I’ve been using HA on a rpi3-64 for two years minimum. Since a few months ago, it’s almost impossible to upgrade the HA Core. Also, it reboots several times a day. May it be the ‘watchdog’ the reason for both issues?
I have several integrations (Enphase Envoy, MELCloud, Passive BLE monitor, Shelly, Tuya, Nest (not working really)…) plus InfluxDB and Grafana. I’m almost sure it is too much to ask for to my good old rpi3…
Which HW should I upgrade to? Is a Raspberry 4 with 4GB currently the best option?
PS: If you think my rpi3-64 with only 1GB should be able to cope with it all and that there’s no need to upgrade, I’ll be thankful for any help to make HA Core upgrades to work.
What are your current CPU and memory utilization now?
I’ve had my RPi 3B+ for well over four years. It’s currently sitting at single digit CPU utilization and hovering around 50% memory utilization. I’ve never had a problem updating. Takes about 10 minutes each time.
If I did need new hardware for HA, I would be looking for alternatives to the RPi line. Not that I have anything against them, it’s just that their prices have gone up to the point where there may be better options in their price range. Or maybe not. But the RPi line sure doesn’t look like the bargain it used to be.
New uSD card, or even a NVME SSD in a USB enclosure (although more useful later on a RPi4 with USB2.0, or a Yellow with a SSD slot) before the existing card dies.
Check the CPU / memory usage - simple installs will work fine on a RPi3b+, but using ESPhome, many automations, etc might be sluggish. I ipdated a RPi3b+ to a RPI4 and the GUI latency improvement was noticeable.
The Yellow is basically a RPi4 in a nice box with a SilLabs radio and a NVME slot.
The Green is a slightly better CPU on a cheaper cut-down board and no accessories.
Other options are usually small form factor Intel PCs or other dev boxes self managed via Proxmox (and not HAOS, but HASS container).
What I don’t have is InfluxDB and Grafana, those are running on a dedicated NAS.
It is also an nginx server, PiHole DNS, and various small scripts I wrote for Tuya, Devolo PLC mainly but other stuffs as well.
I’d say that it is outdated but could/should still do the job.
My initial plan was to target RPi5 but now I’m thinking of a mini PC (HP EliteDesk 800, Intel NUC, …) where I’d still use Debian.
Would be interesting what is “eating” your RAM. You could easily check consumption for your add-ons in the dedicated tabs (influxdb, grafana)…
Also I would - if you upgrade - avoid raspberries. They are just not efficient as they should be in 2023 (or even 2020). If you compare to rockchip based devices in the same price class you find out they are typically not only more performant but often 2 or 3 times as efficient (idle consumption often less than 1W!).
I’ve been able to upgrade the HA core by disabling everything and then upgrading. After restart, I’m still getting lots of messages showing slowness:
2024-01-03 08:36:07.952 WARNING (MainThread) [homeassistant.setup] Setup of hassio is taking over 10 seconds.
2024-01-03 08:37:05.319 WARNING (MainThread) [homeassistant.setup] Setup of input_boolean is taking over 10 seconds.
2024-01-03 08:37:05.320 WARNING (MainThread) [homeassistant.setup] Setup of input_number is taking over 10 seconds.
2024-01-03 08:37:05.321 WARNING (MainThread) [homeassistant.setup] Setup of input_button is taking over 10 seconds.
2024-01-03 08:37:05.321 WARNING (MainThread) [homeassistant.setup] Setup of timer is taking over 10 seconds.
2024-01-03 08:37:05.322 WARNING (MainThread) [homeassistant.setup] Setup of counter is taking over 10 seconds.
2024-01-03 08:37:05.322 WARNING (MainThread) [homeassistant.setup] Setup of schedule is taking over 10 seconds.
2024-01-03 08:37:05.322 WARNING (MainThread) [homeassistant.setup] Setup of ffmpeg is taking over 10 seconds.
2024-01-03 08:37:05.322 WARNING (MainThread) [homeassistant.setup] Setup of input_datetime is taking over 10 seconds.
2024-01-03 08:37:05.323 WARNING (MainThread) [homeassistant.setup] Setup of input_text is taking over 10 seconds.
2024-01-03 08:37:05.323 WARNING (MainThread) [homeassistant.setup] Setup of zone is taking over 10 seconds.
2024-01-03 08:37:05.323 WARNING (MainThread) [homeassistant.setup] Setup of application_credentials is taking over 10 seconds.
I would love to suggest the HA green but as it only has a non swappable eMMC flash storage (and I ha a former HA install that killed a eMMC) I would rather suggest something like a Odrois M1S which is essentially the same hardware but with more extensive storage options and double the flash for around half the price. The bucks you save can be reinvested into a nabu casa membership to support HA!
Downside of the M1S at the moment is that their is no HaOS available for it (but it should be actually trivial for the devs support it in the future).
What about the Odroid-N2+? More performant than HA Yellow and cheaper.
I’m not sure about the HW list or compatibilities. Running Linux on it and HA on top shouldn’t be a problem, I hope. Even better, as I would make use of several Linux services in parallel and get more than a HW dedicated to HA only (just thinking out loud here).
After a few weeks with the Pi4 / 1GB I went to NanoPi R5S and Docker. Never looked back until yesterday when I wiped the dust of my Raspi to install Linux to it - and wow this thing is slow and power-hungry and whatnot.
NanoPi is way more power efficient, has not just eMMC but also several Ethernet ports and especially an M2 SSD slot built in. Odroid board seems to have good support which is a plus.
