I’m just wondering if I should upgrade my HA Yellow with a CM5.
Normally I wouldn’t be too bothered about upgrading as everything is running quite smoothly however I do have a lot of ESPHome devices I’ve bought/made myself and an update cycle can take at least 4 hours to complete everything (and I’m about to install another 4+ devices when I get the time). Install times vary from 15 minutes to over 50. I’m just wondering would there be a huge time decrease to be worth the effort?
I currently have the 8Gb CM4 Lite version but a shop near me is selling the 8Gb CM5 lite model for £60
But, those times for updating a single esphome device are not something I would put up with.
I do my esphome development on a decent mini PC and I get cranky if the change/compile/download/restart time takes more than 30s. I would never put up with 50min for that cycle.
I tend to update everything when I’m at work and no one will be at home for the day (ESPHome update all). I only noticed when I came back early one time and a couple of my automations didn’t work as it must have been just uploading to one of the devices so I looked into it more and saw the times.
It was on my mind that if I start adding a few more devices, my nice little routine would break and update times would be longer than my working day.
While I’m testing and setting the devices up I do use my computer but once set and working how I want, it’s a one click (well - 3 clicks) solution to update all on my display when I leave the house.
I will update to the CM5 - watching the video convinced me it would be worth it and hey! it’s a CM5 for £20 off
Do it, upgrade ram speed and cpu by a ton. PiShop in the US just came in with some stock with the 8gb lite model that I wanted so I just ordered. Will be a huge upgrade. Updates take several minutes now, should speed up a lot.
@xAPPO There’s a CEX near me (UK). Never seen it at close to that price and was kind of surprised it was still there when I went back.
As an update:
I went and got it and installed it on my HA Yellow. It is a genuine CM5 8Gb model. Everything is fine except ZHA doesn’t seem to work with the CM5 which is a bit of a hassle as I won’t have time to look into just yet (hence the 4 or so esphome projects not yet hooked up to HA). As a workaround I had to install my old conbee 2 stick on another Pi I have which I’m running as a media server and install zigbee2mqtt on that to make the switches work.
Not had the chance to run any tests with it yet as I fully updated and backed up everything (just in case) before I swapped out the hardware. That did mean all the esp devices were all up-to-date.
As a side note, I have removed the cover of the yellow as the CM5 runs hot averaging out at over 52C at just running my house at idle. I’ve stuck a small pi fan on the heatsink and the past day or so it’s been running at about 29C.
The change over hasn’t been noticeable but I wasn’t really expecting any day to day changes, as my opening post said it was when I eventually add all my other devices would the update cycle for all those esp toys I have break my routine.
Going off full power off/power on times then I may be good for another few years