Need help deciding on Raspberry Pi models and RAM (or alternative machines that could run Zigbee)

Installation Home Assistant OS
1

I’m brand new to all of this hub stuff (literally joined the forum today).

As we are all likely aware, there’s supply chain shortages for Raspberry Pi. Home Assistant’s docs recommend the Raspberry Pi 4 with 4GB RAM. Rather than usually costing around $100 USD, they are increasingly hard to find and are usually around $200 USD. I looked into buying the ODROID thing with Home Assistant Blue on it, and it’s also sold out.

However, the used market is ripe with Raspberry Pi 3’s for around $50, so I was curious about what the pitfalls would be of purchasing one of those to set up my new home. Also, would a Raspberry Pi 4 with 2GB of RAM suffice? What issues would I run into, and would that be any more beneficial than getting a Rpi 3?

Here’s my estimated setup:

  • 5 Reolink security cameras (all wifi, I wouldn’t be running these through the device, just using for automations if available)
  • 3-4 Wyze cameras, if I could
  • 6 Sengled door sensors (Zigbee)
  • 6-10 Zigbee motion sensors
  • 1-2 Zigbee water sensors
  • 20ish Sengled dimmable LED bulbs (Zigbee)
  • 5-6 Sengled light switches
  • 5 or so Zigbee LED strips

Let me know!

2

It’s the camera feeds that will be the issue here, especially if you intend to do any filtering or analyzations on the feeds.

Regarding the ZigBee, then a Lidl gateway is cheap and can easily be converted to open source if you are not all too scared with electronics.

3

What sort of hardware would you recommend to run Home Assistant on for my use case?

4

I think I would personally go with a small laptop.
Maybe get a used one with broken screen, but with possibility to use an external screen instead (be careful, some brands will only show BIOS and boot menu on the primary screen though).
If power usage and noise is an issue, then go for a Intel Pentium Silver 5000 CPU or maybe one of the big brothers Intel Pentium Gold 7505 or Intel Pentium Gold 6500Y, which has AVX2.
The advantage of a small laptop is that you have a build in UPS from the get go and its easy to read the charging state and battery status, so no complicated setup in HA to make it shutdown correct.

https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/13113527?baseline=13103059

5

Any old pc will do (within reason). Ex lease websites often have nucs of tiny pcs with an ssd.