Hi All
I am hoping to get a bit of guidance around my set-up and I'm sure there are going to be a few options, but I am currently going around in circles.
My original set-up was RPi5 with RPOS. I installed Magic Mirror and then set-up docker containers for HA and HA Music Assistant. I then have a Dell touchscreen monitor and on the whole it has been working well (a few issues with two of our Daikins, but nothing major)
I realised that I had almost maxed out the mini SD card and so were looking at other options. I mentioned to my husband about some people use mini-PCs and i then ended up with a GMKtek mini PC. I have had many people on other posts on fb that HAOS is so much better than through a container, so I went ahead and installed HAOS on the mini-PC. I have now got this working (a few issues with some integrations, but not a huge problem). However, I have since found out the HAOS is headless and I cannot use a browser from the mini-PC. I am currently using the RPi imager to put an Android OS on the RPi to then run a browser to display HA, but I am not sure if this is the best approach. I also have a Synology NAS which I do put some backups on and I would ideally like to transfer a backup of the NAS to the mini-PC if possible as that has all our photos and my music.
We recently had issues with the touch screen, but I have a feeling that the mini-HDMI plug might have been knocked a bit, but not sure.
If it helps:
OS: HA OS 17.3
HA Core: 2026.5.1
Mini PC: GMKtec Nucbox G10
There are lots of ways to skin this cat, if you want the whole thing self contained, you can run HAOS in a VM.. i use Fusion on MacOs, but simular setups will work on Windows and Linux as well. This setup will allow you to use the desktop browser to access HA.
if it doesn’t need to be self-contained, then i’d recommend fully kiosk browser on an inexpensive android device. It’s very easy to set up and powerful.
Thanks for the response.
If I was to set up a VM on the mini-PC, will the HAOS function any differently? I have run it in docker for a while and this was fine, but I've had lots of responses to previous issues about running HAOS and not in docker. If I then want to install Music Assistant and EMHASS do I need to go back to docker or will this work this way. Ideally it would be nice to just use the Mini-PC so my son can play with the RPi, but in the meantime it seems to be working.
I finally managed to get the monitor to work, not too sure if I have done it correctly, but seems to work. I did follow quite a few you tube tutorials, but could not get MindtheGapps installed and google play store. I tried logging into the web based google store and couldn't log into my account.
Anyway, I have Emteria installed and eventually worked out when I couldn't boot to recovery, found I could download the HA Companion App and could also log into HA from the inbuilt browser. It also had a kiosk feature which I have enabled.
How about proxmox? I ran HA on it for quite a while, regarding speed it's same as running bare HAOS, and you can install tons of other stuff in proxmox, either on VM's or in LXC (containers).
There's also some "addon" to run browser and display HA dashboard on same mini pc's output, i know i did try it and it worked, but i'd have to browse a bit about where i found that instructions. But i know it can be done.
I've seen lots of people mentioning Proxmox, but don't really know much about it. This has been a little crash course in linux, javascript (did learn a bit of this years ago, though suspect it was more jscript!). My "coding" experience has really been VBA with MS Access and excel. If it makes a difference, we don't have any vlan/network at all. We are just running wifi through TP-Link.
Yeah, proxmox is a learning curve, i agree. Basically it's an 'operating system', specifically designed to create and run multiple VM's and containers.
It's not fully clear to me what do you want to achieve as you mix multiple requets in the post.
Setup HA -> Use your PI5 with USB-C adapter to a SSD could do the job. I was in this setup with a PI4 4GB for years without issue. Advance setup would be to move to Proxmox: you can use a small setup mini-PC like intel N100 cpu with 16GB with SSD and run a VM with HAOS + some LXC containers like Immich (photos). No issue at all.
Either you use apps (before was called add-on) into your HAOS to run Music assistant, zigbee2mqtt, ESPHome, Mosquitto or you go trough another externalization layer with help of LXC container - kind of small system-level virtualization technology used to run multiple isolated Linux systems).
It's really easy to install Proxmox and you can use https://community-scripts.org/ to have container/VM ready out of the box using very minimum CLI.
You can have both running at same time if you want to play with Proxmox. Keep your production instance on PI5 till you are confident with your next solution but for that you need to set another vlan on network + make proxmox vlan aware (easy). (you could even have 2 HAOS running on Proxmox)
Dashboard: Depends of your hardware but there are many possibilities, either using web browser (with browser-mod can help here) or android tablet (via companion app) or IOS (but don't ask me about it, I'm not exploring this part )
Not sure whether you mean You "Solved" your concern or you installed on the RPI ? ( Which you want to use for other purposes )
As You basically just need something which have a web Browser, most "old" Devices could work, as long as you can install a slimmed OS with a Browser.
This Device IP you can Block in Your Router for External Traffic. ( Just for simplicity/safety )
A old PC-Stick(over WIFI), connected direct to the Monitors HDMI, or another low power consumer device(over WIFI-LAN) will do fine, with i.e android or linux ( Even a slimmed WIN 7-10 ) ( And ofcause a port for Your Monitor )
PS: I haven't tried but i wonder whether you actually can Boot any old Devices with a BOOT-CD/DVD with an OS/Browser on,and connect to HA (i will actually Test my self)(I report back ... after this Summer ...maybe)
@zigomatic and @boheme61 I'm not surprised you both weren't sure what I was trying to achieve as I really am not sure what I wanted or expected. I thought that installing HAOS direct onto a mini-pc would give me add-ons/ apps, more memory and would be able to plug the monitor directly into it and I would display HA with a browser!
My husband wanted me to run EMHASS and I got myself so confused with portainer (again) and the memory was about 97% that I thought we would be better with HAOS.
For the time being I have now managed to install HAOS direct to the mini-pc and android onto the RPi5, so it is working fine, just I'm using 2 devices instead of 1. I leave it as is for now, but when I have better brain space, I will have a look at some of these other suggestions (I do love a challenge and a chance to learn new things).
I'm having issues with some of the integrations that are no longer working, so will find the relevant forum category to post there, but thank you all for all the help and suggestions
I also prefer HAOS, have 3 Instance Running, i was only referring to the fact that anyhow one needs a Browser as HA is basically a Web-Server, Even a Container Installation
VM = Virtual Machine. There is no difference as far as HAOS is concerned between a physical machine and a virtual one. Even the drivers HAOS sees are the same. HAOS doesn’t know the difference.
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