virtualbox under Mint on an older generation Dell touchscreen laptop with a Pentium 4415U processor and 8GB RAM. It’s plenty for me, but I don’t know what addons and integrations you wan to run that may be heavier.
Ah snap, I knew I shouldn’t have made that assumption!
I definitely don’t want to maintain my own Debian as my Linux skills are seriously limited so Supervised is definitely not for me…
Does HAOS have a browser that I can maximize to cover the entire screen? I’m assuming that you should be able to at least go to the local URL for the headless install from the same device? Which kind of runs counter to the whole headless thing so now I’m even doubting that…
If it’s true headless, then I guess my choice has been made for me and I’ll have to keep instead of cancel the Beelink.
Unless if Proxmox runs smoothly on my HW. Not familiar with Mint, but the Proc that you’re running is certainly beefier than mine.
For the time being, what I can see running as integrations are:
Snapserver
Z2MQTT
WLED
3 Broadlink IR remotes and 1 RF remote
Xiaomi Vacuum
That’s on top of a whole bunch of Zigbee lighting (bulbs, strip and switches)
I was actually leaning towards sticking with the N4000 for now. The Beelink sounds great and I always like to futureproof, but if I’m not going to use half of it even running virtualised and then I don’t need anything else, then I’m throwing away money basically.
Futureproofing could also mean just buying the N100 when I actually need it though and optimizing the ‘investment’ in my home automation by using the N4000 for now and then buying the N100 when I actually need it.
Reason for trying to determine whether the N4000 will be enough, is that the Mrs doesn’t like me to pull this from a setup that’s running perfectly fine at the moment under Hubitat if I then need to roll back or sit around waiting for the N100 if it doesn’t pan out
I’m not that deep into HA, so I may be wrong, but AFAIK there is no way to run a browser in HAOS. You’d think it would be available as an add-on or something like that but I think it isn’t.
Proxmox should take up less resources than running a full OS and VM. HA itself is pretty light, the VM typically takes up 0.6 GB of memory on my system, but I don’t run any heavy integrations.
What I did is go with what I had (the Pi), try it, and only buy something heavier once I decided I liked it. The BeeLink will be far more than enough.
That’s exactly what my Mrs doesn’t want me to do
I need to be sure of whether this will work before I take the tablet out of the setup and start tinkering with it. And as we all know, our home automation stands or falls with WAF
I only started with HA after my divorce, I wouldn’t know about that.
But if you need to set everything up, make your automations etc, there will be some downtime. With a second device, you could run most of it in parallel, though not the Zigbee as you’ll have only one controller. I did find when I was switching that you can plug the controller from one device to the next and it instantly works (network information is stored on the controller not the host).
(edit: this ‘instantly works’ was when switching between two HA instances and using ZHA, and it was after I had set up the integration on the new device. Not sure how it works when you switch from something else than HA)
I’ll be using my Hubitat purely as the Zigbee radio connected to HAOS in the first instance before I buy a dedicated dongle so I should be able to maintain my connections I think.
I just did some digging about the headless stuff and at first I found that you’re right about there not being a browser even for the local IP’s.
But now I’ve just discovered a Firefox add-on for HAOS that I found in the forum so that sounds promising!
Decided to bite the bullet and go for it while the Mrs is asleep, hoping I can make enough progress to minimize the downtime so that I don’t get smacked with a divorce
At least if that does happen, I know I’ll have enough time to sort things out like Allard, except I might not have the house anymore
Just started installing Proxmox for the first time and whatdyaknow, ran into my first issue…
For some reason I had assumed (there I go assuming again) that I’d be able to run Proxmox off the tablet via wifi… guess not. Problem is that my tablet is mounted against the wall in a position where I don’t have any CAT cable so I either need to run to the shops tomorrow to get a very long temp cable that’ll be snaking across our living room or take the tablet off the wall either of which will raise more eyebrows and attract more sighs.
Looking into enabling wifi for Proxmox, aside from being unadvised, seems pretty daunting for a Linux noob. Anyone with any quick fixes by any chance?
I decided to take the plunge on trying this out on the N4000 to test the performance which I’d be happy to report back on, but hadn’t thought as far ahead in terms of the wifi limitation.
I don’t know much about Proxmox so I can not help you with that. I do know that Wi-Fi on VM installations is not supported by HA, I also know that it works just fine in my instance. Only if I enable both wifi and ethernet at the same time, with two different IP addresses, things started to go wrong, but I can understand that.
Maybe I’m missing something here, but the standard model I think you should be aiming for is 1) a server such as your BeeLink running ProxMox/Home Assistant, located somewhere centrally or at least where it has easy cable connection, and 2) a device such as your tablet for display and access that can be anywhere and for which WiFi is fine.
You call that the standard model. From the way HA is set up, it seems indeed like the most well supported model. But it requires two devices. If you have a device available that is equipped and powerful enough to do both tasks, it makes sense to me to unite them. It saves money and other resources.
I don’t think you are missing anything. You simply differ in opinion of what we ‘should be aiming for’.
Edit:in case you mean that it is preferable to have the main device that runs HA connected by cable because it is more reliable: I agree with that.
Exactly right, furthermore given that the device that I was trialing this on has an integrated touchscreen, it is even more counter intuitive to go and run it headless in the storage space where I locate all my tech stuff and where all the wiring is
Had Wifi been supported natively under Proxmox, where the tablet is currently placed it offers a more centralised position for the Zigbee radio had I connected my dongle there, even though I agree it would have been suboptimal from a network latency and/or other issues point of view compared to wired.
Anyway, given where I’m at, I’m just going to keep the Beelink when it arrives on Friday and I’m of course secretly happy about that because hey, who doesn’t love a new toy
I might just do a quick install of HA bare on the N4000 before I restore Windows on it just to already have a play with it in the meantime. I really want to see it firsthand before I make any further incorrect assumptions. Like assuming that just because I found a Firefox add-on, that that would be able to run full screen. From the screenshot I saw in that thread it looks like Firefox runs enclosed in a Home assistant tab so not really a solution either.
The tablet is a mounted on a wall and it’s impossible for anyone to plug something in there in my case…
Nor would anyone want to be standing in front of that wall for any serious amount of time to be doing anything but switching on a light bulb or something like that
