yes it does have an M.2 slot - the 5b has built-in Wifi 6 vs no wifi on the opi 5
I bought a cheep transend ssd - works nice
Iâve been running HA for a couple of months now in a docker container on an Orange Pi 5. I got a 16GB model with a 512GB NVMe drive, and Iâm also running grafana, prometheus & nginx-proxy-manager on it. The only reason I havenât moved postgres over too is that I was already running that on my N2+ and several other apps are using it so itâs not worth the hassle to move it.
The Orange Pi 5 is a much nicer compute server than an rPi 4 if you donât need WIFI or need the GPIO pin out to exactly match an rPi.
For $139 on the Big River you get 2x the cores, 2x the RAM, and NVMe disk performance that crushes even a USB3 drive on my rPi 4.
Iâm using this https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BPF4KM68 NVMe drive. I boot from it (instructions are on my blog).
The OPi doesnât ship with screws to hold the drive in the M2 slot, and neither did the SSD, so I ended up having to buy a bag with a half dozen in various sizes https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09J113XZS.
Literally holding a 5b in my hand and there is no M.2 slot.
Did you flip it and check the back?
http://www.orangepi.org/html/hardWare/computerAndMicrocontrollers/details/Orange-Pi-5.html
This thing (Orange Pi 5) looks just a tiny bit more performant that my first HA server which was a Orange Pi One with 512MB of RAM sold for $10 in 2017
.
aaaaaaand the ssd dieded. 9 Months lifespan. wellâŠ
I ordered a new one, same type, and had huge problems getting that stuff to work.
Little did I know/recognize that this SSD is an SATA model, not an NVME.
Seems like my existing setup booted from an SD-Card and then mounted the SSD to /
. It worked, but looking back it was an ugly solution.
New try with another SSD, this time NVME. Some notes for anyone in need:
- I ordered a new SSD from Amazon.de: SSD 256GB M.2 2242 NVMe SHARKSPEED 42mm PCIe Gen 3.0x4 - https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0C7ZK39XS/
- Downloaded the latest bulleye debian from the orangepi website and flashed with Balea Etcher onto a small 8GB SD-Card
- Booted that card and followed this tutorial:
Orange Pi 5 NVMe/SATA SSD Boot Guide - James A. Chambers - After removing the SD Card, and successfully rebooting from the NVME I enlarged the fs with
fs_resize /dev/nvmefoobaar
- Followed GitHub - home-assistant/supervised-installer: Installer for a generic Linux system to install the supervisor, but ran it like
BYPASS_OS_CHECK=true apt install ./homeassistant-supervised.deb
to not get warned about the âunsupportedâ os (and chooseraspberrypi4-64
if asked)
Weird things:
-
To connect a network drive, for e.g. backup purpose, I needed to install
cifs-utils
sudo apt update && sudo apt install cifs-utils
(see e.g. Network storage not working on Supervised (Debian 12) · Issue #318 · home-assistant/supervised-installer · GitHub) -
Changing MAC Address:
After each reboot it assigns itself a new MAC. This doesnât bother me really as I neither restart it often, nor do I rely on it. But I get some mail from my FritzBox (ISP Box) that a new device was detected. -
cgroup
wrong: IIRC i did this:
sed -i.bak 's/$/ systemd.unified_cgroup_hierarchy=false/' /boot/orangepiEnv.txt
If you want to achieve a higher lifespan (e.g. more than 9 months) itâs advisable to choose a product which uses new and âbrandâ flash cells. Typically that means to buy your SSD from a manufacture that is also producing flash cells⊠which are only a few world wide anyways: Samsung, WD/Sandisk, Transcend and probably one more I forgot.
Specially for data(base) intensive application like HA it can be quite a short show if one opt-in for the cheapest and/or creepiest (e.g. not advertising TBW) available âSSDâ that often made of old and low quality flash cells that were intended for the use in lower quality products like usb sticks.
Orange Pi 5 is more than adequate for any home automation purposes. And it will use much less power. And there has been no need to use SD cards for years, because SBCs do have eMMC and m.2 slots.
And that Lenovo Tiny isn*t that tiny, when you factor in its power brick. Same thing with any mini PC and/or old laptop. And Iâm quite sure that if you put Lenovo Tiny (or any other standard PC) in to basements utility spaces, itâs going to have shortened lifetime. And if you want to do AI stuff or NVR (or both), Tiny wonât cut it. Actually, AI accelerators on SBCs help some tasks greatly.
To summarize it, mini PC is bad choice compared to powerful SBC because of many reasons.
Are you aware of any NPU/TPU integrated on a SBC that actually works with frigate/HaOS?
Because I own a s905x3 device with integrated 1.2 TOPS NPU and it is totally useless
In the end I went with old x64 thin client and coral tpu. The performance boost over all is amazing and I got it shipped used for $50 with everything in the box.
If it works for you, then it works for you and thatâs excellent. If your use pattern depends on some of the advantages you point out below then a nicely specâd SBC will do the job.
ExceptâŠ
âAnyâ is a very wide claim. Itâs not conclusive to say âanyâ because one personâs use might be much more taxing than another personâs.
And while the RK3588 is a very nice ARM CPU, it is slower than even the Intel N100. Itâs fairly trivial to find i5 based small from factory PCs (Lenovo Tiny) on eBay with an SSD and 8GB of RAM because these were sold by the millions and widely deployed. Performance and capability wise, they are well above the majority of SBCs.
[quote]
And it will use much less power. And there has been no need to use SD cards for years, because SBCs do have eMMC and m.2 slots[/quote].
It would entirely depend on the the SBC of course. And note that eMMC isnât equivalent to a real SSD on SATA or M.2. It is entirely possible to burn out eMMC and there have been high profile cases of this happening (ie. Tesla). Database use is absolutely not something I would ever trust to eMMC based on my experience.
I guess that depends on how tight one is for space. If space concerns are such that a 7" x 7" x 1.5" device with a power adapter about the size of any standard laptop power adapter wonât fit, and a SBC in case with a power adapter (and potentially external SSD case) fits, then the choice is dictated. That seems to be a very narrow limitation however. I doubt this is a factor for the vast majority of users.
Thatâs not really true, however. Thereâs nothing in a basement or utility room that would shorten the lifespan of a small form factor PC. And if there is (such as extreme temperatures or humidity), then it could certainly shorten the lifetime of an SBC as well.
Lenovo Tinys are widely deployed in many extreme environments. And if that is truly a large concern in the installation, then Lenovo makes hardened Tinys designed for this use. At a price premium, of course.
[quote]
And if you want to do AI stuff or NVR (or both), Tiny wonât cut it. Actually, AI accelerators on SBCs help some tasks greatly.[/quote]
Wonât it? To be honest, I donât have any need for this âAI stuffâ so Iâve never looked into it. Iâm assuming the âAIâ accelerators in SBCs are widely supported, easy to use and can be integrated into Home Assistant with minimal effort then?
Have seen some boiler rooms, not everyone uses gas for heating. They can be hot and they can be dirty. For sure, it shortens life of Tiny/NUC and SBC too, but guess which one stops running first in same hot and dirty environment? It will be that PC with tight packed electronic, multilayered borads (RAM, wifi) and possibly complex cooling. SBC is easier to clean up regularly also.
Teslaâs eMMC were burned out, because Tesla was such cheap company they didnât bother to equip their car with big enough SSD. You know, thereâs write endurance rating nowadays for SSD, usually specsed in multiples of memory device capacity. eMMC has wear leveling in controller, just like SATA and NVME devices. Memory cards donât have. eMMC isnât really magically worse than SATA or NVME, and you can buy SATA and NVME with bad enduranc. Interface doesnât guarantee anything itself.
And finally, why buy old desktop/laptop to run something important, you never know what kind of beating it has gotten? When you buy new, you have reasons to believe it will last intended use. And it will have warranty.
[quote=âhonkkkis, post:39, topic:498585, full:trueâ]
Have seen some boiler rooms, not everyone uses gas for heating. They can be hot and they can be dirty. For sure, it shortens life of Tiny/NUC and SBC too, but guess which one stops running first in same hot and dirty environment? It will be that PC with tight packed electronic, multilayered borads (RAM, wifi) and possibly complex cooling. SBC is easier to clean up regularly also.[/quote]
In my nearly 3 decades of professional IT work since 1995, Iâve installed equipment in nearly every environment out there. If you think the boiler room is bad, try a paper mill or a recycling plant. 100% humidity, 35C, 24/7. Or a machine shop with a loading bay open to the world in which not only is everything covered with a fine layer of increasing metal dust but the equipment is exposed to -40 to +40 temperature swings.
Standard PC hardware, while not ideal (I always recommended sealed systems, which are always overruled due to cost) seems to last fine.
Of course, one should always choose the system based on the environment and if a SBC is the best choice, then it should be used.
There are however Tiny/NUC style systems that use no fans and are relatively well sealed. Certainly more sealed up than most SBC cases out there. With no active cooling needed, there are no fans to fail and no dust/gunk sucked through the chassis.
All SBCs use multi-layer circuit boards. There is simply no way to build these things to size using only a single or double sided board. Multi-layer boards have been commonly used since the '60s.
[quote]
Teslaâs eMMC were burned out, because Tesla was such cheap company they didnât bother to equip their car with big enough SSD. You know, thereâs write endurance rating nowadays for SSD, usually specsed in multiples of memory device capacity. eMMC has wear leveling in controller, just like SATA and NVME devices. Memory cards donât have. eMMC isnât really magically worse than SATA or NVME, and you can buy SATA and NVME with bad enduranc. Interface doesnât guarantee anything itself.[/quote]
eMMC wear leveling is more similar to SD cards than SSD. The hint is in the name, with eMMC being a subset of the MMC storage standard. That doesnât make it worse, that makes it different. The issue there is, that eMMC is a bit harder to replace than SSD as most of the time (not always) eMMC is soldered to the board. If longevity and warranty coverage is important as you indicate below, eMMMC may not be the right choice.
Teslaâs eMMC issue was a combination of factors. Not having enough over provisioning, and mistreating the eMMC with many small inefficient writes. The sure way to burn out any MMC based storage and up until recently, a real problem with HA due to the database schema/handling.
One thing to note is that eMMC usually has a lot less over-provisioning than SSD due to expected use patterns and cost goals. That in itself can drastically reduce eMMC endurance vs. SSDs. One hopes that a eMMC storage is chosen based on the expected workload.
New Tinys and NUCs are available from many vendors with warranties if a warranty is a concern.
Used equipment is fine. One would give it a once-over before putting it into production. Used enterprise grade hardware (such as hardened Tiny/NUC style systems) is still very inexpensive and built to a far better standard than the majority of SBCs.
I have installed a lot of new equipment over the years only to have it fail shortly after. Stuff sometimes just fails. Being new does not negate this.
I have installed HA via docker on the Opi5 for my neighbour. Works great but I can not seem to get Hacs on it. Did anyone have a solution for the docker version of HA? I have 2 Opi5âs but didnât move my own instance to it from the RbPi4 because of the hacs and add-on store
Container installation doesnât support add-ons:
For add-ons you new or HA OS or Supervised. Right now only supervised seems the option in Opi5.
Correct, sad but true, hope we will be able in the near future, Opi5 is a nice platform for me
Uau the Cosmo guy is arround here too!
Not really. If it still works well with less cpu power and less energy, itâs not downgrade. No reason to over-spec. Besides, even all the arguments about SD cards etc. are no more valid, because even cheap/mid-priced boards have at least eMMC, many do have m.2.
eMMC is not equivalent to SSD though. It is more equivalent to a âslightly better SD cardâ.
There are actually many valid reasons to overspec and it is unfortunately a lesson I have learned time and again. It is difficult to judge future use cases and as weâve seen, Home Assistant hardware requirements continue to creep up.
In my opinion anyway, the largest advantage of a small form factor computer is that it is a known, assembled package that comes with everything needed. No need to figure out a case, add an MMC, make sure a power supply is up to spec. Even a 5 year old Tiny is going to be faster than any equivelant priced SBC.