I have a 1st Gen surface pro that I’m really not using. It’s an i5 4gb ram 128ssd. More than enough power to run HA. Only one USB. No Ethernet but it could support a USB hub and USB network adapter if needed. I’d want to use my zwave/ZigBee usb stick.
Anyone try to this? I cannot find much in the forums
If your wanting to stick with Windows, then as long as it runs you should be able to follow the install guides on here to get up and running.
Linux is a different matter as the surface products are Microsoft, so you’d have to find separate details for that.
Laptops aren’t meant to be on 24/7, that said I used to use a old laptop as a smart picture frame. I removed the battery as the battery was old and I didn’t trust it.
yeah I was considering just removing windows and straight ubuntu, I found a few guides online. But your comment about the battery give me a bit of pause, since I cannot remove the battery. I think maybe I should just stick with my PC for now. Maybe a NUC in the future
Following up on my post. I loaded ubuntu 18.10 on my surface pro this weekend. I’m also using a USB gigabit adapter with built in USB hub (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00M7MYFAU/) for my zwave/zigbee controller since there is only one USB port. I have to say it was painless. I loaded a headless server install. Everything on the surface was supported, no custom kernel, etc.
I copied my yaml over from my old server, and was pretty much up and running in a couple hours. Most of the time was just spent being cautions with the move.
Even the bluetooth works (although i found bluetooth a bit buggy for me). It’s 100% quiet, easy to hide. If anyone has one laying around, I’d recommend it over a pi, any day, and probably over a celeron nuc as well. it is an i5 processeor, 4gb ram, and 128gg ssd. I was looking on ebay, and the 64gb model of these go for $150. Which I think is not a bad deal considering that 's all you need.
Glad it went well, have u installed any battery tools on it like TLP so the CPU can throttle down ? (I can see a Reddit post about needing in on 17.04)