Raspberry Pi 3 Installation

[vortex1701]

I am about to give up on using Home Assistant. Have been using it for multiple years on a Raspberry Pi. I had a crash recently due to my SD card and had to reinstall and now running in nothing but problems.
Installation goes fine without any issues but when trying to install Apps the trouble. Trying to install HACS, MQTT or Samba either stalls or seems to complete but then afterwards I am getting random resets. Even just trying to look at a log causes crashes.

I tried booting from a different SDCard, switched booting to USB from a SSD. Nothing helps. About to give up. The version that is being installed with the Raspberry Pi Imager is from 30-07

[tom_l]

@vortex1701

The version that is being installed with the Raspberry Pi Imager is from 30-07

Shouldn’t matter. The first thing a new install does is check for updates.

If you have replaced the SD card then the next major cause of instability is the power supply, especially if you have power hungry peripherals like an SSD.

[vortex1701]

The issues already started when booting from the new SD card but will give it a try.

[fleskefjes]

The Raspberry Pi 3 is no longer recommended, it’s too weak. I’m betting you would get a much better experience using something more modern with more compute power and some proper storage. Raspberry Pi - Home Assistant

[CaptTom (Tom)]

I’m a RPi 3B+ refugee myself. That thing worked great. I never had a problem with the hardware. But HA has grown over the years, and right now even the leanest, most bare-bones install consumes all the memory available on that platform, and will crash at the slightest increase in memory demand.

I was ultimately forced, kicking and screaming, to admit that this wasn’t going to be viable any longer. At around that time, a family member got a new laptop, and their old one became available. So far it’s been great. Built-in battery backup and plenty of room for HA to spread out, with more than an order of magnitude more memory than the poor old PI could muster.

Another alternative I was looking at was off-lease mini computers or laptops, which could be had relatively cheaply at the time, although I don’t know what the current market offers.

One thing which was never an option was a new RPi. They’re just not cost effective any more. It’s kinda sad. Those were revolutionary in their time from a price/power perspective.

[stevemann (Stephen Mann (YAML-challenged))]

@CaptTom

One thing which was never an option was a new RPi. They’re just not cost effective any more.

You can buy a used Intel NUC i5 on eBay for less than the cost of a new Raspberry Pi5, and the NUC will outperform the Raspberry in every performance metric.

[patrikg]

As a user of HA on Raspberry Pi 3 Model B Plus Rev 1.3.
I struggle to update the HAOS/CORE/SUPERVISOR/APPS because of the memsize of only 1GB.
So when I update, I have to take down all containers(apps) as a workaround.

I can run:

• OpenThread Border Router
• Matter Server
• Zigbee Home Automation

But I know thats the way i have to deal with.
And very happy with that.

[vortex1701]

Thanks everybody, I decided to repurpose the Raspi 3 and went with a mini PC with Proxmox

[macmpi]

You could have a second thought and still use HA on a 1MB Pi3 with a streamlined container setup and RAM compression with zram: check this and linked automated setup (can work on any platform in fact).

[patrikg]

And one thing to this conversation.

2026.8: Approachable by design

In my setup with a RPI3B i have only 1GB memory, and it have some problems also when updating. I think it’s OOM’s when updating. And as a Raspberry PI user, I also suggest to change the config.txt file to add the line gpu_mem=16 to max out available memory. Therefore, we who run headless don’t need that much memory for the GPU, just keep in mind that you do this on your own terms and I guarantee that it may not work for you. Add the Advanced SSH & Web Terminal. And set the Protection mode to …

2026.8: Approachable by design

@patrikg Thank you! I believe that was the issue. It’s a headless system, and it’s default was set to gpu=76M. It has 1G of memory, based on the free -h command output. I found various Out of memory: killed process (hass-configurat) messages using the dmesg | grep -i -E "memory|gpu|oom" command. I am pretty sure that’s a sure indication that the update process is getting cancelled due to memory. I set gpu=16M as suggested - the update made it to 84% (versus 30%) this time, but still looks…

[doyajii1 (HK Ra)]

I am still using Raspberry Pi 3 B+, with bare minimum like a dashboard with 4 tabs, 14 integrations(including ones like bluetooh, backup, zigbee home automation, tp-link smart home, carrier infinity, and august for yale lock), and no camera viewer type of integration.

I was able to install/upgrade to latest but had to reboot before starting upgrade core.
However, the document does say minimum raspberry pi 4 with 2gb ram.