OK, thx for the idea, gotta check that up on my Green, before i run it as i intend to ( it’s still not heavy loaded or even important.)
My Green power-supply gives me 12V / 1A / 12W, so if i use the usb-port, they will only provide 5V-1A each, 2A-Combined 
, well it’s only for keyboard anyways ( not much left if i draw 2amp/5 volts = 10W from the USB 
I really hope Greens Board’s Jack is higher rated
The phraseology is wrong. You could plug the board into a 300 Amp 12-volt car battery; the device will only draw what it needs. What NABU CASA Support means is that you should use a 12V power supply capable of at least 2.5 Amps.
Why don’t they (in that case) Not Inform People about this ? , as i said above Green is mend(and shipped) with a 12V-1A Power-source, giving 1A on the i.e USB ports
It Would be great if you could provide facts, that what you say is true, and would/could be verified by NABU
PS: I know a Device only draw what it needs, however not all board-components, can handle a “pass-through” of i.e 300Amp ( Puff ! )
( It’s not the Volt’s that Kills, It’s The Amps ! )
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This is a good advice for me too
Keep in mind, my question to Nabu Casa was specifically about the Yellow board. I don’t know if it is the same answer for Green.
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Does anyone know if there is an entity that I can use to monitor the yellow board power consumption in my System Health Monitor card on my dashboard?
Hello,
Brandon from ameriDroid here, thanks for the question—it’s a fair one, and I appreciate the chance to clarify our approach. We’re a small team focused on single-board computers and home automation hardware, and we’ve been supplying components like the Home Assistant Yellow, CM4/CM5 modules, and NVMe SSDs for years. Our goal has always been flexibility and customer choice rather than pushing any one “max profit” config.
To your point about recurring issues: Since we have not heard of any other user having an issue like this we are not sure if the issue is the Power Supply, I read somebody mentioned that they might have no issue because they are using PoE, but the Yellow supports PoE (IEEE 802.3at PoE+), Class 3 (default) or Class 4 (via jumper), allowing it to request up to 15.4W or 25.5W, so I think the difference would only be 1.5W, which is minimal, and I am not sure even at peak the Yellow would draw more than 24W.
We sold hundreds of units just like this one, CM5 16GB RAM and 1TB NVMe, some users even upgraded to 2TB NVMe if I recall correctly. Now we did not push this specific configuration at all, we had configurations for different prices, we offered CM4 and CM5 configurations, starting at 2GB RAM up to 16GB RAM and from 128GB NVMe to 1TB NVMe, we also allowed customers to make changes, they could reach out to us and we would build any configuration, 8GB RAM CM5 along with 128GB NVMe, any combination they wanted. Evan did not purchased our ready to go Kit, he ordered all 3 items separetly (I am not sure if we were even selling ready to go kits back then) we simply allowed users to buy any CM5/CM4 and any NVMe they wanted, if we would have any indication that using a 1TB NVMe along with a 16GB RAM CM5 would cause issues like this, we would have quickly noted that and stop offering that option and tell customers about that, but we sold hundreds of what we called “Home Assistant Yellow Pro Kit w/CM5” Power Supply version (which was sent pre-assembled with the 16GB RAM CM5 and 1TB NVMe) and we have not heard of any issues like this. A good few things to test would be running the HA yellow without NVMe, to see if the NVMe is causing any problems, if the unit does not crash without NVMe it will be easy to determine that there is an issue with the NVMe. If the NVMe ends up being the issue we can make an exception and accept the NVMe back. Or if Evan would want us to troubleshoot the unit, he could send it back to us and I can test it with a few different NVMe’s that I have here and a few different CM4/CM5 to try to find the issue, I can also test it with a few different Power Supplies.
Brandon
Just to note again, we did in fact sell hundreds of this same configuration as a Kit, but Evan selected each item himself shortly after the CM5 was released, we did not push these specific sizes to him, when Home Assistant announced it would be compatible we started offering CM5’s as customers were asking for them, we also sold 1TB NVMe (same brand) along with the CM4 before the CM5 was released, also we have not heard of any issues with those. When customers called me on the phone and asked, I did tell them that 16GB RAM and 1TB NVMe could be overkill for Home Assistant, but many users want futureproof devices as there might be some add-ons that eventually might need more RAM or storage (My system has ~62GB used, I have a 128GB NVMe (SiliconPower) running HAOS).
The power connector itself, regardless of what it is installed on, is rated at 2.5A. Stating that is meaningless since the device will draw only the current it needs. If the device comes with a 1A PSU, then the device can only consume what it needs, up to 1A. Again, you can power the device with a 300A car battery and it will only draw the power it requires.
The USB ports are 5V, so the device has a voltage regulator like the AMS1117‑5 to drop the 12V to 5V. There is no “pass-through” to the USB connector, and it is limited to 1A because that is all that the AMS chip can provide.
Yes im aware of the fact you’r describing, and theoretically, it should also work, “overkill” Yes , and people should know that futureproof is more than lots of RAM and Disk-size.
Homeassistant have also “evolved” and many people does not have much knowledge, in server-maintenance nor templating etc.
i.e A nightly back-up is running every day, with an i.e ever increasing DB, it will be quite some “shuffling” every night, with a “Spewing” Log, record-component might even have “problems” during a long backup etc
So there are quite some “issues” in here related to i.e full disks or hanging/crashes , and most of the times these comes from inexperienced people, who never check their logs, and just install what ever integration they find interesting/useful, without even check their “performance” or logfiles after. And have little network knowledge.
However Evan initially had various “issues” let’s call them newbee issues ( Including various connection issues ) Apparently he has been struggling with his HA setup, for a year now, and who knows he might not even have a habit of checking/or understanding his logfiles, or have tried to debug in anyway, or are “comfortable” with his network. Yet !
So the options we have to try to help, is by excluding, and trying to make sure he has followed common “rules” and recommendations.
I understand that You don’t have any doubt, and don’t have any reasons to question the Products/Setup You are selling.
But for us here, “being on the dark-side” can only try to guide him, using i.e basic setup, check his network And checking the overall temperature under load, and check his logs etc. etc.
My commend you referred to is/was just a “common” joke, i hope you know that, it was not mend directly to you, or the company , not the products , and i did suspect that he didn’t bought them in 1 package , didn’t even know if it was from same Store
I understand that, we did support Evan to help him get the unit initially working around the end of May 2025, but then we did not hear back from him for over 6 months, unless I am forgetting any other communication besides email (so we were not aware of him continuing to have issues—I wish I had seen this post sooner). His last email was based on the communication here about the power supply. We noted that we did not think that was the cause, as the 12V/2A power supply is the official PS that the Yellow comes with, and asked him a few questions about logs, integrations, and add-ons. Then Evan responded that the consensus here was that the 2A supply was not sufficient, that he wished we had not allowed this configuration when he ordered, and that he would try to run without the NVMe. We wish we had heard from him more often to help him troubleshoot. Since we knew that the issue was likely not the specific configuration, it could have helped us find the culprit by now—if the unit runs well without the NVMe, then we know it is the NVMe; if it still crashes, we could have the unit sent back to us and we could have tried a different CM4/CM5, etc. No worries about the joke, I just wanted to clarify those few points as I thought it would be good and hopefully be able to help Evan figure what the issue is, and if the NVMe is having issues, have it sent back to us for a refund.
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Thanks for jumping in Brandon. My board is up and running now without the NVMe SSD for 2 days. Once I hit day 7, I will report if I am still able to log in or if it is frozen. If it does not freeze by day 14 then I would like to try it again with a higher power, Power Supply and the NVMe installed again.
True. I am new to Home Assistant. I have been using Universal Devices ISY and eISY for many years and this was just a toy for me to learn a new system. During the 6 months, I noticed the freezing but thought it was my software configuration. It was conversations on this site that convinced me that the problem I was seeing was something that could not be solved in software. This is why I reached out to you to confirm that the configuration I had purchased was a valid configuration.
I understand, that is why I noted that we wish we had seen this blog before as we could have recommended trying without the NVMe sooner. Hopefully the issue is the NVMe so you can start using your Yellow without problems.
Well, I think it is an issue of conservation of power not voltage or current. So a 12V 1A supply is 12W. If a component on the board uses 5V then it could draw up to 12 W / 5 V= 2.4 A - less efficiency. So the component will draw what it needs up to 2.4 A and will then be limited by the Power Supply.
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Right, if you plug in i.e a 5V 10W dimmable lamp into a ( 1 amp limited ),usb-port, it will try to suck as much as it can, the Usb-port will “work” as a “static” dimmer
Same goes for i.e a disk-drive, it will run, but…
And same goes for the 3.5V limited components on a board
Common for these/such components is they also have(should have) “safety features” like a thermal switch, which protects against high heat and high load
Right, try to trouble-shoot such an “incident” !
NOTE: Don’t try to test stevemann’s example !, I have seen Cars burned down, caused by a Simple “short circuit” , which actually could happen anywhere, from the Power-connector to the internal components
It doesn’t matter what size battery you have, a short circuit in your device will usually let the magic smoke escape. You are using an anomaly to rationalize your opinion. The fact is that no device- a sensor, a Raspberry Pi, your car even your house will ever draw more current than required to function. UP TO what is available from the supply.
Thing is, You keep jumping into various Topics with Redundant Bollocks and even claiming things You have no idea of ( Like here howto interpret what NABU have told OP ), Not Helping, Nor suggesting … I don’t even know why i bother to answer You
My system has now been running for 7 days. A good sign since it typically would have frozen on day 6. I will let it run for another 7 days and then on day 14, I will probably be able to say the NVMe was a contributing factor to the freezing. I will probably want to try again with my 12V 4A supply with the NVMe installed if folks on this forum think it is worth trying.
Brandon said that my CM5 was shipped with the HAOS flashed to the 64GB eMMC. I did not verify this as he told me this after I had already re-flashed with the latest. Anyway, I am just curious as to how the Yellow Board knows to boot from the NVMe and not the CM5’s eMMC. I do now that my board was using the NVMe as it was showing the latest version that I was putting on the drive using Raspberry Pi Imager.
Hello Evan,
That was my mistake, I thought you had ordered one of our Kits (our Pro Kit w/CM5 was sent with a 16GB CM5 with HAOS flashed on the eMMC and a 1TB NVMe) but then I noticed that you had ordered the products separately so it was not sent assembled or flashed, so I am not sure if you installed the HAOS on the NVMe or eMMC originally. As far as I know the Yellow sequence is eMMC first and then NVMe, so if the HAOS is flashed on both eMMC and NVMe it should boot from NVMe first.
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