Good morning!
So, I would like to change the HW of my Raspb Pi4 2GB to 4GB. Given that the prices are practically the same with the Pi5, I was considering it. The question is, I haven’t heard good things about the Pi5 due to some issues with HomeAssistant (maybe old issues). The Pi4 should only connect a cable but the Pi5 should proceed with a restore to a backup (It is however a different HW).
I’m really very undecided. Are there such big differences in performance?
If you want big performance increase for a similar price, buy a NUC. Any one of them in the same price category (considering case, cooling, ssd and power supply) will outperform the pi. And you’ll have a nicer looking package, with capacity to spare.
As for the transfer, I went from a PI4 to a NUC last year, both on HAOS with lots of addons and integrations. The backup restore was seamless. If you can get the new device to run on the same IP address then it is even easier.
I was definitely expecting this answer. I honestly had also thought about this solution for a long time… the thing is, first of all I have a good confidence with Raspberry and the community is very large, in case of problems you always have a good chance of solving (same HW, same SW and same problem) if you have a NUC the HW can vary and the behavior can be different for each type of setup.
Raspberry has very small dimensions and excellent consumption with performances that in my opinion are adequate.
Furthermore, it is a product that in my opinion is almost immortal and you can always give something to do.
So I wanted to proceed and continue with a Raspberry.
As far as reliability goes: common problems for pi are the power supply. As SD cards are not fine for HA, most people use SSD’s. But for pi4, firmware originally was not supporting that. Many ssd casings proved incompatible. Usb is said to be not fully standard.
My PI4 worked fine, bot at times a full shutdown would not boot until I did a full power down. Putting a pi5 compute model on a HA yellow also has it’s challenges. This is just what I know of the top of my head. And in your own words “I haven’t heard good things about the Pi5”.
The reason pi is so popular is its price point. That has changed with the shortages and then the pi5.
So how bad is it to buy a device where the hardware manufacturer has put together a set of components that they tested to be compatible, and have to give warranty on? The pi is just a board. The choice is yours to make, but many people say the same. I have yet to read many problems from those people.
I had an RPI4 8GB running weewx collecting data from a weather station and pubslishing it to various weather websites worldwide.
Then I discovered HA. As HAOS does not allow anything else to be running on the host, I had to go with HA Supervised (to be able to also get HACS etc.) With that setup, the only thing I could not easily use was the HACS Studio Code Server for editing. Not the end of the world. HAOS would allow all of that (including Studio Code Server editor).
I really love the RPI hardware and environment as well, and was facing the same issue as you. Therefore I bought an RPI5 - but then sat on it for a while because I could not decide how to easily upgrade and still be running everything I am running now - while I sadly saw people on all these forums talk about how it is much more bang for your buck to buy an NUC.
With regards to the other post about SSD compatibility issues, I dsagree - just like with anything else just be sure to buy compatible equipment, and be sure you have a strong power supply. For my RPI4 I have it plugged into and booting up from an Samsung T7 SSD (which even comes with the right cable) and it is MAGNITUDES faster than running anything off on a Micro SD card, you MUST use an SSD. What’s actually even slightly faster than an external SSD however, is an NVME.
Also I held back on pulling the trigger on upgrading to the RPI5 because I still wanted to use HAOS which is easier to maintain than the HA Supervised, but also still wanted command prompt access to the bare metal on it as well. I finally figured it out. I found on this forum someone figured out how to run HAOS on a VM on the RPI5, using the KVM/QEMU Virtual Machine Manager. You actually install Raspbian on the RPI5, install KVM, create a VM and install HAOS from a VM image onto the VM. And, to my great delight, I learned that a full backup of HA (I use the google drive backup) from HA Supervised, works perfectly when restored onto HAOS!!! That only took me about an hour! So as a bonus I was then able to happily install and use the HACS Studio Code editor.
So once I learned this then I went a little nuts and purchased this:
and here is how to assemble it:
Note, the display on the front only works if the RPI 5 is running a compatible OS (such as Raspbian, so that is no issue!). And I use RealVNC viewer to access it headless:
Note when you buy this to be sure to buy a good power supply and also the correct compatible NVME to ensure everything will work.
So also instead of putting weewx on the RPI5 as well, I left that on the RPI4 -
and I have some daemons running on the RPI4 to SSH into the RPI5 and populate additional statistics about the weather data transmissions into sensors on a dashboard I have in HAOS (using REST):
Note also, this KVM is unfortunately unable to take snapshots for backups - but what I do to create full backups occassionally is just boot up both RPI’s on SD Cards running Raspbian, then plug an SSD into each, and then just run the SD Card Copier app on each RPI to make an exact clone of the entire SSD onto a backup one.
Lastly, for statistics such as CPU temp and % used, on a VM there is no way to get those statistics from it’s host for some reason. So I have the RPI4 SSH into the bare metal RPI5 to get the information, then SSH into the HAOS instance and populate those statistics into the approriate sensors set up in HAOS for same (also, REST commands), every 5 seconds or so. Then I used chatgpt to figure out how to code the daemons on thew RPI4 such that they would continuously try to reconnect if the SSH connection is broken (by a network issue or an RPI reboot etc.).
I can’t find it now but there was a good post on this forum about how to install KVM/QEMU VM on RPI5 - and then how stand up the correct VM to then get the correct image to install HAOS onto that VM. (Then restore from your RPI4 backup)…
Thoughts? Good luck!
I’m already using a Pi4 with NVME SSD… and everything runs smoothly without problems.
I started with a pi5, then downgraded to pi4 after realizing the pi5 was way overkill. But then after a few days, realized the pi4 was very sluggish, so went back to pi5. Everything is just so much “snappier”. Resorting from one to the other is seamless with backups, 15 minute process.
I ran pi’s for years and still do, but the price of a pi4/5 is now too high to justify their use, but the time you buy a case, power supply. SSD, heat sink/fan etc and cobble it together yourself. It’s cheaper to get a N100 based system which is cheaper, has no compatibility issues, comes fully assembled, is upgradeable and significantly more powerful.
I tried a Pi5 some time ago and basically could not get HA to run properly, waisted days on it. Got my money back and bought a cheaper N100 system, 10 mins to get everything up and running, rock solid ever since.
Sorry to hear about that and you are correct from a bang for the buck perspective, but some of us are diehard RPI lunatics! (Yes, silly, I know, but that is the way it is!). Do you remember the nature of the issue?
Lots of compatibility issues with SSD’s, and random errors, crashes etc which would be just impossible to track down given the complexity of my setup (9 years worth of development…)
i have both pi 4 & 5 and id say dont waste your money on anythiung with less than 8gb ram. today you may be running simple things but when your thinking up ideas and wanting to create cool things like sensors that use google generative ai + screen shot from camera to detect if your pet food bowl is running low. then youll get some real issues 
and yes i know theres a simpler way to acheive this but this way is cool and still free. Also pi 5 doesnt have google coral support. id go other devices like
these devices are way more powerful and still very power efficient on the low end, but you can get some that good enough to game on with AMD processors etc. same price ad a vilaros pi 5 kit but more power to you
I don’t think I need that much power… everything works fine but now that I’m programming the ESP32 sometimes I have problems because it doesn’t have enough RAM to complete the process… so I have to disable the extensions and then it works. For everything else it works great. With Rpi it’s never a waste of money because you always find something to do. The Pi4 are about 3 or 4 years old and I’ve always used them for something. While often and willingly NUC the various PCs totally lose their capabilities… and have too high consumption to make them do simpler things. Consider I still use the first generation Rpi 0 and an RPi 1 that still work are useful for something.
I question, “Dont need that much power” as ai continues to roll out youll be doing heavy task im sure of it, and yes an rpi always has its uses, but sucks when it lacks the power to be used. Reconsider, too much is better than too little.
for instance ill be running my own ai off an rpi soon to constantly watch a video recording triggered by motion detection then create a detailed description that can be searched against by tenants, need all the power i can get as this ai will replace my paid api. sounds nuts because it is but it can be done; because it has been done
when I need it I will change… I understood that we must use the current resources and the current need. Thinking of buying something “TODAY” because “LATER” it will be useful is wrong if we are talking about technologies. Because those same products that I bought yesterday for today… today are old. Often technologies and needs change over time so we don’t even know if we will actually need them.
and I would also like to add that these products are certainly more advanced in terms of power and possibilities… but sometimes have problems. And while a Raspberry has a “common standard” for everyone and for all the future… these PCs often have different components and therefore different problems with different solutions. Personally I am not a computer scientist… and sometimes fixing things takes me a very long time and often certain solutions are also out of my reach.
They may have motherboards with different BIOS that I would have to update through particular procedures that would take me days and days… because I have to go back and study all those steps that I didn’t know (this would certainly increase my culture and knowledge but I also have a family and a profession to think about)
I’m also realizing… that increasing performance and the possibilities of doing things… increases the problems.
I prefer to keep myself at a medium/low level with simple things that honestly I don’t have time to keep up with.
That’s why I’m also dedicating myself to ESP… simple and elementary controllers.
Making things too complex and articulated leads to having increasingly complex and articulated problems.
I went from a Pi4 4GB with USB SSD to a Pi5 8GB/Argon V3 case and NVME from the PiHut. Once powered up it took me about 15-20 minutes to migrate my backup. Haven’t looked back (it’s been over 12 months now!)
