Raspberry Pi s are harder to get , from where do you buy yours from ? i plan to use my raspberry with home assistant and run home automation , how was your experience with this ? , my next alternative will be to use my ThinkPad t450s and install docker on my Ubuntu lts os , do you recommend this way , or what are your thoughts
For iot i will mostly use tplink tapo, wiz, arlec, D-Link,
Home Automation with Home Assistant on Raspberry Pi
desikiwi on 05/12/2023 - 06:05
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What are your thoughts 🤔 on Home Assistant Green it's roughly 180 NZD approx my thinkpad i brought it for 250 NZD only difference will be power consumption
No idea, sorry, haven't really looked at it
I would rather recommend a mini pc like N100 or something from Amazon/Aliexpress. You can get it for less than $250 shipped. This is way powerful then anything you can run on rpi. Rpi is not much worth at this age due to the cost and it being an arm processor limits your virtualization options. You can even get a cheap SFF pc 2nd hand.
I recently bought Beelink EQ12 N100 (16gb) for around $270 from Aliexpress. Running proxmox on it with Plex server, HA VM(with zigbee & around 50+ sensors) & pihole. CPU sitting around 2-4% on idle. With 2-4 simultaneous plex streams CPU sits around 40% or so.
Check homelab on reddit for more detailed discussions.
Edit: Stay away from baremetal OS install if you can. Running HA OS in virtual environment has its perks which out weighs anything else. I have a copy of my HA also on my Unraid server in case I have issues with mini pc. I can easily start the instance within 5 minutes and back online. Here is the installation instructions
Just out of interest, why Pi Hole over Adguard Home?
Can't remember right now. There was something which pi hole had. I think adguard needed some sub or something for some feature. Will have to look and come back to you.
Do remember one thing that you will require Ethernet for Home Assistant. It won't work on wifi in case you plan to use laptop, it needs to be connected to lan.
what things do you use home automation for?
I feel like i should be looking into this
Lots of things with lots of integrations into one app/one place. In short controlling almost all your devices which can be controlled via internet/ethernet.
I have different brands of smart bulbs you can use everything together you can set up conditions like say turn on outside lights when sunset then add another condition like turn off at set time and turn on again at a specific time and turn off again at sunrise just an example .
You can automate lots of things like sensors set alarm say if you have certain speaker hub which are used in smart video door chimes you can trigger it to ring if motion is decteced door is open so on
Raspberry Pi's aren't that hard to get anymore, PBTech even seems to have RPi5 4GB in stock.
But like @ace310 suggests, I'd recommend a mini PC or a second hand SFF PC like a HP EliteDesk 800 G2 Mini.
I have an old Pi 3B I use HA on. It's mostly pretty good, but it can be a little slow: I have the AdGuard add-on running on it, and things like retrieving history can take quite a while. I also have a mini PC at work with HA on Docker, and while this is much better performance-wise. However when installing it I didn't fully realise one important point: You can't install add-ons in it. Add ons are only supported in HAOS or in supervised installations, and running under Docker is not considered of those. Of all the installation methods, HAOS is the easiest to manage (think: appliance) and Supervisor installations are the most work (think: another entire server to manage).
If you do decide to go Docker, most of the time you can get similar functionality to the add-ons by other means (eg. by installing AdGuard as a separate service on the machine), but I have to say the add-ons are pretty sweet.
So in summary: if you just want to use HA like an appliance, use HAOS. If you want more flexibility and don't mind the loss of add-ons, Docker is pretty straightforward. If you want ultimate control and don't mind fully administering another Linux machine, go for a Supervised installation.