Wanting to buy a windows system that is fast enough to use as my blue iris NVR and run home assistant on a virtual machine. Any suggestions on the best option for this? Prefer a Mini pc, as this will sit on a server rack.
#Windows PC to run home assistant and Blue Iris
willow patrol
hexed mesa
Beelink N100. Most of them come with Windows10/11 pre installed (so, no need to buy an additional license).
But, it depends on how many cameras you want to drive out of BI.
willow patrol
Beelink N100. Most of them come with Windows10/11 pre installed (so, no need to ...
I was looking at that. Probably at max 5. But all will be 4k. Will only record 4K when activity is detected.
hexed mesa
A N100 should be fine for that.
ancient sundial
Technically, it should be no problem for most modern machines. But I would recommend against it. Both systems are designed to run 24/7/365. If you have both running on one system, you create a single point of failure for two highly critical systems. I recommend spending the same (or less) money on two independent systems and dedicating each one to a specific task. You will have less headaches in the long run. And while I'm at it, although Blue Iris requires Windows, HA does not. I would buy a used Windows 11 machine of decent power (almost anything nowadays will work fine) and then put HA on a dedicated HA box like HA Yellow/Grn/blue/whatever color, or simply load HA on a RPi 5.
latent granite
Note that both windows and HAOS can be easily virtualized. You don't need a "Windows PC".
willow patrol
Technically, it should be no problem for most modern machines. But I would recom...
This is great advice. I'll stick with HA on my HA blue and get a separate computer for Blue Iris. Thanks!
willow patrol
Note that both windows and HAOS can be easily virtualized. You don't need a "Win...
Yep! I was more so wanting to go PC if I combined everything on one, and just virtualize HAOS.
tough torrent
Just a headsup that ZBT-1 does not work properly in virtualbox/windows version (not possible to set it to zigbee or thread) detects the device fine though so probably works if you can do the configuration somewhere else or just use something else that supports usb-passthrough.
opaque hamlet
For Home Assistant itself, I'd stay away from anything virtualized and running "on top of" something. I like the clean Home Assistant OS. Personally, I have a x86 mini PC just running that. You can get mini Pcs with home assistant preinstalled on Amazon or eBay like a Pulcro Home Assistant Mini PC.
latent granite
Care to elaborate why? It has many benefits: #hardware-archived message
opaque hamlet
Care to elaborate why? It has many benefits: https://discord.com/channels/330944...
So in my case, the lower power requirement is a benefit. I have my WiFi APs, router and Mini PC plugged into one UPS, and certain LED drivers into separate UPSs around the house. Often the power goes out so HA knows how to light up my staircase and other LED lights powered by the UPS. That...and the fact I don't have to have a dedicated PC.
I don't have anything against virtualization but for my home user usecase, I really don't see any benefit for this big machine unless I'm running some server or multiple applications and want to colocate it on the one physical device.
latent granite
Why would HAOS in a PVE VM use noticeably more power than HAOS?
opaque hamlet
Good Q. You have virtualization overhead for start. Not just the QEMU/LXC engine but PVE's bells and whistles. Typically when you dedicate a PC for virtualization, you wouldn't have a Celeron CPU running a PVE (you can of course) but something with more cores and power. Then it depends how robust your setup is: you may have hardware RAID, more NICs. Granted, I don't have a lab to validate the scale but by just looking at the power adapter to an Mini PC - it has a max rating of 30W? 36W? at full power.