I’ve been running my HAOS installation on a Pi4 for a number of years now and have been adding integrations and helpers and custom templates and you name it as i have been playing around with the system capabilities and dashboards.
My question: when do I know I have outgrown my Pi4? After upgrading to a new A2 class SD card, the system response is pretty good, and CPU and RAM utilization do not seem to be concerning so far. When do i know the device is redlining or that I may need better hardware?
Or is the impact of my tinkering not really the big?
For me it was memory which drove me away from my RPi 3B+. I was never able to put much of a dent in the CPU. I’d say you’re good as long as memory utilization is below say 50 or 60%.
Of course, every time you add something you should check both CPU and memory again. Some integrations and add-ons can really consume resources. Plus, HA itself gets a tiny bit more bloated with every version. So far this has been gradual, but you never know when that might change. I suspect that the developers develop on much beefier hardware than a RPi, so supporting that environment long-term is unlikely to be much of concern for them.
Ex MS core and system performance engineer. If the machine is less than 70% constant utilization, not throwing consistent long Cpu utilization spikes, and you aren’t using swap on the regular. And system perf is fine for you. Walk away and leave it alone.
Ha is a great platform to start chasing phantoms that don’t matter if you let yourself do it. Don’t.
Switch to an SSD, it will be faster by more than a factor of 2x I was in the same boat and switching to the SSD was amazing. The Samsung T7 even comes with the right cables for the RPI4
Control or object recognition in your video streams.
Add-ons can have a larger effect. I was running ESPHome builder as an add-on to HA. HA was running in a virtual machine in an old Mac Mini (Intel i3, 8GB), and ESP builds took longer than I wanted. I uninstalled ESP builder and put it on my desktop Mac. It is an M2-Pro with 16GB RAM, and now ESP builds take 6 to 7 seconds. ESP builder is no reason to upgrade HA, just move it off HA. In fact, other add-ons are like this too; you can run them on a different computer from HS. So what I said about AI is maybe not true; when you decide to add that feature, place it in a different computer and keep the Pi.
The reason not to use a Pi is that of late they have become poor deals in terms of bang per buck. By the time you add an enclosure, replace the SD card with something faster and more durable, and buy a power supply, you spend more than if you just buy a mini PC. Older notebooks (which can be “free” work well too, and come with a “backup” battery built-in.)