I’m running a raspberry pi 3, with an aeotec zstick 7, and 35 invovelli red series lights. The memory usage on the pi is often around 80% or greater. CPU usage normally under 10%. Just wondering, would I see better zwave controller performance with zwave Js and zwave JS UI if I upgraded to a raspberry pi 5?
I had a similar setup a year or two ago, running HA on a Pi3B+ which has 1GB RAM. Usually things seemed to work, but there were a lot of glitches like devices disappearing or slow response.
The Pi memory utliization was hovering around 80+%. That seemed OK, until I realized that the Pi, like most OSes, tries to keep some minimal amount of memory free at all times. It accomplished that by “swapping” data from its RAM to whatever slower storage it has available - e.g., an SD card or perhaps an SSD if you’re using one. So even if your memory utilization is only at 80% or so, you may not have enough memory for HA to operate as it should.
When that “swapping” activity becomes continuous it is called “thrashing”. Basically the system spends much of its time moving data back and forth between RAM and SD card. In the old days using hard disks, you could hear the disks clicking madly. With SD or SSD there’s no moving parts so the system is silent.
As a result, things slow down and eventually start to break. As HA evolves with new releases, or as you install more devices or integrations, memory needs increase. AFAIK, HA never complains about shortage of memory (RAM). It just starts acting weird in various ways.
In my case, I replaced the Pi3B+/1GB with a Pi4/8GB, running the same configuration of HA by simply restoring a recent backup. Memory utilization stabilized at around 1.3 GB – quite a bit more RAM than the Pi3 had. Everything started to work fine and has been for over a year now. RAM matters – a lot.
You didn’t say how much RAM your Pi has, but if it’s a 1GB model, I suggest trying a Pi with more RAM. You may not need the speed of a current Pi for the devices you’re using now, but RAM is probably more important.
Ok. Appreciate the input. I have the 1GB RAM model.