I’m going to add my experiences to this post (ongoing).
I want to speed up HA reboot and ESPHome compile times from my rpi4 4GB w microSD.
I have an old laptop with HDD and 4GB RAM which was destined for the trash. Battery failed long ago.
CPU is Intel i7-3610QM CPU @ 2.30GHz.
Before investing in SSD and memory upgrades, I decided to pull out the HDD, throw it in an external enclosure I have, and flash the generic-x86-64 image to it to see if it would work. I followed the instructions, and had to do the step to add a new EFI entry in bios (no clue, but worked through it), and now Windows is gone and HA is up and running the show. Was relatively easy.
Need to do some more testing.
Investigating removing screen entirely if screen-off no longer works. That’s fine for me.
Like this. Convert a broken Laptop into a Desktop - YouTube
Edit 1: Looks like the screen might always be on now.
Edit 1.1 Hang on no it’s ok. Maybe I didn’t check properly somehow.
Power consumption of laptop is ~ 27 watts with the screen on.
And ~ 22 Watts with the screen off (Lid closed)
I think my full loaded/operational rpi4 consumes ~ 7 Watts (using the same cheap smart plug with power monitoring). Not sure what the “zero values” are all about.
So I’m calling that four times more power consumption for the laptop…
Edit 2: Ordered upgrades.
Adding 8GB will bring it up to 12GB.
About $100AUD.
Initial upgrade resource usage:
Can anyone pick where I cut over;)
