Orange pi 5 with home assistant?

Hardware
22

Hi MaxW, so did you went from RPi4 for Orange Pi 5? How much RAM does each board have? Thanks
I’m very interested in upgrade my RPi3, but I was thinking on RPi4 because I thought that it would be more powerful than Orange Pi.

23

The Orange Pi 5 is more powerful the RaspI4

24

Hi.
I’m about to pull the trigger on an OrangePi 5B with 32GB eMMC, but before I do that, I want to confirm with those who were successful with installing HA on Opi5B, do I need to get an M.2 SSD for it? What would you recommend to add to the shopping list and which guide should I follow to get it all up and running?

Thanks!

25

I don’t think the 5b has an M.2 slot.

26

yes it does have an M.2 slot - the 5b has built-in Wifi 6 vs no wifi on the opi 5

1 Like
27

I bought a cheep transend ssd - works nice

28

I’ve 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 I’m also running grafana, prometheus & nginx-proxy-manager on it. The only reason I haven’t moved postgres over too is that I was already running that on my N2+ and several other apps are using it so it’s not worth the hassle to move it.

The Orange Pi 5 is a much nicer compute server than an rPi 4 if you don’t 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.

2 Likes
29

I’m using this https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BPF4KM68 NVMe drive. I boot from it (instructions are on my blog).

The OPi doesn’t 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.

30

Literally holding a 5b in my hand and there is no M.2 slot.

31

Did you flip it and check the back? :point_down:

image
image1019×568 75.5 KB

http://www.orangepi.org/html/hardWare/computerAndMicrocontrollers/details/Orange-Pi-5.html

This thing (Orange Pi 5) looks just a tiny bit :pinching_hand: more performant that my first HA server which was a Orange Pi One with 512MB of RAM sold for $10 in 2017 :joy:.

32

Yes, we were specifically talking about the 5B version. It does not have an M.2 slot

icon-5B-19
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1 Like
33

aaaaaaand the ssd dieded. 9 Months lifespan. well…
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:

Weird things:

sed -i.bak 's/$/ systemd.unified_cgroup_hierarchy=false/' /boot/orangepiEnv.txt
34

If you want to achieve a higher lifespan (e.g. more than 9 months) it’s advisable to choose a product which uses new and “brand” 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. :bulb:

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 “SSD” that often made of old and low quality flash cells that were intended for the use in lower quality products like usb sticks. :man_shrugging:

2 Likes
35

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 I’m quite sure that if you put Lenovo Tiny (or any other standard PC) in to basements utility spaces, it’s going to have shortened lifetime. And if you want to do AI stuff or NVR (or both), Tiny won’t 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.

36

Are you aware of any NPU/TPU integrated on a SBC that actually works with frigate/HaOS? :thinking:

Because I own a s905x3 device with integrated 1.2 TOPS NPU and it is totally useless :put_litter_in_its_place:

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. :muscle:

37

If it works for you, then it works for you and that’s excellent. If your use pattern depends on some of the advantages you point out below then a nicely spec’d SBC will do the job.

Except…

“Any” is a very wide claim. It’s not conclusive to say “any” because one person’s use might be much more taxing than another person’s.

And while the RK3588 is a very nice ARM CPU, it is slower than even the Intel N100. It’s 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 isn’t 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 won’t 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.

That’s not really true, however. There’s 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 won’t cut it. Actually, AI accelerators on SBCs help some tasks greatly.[/quote]

Won’t it? To be honest, I don’t have any need for this “AI stuff” so I’ve never looked into it. I’m assuming the “AI” accelerators in SBCs are widely supported, easy to use and can be integrated into Home Assistant with minimal effort then?

39

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.

Tesla’s eMMC were burned out, because Tesla was such cheap company they didn’t bother to equip their car with big enough SSD. You know, there’s 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 don’t have. eMMC isn’t really magically worse than SATA or NVME, and you can buy SATA and NVME with bad enduranc. Interface doesn’t 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.

40

[quote=“honkkkis, post:39, topic:498585, full:true”]
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, I’ve 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]
Tesla’s eMMC were burned out, because Tesla was such cheap company they didn’t bother to equip their car with big enough SSD. You know, there’s 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 don’t have. eMMC isn’t really magically worse than SATA or NVME, and you can buy SATA and NVME with bad enduranc. Interface doesn’t 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 doesn’t 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.

Tesla’s 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.

41

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 Opi5’s but didn’t move my own instance to it from the RbPi4 because of the hacs and add-on store

42

Container installation doesn’t support add-ons:

For add-ons you new or HA OS or Supervised. Right now only supervised seems the option in Opi5.