My ideal HA RPI 4 setup!

Hardware
#1

Hi for those who are interested I show you my ideal HA setup to my opinion.

I started some 2 years ago with HA on a Raspberry Pi 4 4GB with a micro SD 64gb. I built my instance overtime until on a day I bricked my SD card (of course) and I lost everything. My strong advice is never to start HA on a SD card whatever they are recommending. Don’t do it!

I stopped with HA for a few months to regain energy to restart the project. And this is the result in terms of hardware which I am using now:

  1. a RPI 4GB
  2. aluminium heat case with a double fan controlled via HA
  3. a Kingston 128Gb SDD
  4. a KNUP SATA to USB 2.0 adapter
  5. a Baseus power bank 45W 20000mah.
  6. a aluminium mounting plate 10x20x.9cm

The result is that’s it’s fast. Cools when needed. Plenty of data space. It’s well protected against power surges. And can run stand alone for at least 12 hours in case of a power dip (not uncommon where I live).

As they say Hardware is for losers but I am quite happy with this:

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2023.4: Custom template macros, and many more new entity dialogs!
Feature Request: Backup Directly to External Storage
#2

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#3

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#4

Interesting setup.

How are you controlling the fan?

#5

Via a thermostat card and a switch over GPIO 18 (requires a transistor and a resistor). I found the setup under fan control RPI in the community

Controlling cooling fan for Raspberry Pi 4

I put the transistor and resistor in the small grey box. I added a blue led to it which lights up when the fan runs

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#6

Hi, interesting setup. I have almost the same setup, except for the Powerbank.

You use the Baseus power bank 45W 20000mah. Is this a so called pass-through-power. In other words, is it continuesly connected to mains, and when mains switches off the Powerbank takes over?
And importantly, have you tested this?

#7

Yes I selected for it, it keeps power on while charging or not and Yes I did and it works perfectly. I did this to protect my SSD against power failures while writing. Of course its also better for your RP. I guess I have about 12 hours of backup power like that.

#8

Nice/interesting setup, but… what is the use of 12h backup power if there is no electricity and there is nothing to control?

#9

True, but once the power comes back (and 12 hrs is extremely rare) your system has nicely been waiting for you to return and continues without a flaw.
More commonly are the short power break of seconds to minutes and the power bank buffers the fluctuations. For me its more protection then back-up.

#10

TBH: in the beginning when I started using HA, I was worried that my system would not be available when there was a power failure and I could not control anything. :blush:
I quickly realized that this would not be an issue since nothing would work anyway.
A few weeks ago this happened for real: power failure and my HA came up soon after restoring and things worked immediately.
Also, the lights (I think all of the smart ones) switched on by themselves.

#11

Yes I know but these power failures and reboots killed my SD card. I lost everything and I decided to go for the overkill. Then again the battery was about 60$ or so and it kept me safe for the last 2-3 years :yum: