I would like to get started with home assistant and for starters I would like to monitor the temperatures around my house and keep a history of data I can look through.
I have a Raspberry pi 3 already so what I was thinking of buying was the following:
16 go usb stick to run home assistant from on the pi.
ConBee signee usb stick ( I’m located in Europe )
10 x xiaomi temperature sensors
Is this all I need to get started ? And will I then be able to expand with for example hue lightbulbs in the future?
You will need an sd card to boot the Pi. I understand there are ways to boot from usb sticks, but its best to start out simple and adjust if you need to.
There is a thread on the forum that describes how to store logs and database on a usb stick, but I found it wasn’t really saving very much.
The reason for choosing a usb stick to boot of was that to my understanding the sd-cards could go corrupt faster because of more limited number of writes.
You can for sure run it from USB but it’s not clear there’s any advantage. Perhaps if you pull the power all the time the SD card will get corrupted but so will a USB. I think it’s similar memory and chip in both anyway so it’s maybe an illusion. Having said that there is a thread in the Hassio forum about doing it.
Good luck.
(Should also add I’m using a genuine Samsung evo plus 32gb and it’s been flawless. Be careful though there’s plenty of counterfeits around. Also make sure you have a good 2.5amp or higher power supply. So cards and power are the biggest issues)
In terms of SD card life, on my media server Pi3 (running Plex, with lots of writes to the SD), it took nearly two years before the SD card started to fail.
All my Pi3 units have a micro SD card reader, a spare (Sandisk Extreme) micro SD card and I use rpi-clone to create bootable backups. Total downtime caused by the corrupted SD card? The same as for a reboot of the Pi3.
If you move the logs and database to a USB stick, and you’re using a good power supply, and you remember to look after your backups (and restores) then you should have no problems until you’ve outgrown the Pi3.
All you really need to get started is the Pi3 (and bits needed to make it work). I’d suggest you start with a single sensor and hub/stick, before you buy more. That way if it doesn’t work the way you want/need you’ve not sunk lots of money into something you’ll regret, and can buy other sensors.