Hi all
I am just starting in Home Assistant world.
I just have a smart thermostat that’s all.
I would like to ask what to buy to start this journey
Shall I go in a solution like
Or shall I Wait for the
IT’s said that it’s for pre order so I don’t know when will be available but I rather wait than to buy something that is not up to the date.
Thank you
For the current price of a RPi, you get a more powerful x86 Celeron based PC where you can run HA Container while still having a standardized Linux OS. Only thing you won‘t get is GPIO.
I recently switched from RPI4 to a Minisforum N40 (https://amzn.to/3ezUV1A), with 4GB RAM and 64GB eMMC „SSD“.
My smart hardware is Zigbee only, so I bundled it with a Sonoff Dongle (https://amzn.to/3SRiiCR) and created a Docker Compose „Kickstart“ project for HA, Zigbee2MQTT and Mosquitto on (Ubuntu) Linux:
UK person here; That Pi is bonkers expensive. I bought mine 2 years ago for about £40 (for comparison). Right now @m0wlheld’s advice is good 
[edit|: that price was for the Pi and power supply only.
I would also go for anything but a pi. By now I have 3 of these machines (differnt versions) in my home now. Having replaced all these clumsy midi towers from the past which were able to hold fancy historical devices such as CD-ROM drives and such like 
https://global.shuttle.com/main/productsDetail?productId=1767
If being patient you get them for less but 100 bucks on ebay.
If you think about a raspberry + PSU + case + perhaps a sata<>NVMe adaptor and an NVMe drive you pay a fortune for a bunch of crap you need to assemble without any benefits if ever in terms of power consumption.
The big benefit of these machines against most others, they do come with 2 serial ports being able to run in RS232, RS422 or RS485 modeaswell as being able to be jumpered to deliver 5 or 12 Volts.
Not a real GHIO replacement but better but asking for another PSU for a gadget.
And if all fails, ebay is your friend and these machines could be used by poeple in need of a media server or a windows office machine or something else, means they do sell easily.
The price of that Pi is insane!
I started my home assistant project on a Pi and later moved to a micro PC (Generic x86-64). I bought this used off eBay. The PC is sooo much more stable than the Pi.
I’d recommend a Micro PC every time.
Most people start with an RPI and SD card. They learn from that a lot and when they hit limitations they move up in hardware. The bottom up approach. The top down approach is to buy the best hardware everybody suggests and it may be a bit more frustrating to learn on. People will say , No it’s easy but they forget the path they came up and all the things they had to learn. Home Assistant is all about the learning, mistakes, success and tinkering. Learn to drive in a Ford and buy your Ferrari later when you have more than just one thermostat to sit on the dashboard.
Ok so why everywhere I look they advice a pi?
Shall I go with the Minisforum N40 and the sonoff zig bee and just buy sensors only with zigbee compatible?
Is there are any YouTube videos with this setup? Or similar.
Sorry for many questions that may be also stupid. I trying to understand before start buying.
Thanks
True, but in this instance I think we have the Ford costing more than the Farrari.
Too true. Reading about the cost of RPI and they keep saying just over the next hill the cost will go down again. I’m driving a 10 year old Ford as well , and couldn’t afford to replace that either at the moment.
Because PI’s used to be cheap, but supply issues allow a price gouger like that Amazon page to exist. That package should be a third of that price.
And, the other advantage of a Pi is that it is low power consumption.
So any mini pc can do. Or I should check something special. Of course it will be with a solid state drive.
Should running windows correct?
What about this
Or the one that was suggested earlier
https://www.amazon.de/Lüfterlos-Celeron-Mini-Desktop-Computer-VGA-Anschluss-3xUSB3-0-Unterstützung/dp/B082VVHXK6/ref=mp_s_a_1_7_sspa?crid=4GPZ3YRXEVJT&keywords=mini+pc&qid=1673812505&sprefix=mini+pc%2Caps%2C204&sr=8-7-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9waG9uZV9zZWFyY2hfbXRm&psc=1
Thanks
Better not 
Check the different installation methods 
Full potential will be HaOS were Home Assistant comes already shipped with JeOS and everything from top to bottom will be updatable through HA 
This seems expensive.
Personally I’d recommend something like this but obviously it’s not new:
Of course, is up to you.
I’m also an absolute beginner.
I’ve been playing around with the HassWP “Portable version of Home Assistant for Windows” Home Assistant Portable on Windows 10 (Easy) | Install HA Without Any Virtualization | 2021 Guide - YouTube which has been a great introduction.
I couldn’t find a Raspberry Pi 4 for a reasonable price so I’ve now bought a “preloved 
” Raspberry Pi 3 from eBay - £60 in the UK.
(Just the board and a case.)
I think the comment above from @Spiro makes a lot of sense: "Most people start with an RPI and SD card. They learn from that a lot and when they hit limitations they move up in hardware. "
I need som fanless thin pc for HomeAssistant.
I think some Lenovo Thin client will be ok but which model to chose?
Or maybe HP EliteDesk 800 G1 Mini PC will be better?
What ever you get second hand 
- HA isn’t very demanding if you don’t plan doing lot’s with video streams. We just moved to a HP T630 thin client with 8GB RAM bought labeled as used for $50 - just to find out that it was still original sealed when we received it 
If you want it new and shiny you could go green 
I bought an HP t630 about a year ago to replace my Pi4, I was running 2 pi4’s one with HAOS and one with Pihole and nas storage using usb ssd’s. Said HP t630 cost my about £60 with upgrades to ssd and ram also bought second hand. I then sold both pi’s on eBay for just over £100 each. The t630 coped well with my needs and now runs proxmox with HAOS, Pihole, Openmediavault, and a few other containers. I was so impressed I bought another to Run Frigate, After buying some ram, storage and an a+e key coral tpu, it now performs faultlessly providing 10 camera feeds with object recognition.