I wanted to finally treat myself to a Home Assistant hardware upgrade from a RPi 3B+ to a RPi 4, this Christmas… well, then I learned about Home Assistant Blue yesterday and thought, what if the N2+ is the best long term platform, since Blue is built on it?!
HA developement will probably befocused on this hardware from here on out and the Pi will only be “also supported”
I actually would prefere getting an Odroid N2+ anyway - if it wasn’t pretty much impossible to get my hands on in Europe … the only local store sells the N2 (non plus), with 2GB RAM for over 105€ - no Plug or storage included… I haven’t found any other store within the EU who easily sells it (most only sell localy and don’t ship abroad) so the only remaining option is to get it directly from Hardkernel, which means - after taxes, customs and handling it will be almost 200€ 160€ for the N2+, 4GB, with 64GB eMMC and a power plug…
Is that really worth it?! and by “is it worth it” I mean - is it worth almost 100€ 40€ more than a RPi 4?!
Will it run almost twice as fast, twice as reliable, and will it be a good foundation for double the time?
Blue really got me confused - hope you can clear things up a littel (maybe someone actually had the opportunity compare the RPi 4 to the N2+)
btw, I don’t need wifi or Bluetooth - which are the only two things the N2+ lacks compared to the RPi 4, afaik
IMO best long term is a “proper” PC (NUC, old laptop, rack mount server, whatever your budget has money for), ideally with an SSD.
A Pi4 running on SSD is a pretty solid budget option (and actually better than the really low end PCs). For me the question would be about the price differential between that, and the “Blue” if I was going for low cost.
I also thought about that - and I actually have a PC which has to be up pretty much 24/7 - the issue is, it itself and some things connected to it, are controlled by HA (because it’s in a server room and I want to be able to turn it on/off with just a zigbee button) Also it’s my main PC, so occasionally I have to reboot it, or turn it off for a while - all of which would be far from ideal (just imagine it get’s stuck in the middle of the night while gaming, and I’d have to go into the basement without any lights, becasue they are all controlled by the PC which just froze)
And the NAS I’m using is too old to run HA … but too young to be replaced
Generally speaking, I think it’s best for HA to be completely independent from other hardware - for example, I can live with the NAS breaking - everything on it is backed-up and it’s barely any trouble to retrieve it. Just like it’s merely a minor inconvenience if my PC crashes - this usually happens when I’m working on it, so I can press the reset button via HA and it’s all good
However if HA stops working, pretty much everything in my home stops working - best case szenario, the lights won’t turn off when I leave … worst case szenario (and this has happened - despite HA running on dedicated hardware - it just randomly froze), the heat won’t turn off all day and I get home to a house that’s hot like a sauna - but without the joy of sweaty naked people everywhere.
So, HA just has to work without any interruption and as few dependencies as possible. It’s the heart and the brain of my house. the next modification will be to get a UPS to power HA, the whole Network and Internet connection. It’s kind of overdue anyway
So, long story short - It has to be standalone, reasonably priced, and simple to use - which pretty much leaves the Pi4 and N2+ (as far as I’m aware of)
Oh btw - I just did some calculations and the N2+ is “only” 40€ more expensive (for the Pi4 I’d have to also include a fitting SSD and USB enclosure also the exchange rate from USD to EUR is better than I thought)
Isn’t that quite power-inefficient?! the N2+ probably runs at 2-4W in general, whereas a NUC or a Laptop probably use 20-40W (nevery actually measured it - it’s just an assumption)
It really depends. A “low power” system running heavily loaded is often more power intensive than a higher power system running largely idle. The laptop runs off a 45W power supply, and based on the various stats I get from it, I’d say it’s drawing 5-10W. It runs VMs for HA, Zigbee2MQTT, and a few more things
That’s true - but will HA ever actally need that much power?!
That doesn’t sound too bad - I’ll look into it - maybe I can get a cheap laptop
This would mean, I can’t run Home Assistant OS on it (with the Add-On Store and so on), but have to go through VMs for every addon I have right now (Mosquitto, Zigbee2Mqtt, Node Red), right?!
The N2+ have real power. I would not suggest using an RPi4, also if you have SSD, all going over a single slow USB hub. The next step after an N2+ is the Intel-Nuc with a M2. I mean, Blue doesn’t solve every use case and it was never the idea that it does.
EDIT: Also the Open Virtual Appliance is fine, if you run an Hypervisor, just use that. It would not make sense to run a second device just for HA.
I don’t currently have any device that would be feasible for this usecase, so I’d have to get new hardware anyway - the question is just, which way to go
I’m more and more leaning towards the N2+, but will see if I can get an old laptop to give it a try
I did go the NUC with proxmox way and I’m very happy with it. For Home Assistant alone it is of course overpowered but I knew I’ll use it for more than HA. Today I’m running 3 VM’s one with HA, one with some Docker containers running on ubuntu and one with a second HA instance for testing . Also proxmox has a great feature where you can backup the whole VM while it is running and if HA freezes you can just go to the proxmox web interface and restart it.
Thanks @Tinkerer, your comment on the old laptop pretty much cemented what I should do about replacing my old pi. I too have been thinking about what replaces the pi since the 100+ devices, automations, integrations, and add on have pretty much put the pi to the wall. The CPu still handles it but memory has long since been maxed out. I don’t want to not have a dedicated HA platform. As Fansworth points out we do really start to rely on HA. I also don’t really want to get into going on my own to home assistant core as I really want to focus on the home automation the home assistant ecosystem just comes with so much built in. So being somewhat cheap, I have been going back and forth on NUC, pi 4, Odroid, etc looking for that platform that will have the horsepower, and will work with my Dresden zigbee dongle, and isn’t going to break the bank. Pi 4 seem simple and should have the horse power and memory I need, but have read often how it isn’t just a pi 3B+ with more. The 3B+ just works and works with anything I have tried. I have read that the 4 isn’t there yet and things like the dresden dongle don’t work along with heat issues, etc.
So that moves me on to the nuc which seem perfect, but I’m not looking to put that much out for a HA platform. The Ordoid seems to be well designed, fanless, and has the power, but appears to be on the fringe of HA platforms. So that takes me to a pc running a hypervisor. I was leaning towards just getting a refurbished HP elitedesk mini for about $200 CDN that would have 16GB memory and a 256G SSD. I would either load vmware or proxmox and run the HA virtual machine. Why I wasn’t thinking about the various notebooks around the house I don’t know.
Regarding your comment “the heat won’t turn off all day and I get home to a house that’s hot like a sauna”, I had that situation. So my furnace controller is now semi autonomous. HA tells it to turn on/off, but I built a Tasmota based controller that has its own temperature sensor and rules that don’t allow the temperature go above 25 degrees. It also won’t let the temperature go below 10 degrees.
I kind of made it failsafe by just turning down the settings on the heater itself - initially I just put it on max, because HA should handle everything else, but now it is turned down far enough that it barely ever turns off by itself. - only downside now, I can’t heat up the rooms quickly any more (at least when I’m not home)
I think you also need to consider how much you plan to run on something like a RPi.
My RPi 3B+ barely idles along running HA. I don’t do any streaming video through it, and I mostly run a bunch or switches and sensors. I can’t even justify going to a Pi 4 (much as I’d like to), never mind the effort it would take to re-purpose an old laptop. Plus the Pi 3 sits on a tiny little shelf in my utility closet where it doesn’t get in the way.
For a simple “HA Only” system, it’s hard to beat the RPi. It’s cheap, small, very capable and basically plug-and-play for even a novice like me. Having a dedicated system running nothing but the canned HA install avoids any interference from other things I may be playing with.
I also have a Raspberry PI 4 that I upgraded to SSD Boot. When I look at utilization it is very low, so not taxing it at all. I like the fact that there is nothing I have to do to install or maintain it as it’s part of the ecosystem.
When the Blue was announced I decided to get it as I had already considered getting another PI 4 to put upstairs where I plan to install my Zwave and Zigbee sticks. The current PI is in the basement so ZWave coverage is poor.
Going the Blue route was a small incremental cost over the PI and future proofs me a little more.
I am of the belief simple is better, keep the variables to a minimum. So much easier to recover from when you have problems.
Another few option to consider, some already alluded too;
I recently purchased one of these HP T520 thin client for $40 AUD for testing/playing purposes. I have it up and running with Debian 10 and HA Supervised. It shipped with a 16gb m.2 SSD and 4gb RAM, which is enough to get going, but for an additional $30 I’ve picked up a 64gb SSD. It has a cold boot time to HA up and running of 1min 30secs, HA reboots in about 40secs. Very low power usage, and is about the size of a modem.
My production HA is on a Dell Optiplex SFF 990 running Proxmox with a HA VM, Ubuntu VM and some LXC containers. It runs Plex, Shinobi (CCTV) and a number of other things with ease. Pop in an SSD and extra RAM for about $50 and an old HDD to store media on, or record CCTV too, and you have a very cheap and powerful machine.
Everyone has their own needs, energy requirements, space, ease of use, upgrade-ability, etc. I make mention of the 2 above units more-so as so many people seem to post about NUCs and thinking they are the logical next step from a Pi. In some cases they are, but in many cases you can save yourself a fair bit of money and get a machine that is more than powerful enough to run HA and plenty of other pieces of software.
NUCs are great, I used one - and sold it and got a cheaper machine that does more for my needs. Your needs may vary.
Check out the G1 Elitedesks in the USDT form factor. They have loads of both usb2 (for conbee) and usb3 ports, there’s a mini pcie slot for a coral (if you plan to run frigate), it’s tiny, and they are loads cheaper than the mini elitedesks. Look for the i5 variants with at least 8gb of RAM. I run over of these for my home assistant stack and it works great (I run Ubuntu desktop on bare metal and home assistant core and all the fixings in a docker stack). I scooped one up with an SSD for $120 shipped. There’s a handful at that spec under $100 on eBay now.
My other recommendation in the HP prodesk 400 G2.5 SFF. These are not that much bigger than the USDT FF and are equally spec’d, but they have one 16x pcie slot and one pcie 1.0 slot, so they have more room for things like a multi port nic for running something like pfsense in a VM next to your home assistant VM. These can also be scooped up well equipped for around $80-$100 shipped.
I am an old HP hardware hound now. I’m constantly scanning eBay for good deals as these things are total beasts compared to the rpi4. So useful.