Best mini PC for HA?

[thorny adder]

What are some good mini PCs for HA? I would like enough compute for fully local STT and TTS at real-time speeds. It doesn’t need to be attractive in appearance, but it needs to be quiet enough to not disturb anyone.

[lilac ibex]

The Voice PE site recommends a N100: https://www.home-assistant.io/voice-pe/
There's fanless models.

[flint berry]

i have had some good experience with beelink products
something like the s12 is pretty solid choice

[thorny adder]

Does BeeLink provide regular firmware (BIOS) updates?

[lilac ibex]

I think so but if support like that is important to you you can also get a used (U)SFF PC from fujitsu, lenovo, hp, dell, etc for much cheaper. I prefer them in most cases.
I didn't mention it earlier because you specifically asked for a Mini PC.

[thorny adder]

What is the difference between mini and USFF?

[lilac ibex]

Size/form factor. I suppose mini fits into the USFF category.

[flint berry]

yeah i beleive so. they to a monthly round up of them on their blog

https://www.bee-link.com/blogs/all/beelink-february-bios-update

[thorny adder]

I’m not particular with used stuff that is not a super locked down embedded system.

(exception: systems only used for testing)

[lilac ibex]

Not sure I understand.

[thorny adder]

Used hardware has security concerns unless it is something with strong secure boot.

[lilac ibex]

Well HAOS does not support secure boot.
Beelink has chinese roots. I'm not that concerned about this, especially for home but everyone has different view points, of course.

[flint berry]

you could install proxmox with secure boot and then install haos on top of that if that is a big thing for you

[lilac ibex]

I consider this the best way to run HAOS. Almost anything, really.

[flint berry]

yeah i have haos on proxmox on a mini pc

[thorny adder]

I run https://www.qubes-os.org on my laptop 🙂

and yes, I will likely use a VM, if for no other reason than it lets me put HA entirely behind a reverse proxy.

[flint berry]

i have an n150 eq14 which i got for the extra m.2 slot (for a coral tpu) and run haos on a vm and frigate on a lxc HOWEVER i would not generally recomend this at the moment unless you really need the extra m.2

[thorny adder]

What do you use the TPU for?

[flint berry]

frigate object detection

the issue with the n150 is the igpu comatability. i got it working (mostly) but it was a bit of work. hence i recomend the n100 systems as they work out the box. the performence difference is in practical terms non-existant i just wanted to be fancy with internal tpu. i probably wouldnt have bothered knowing what i know now

[thorny adder]

Which brands are known to provide BIOS updates?

[flint berry]

beelink do seem to do it fairly regually but realistically how long are you hoping to get updates for? unless something is really broken i cant see many companies doing updates passed a few years

whilst i do keep stuff up to date, ill admit i dont really care that much about bios updates as long as stuff is working

[wind yew]

I've tried installing it inside a router

[worn ivy]

N100 is not enough CPU to run a larger whisper model fast. I found that Whisper large turbo improved the experience of talking to a large LLM. Using local assist with a limited dialogue may not make much difference.

[twilit oriole]

What beelink or NUC devices would you all recommend?

[flint berry]

it depends on your exact use case and requirements but in general the beelink S12 is a pretty solid option

[twilit oriole]

A few ZigBee and Matter devices and no more than three cameras

[flint berry]

then i imagine you will be fine with an n100 system

[twilit oriole]

Thank you

Anything to look out for?

[flint berry]

as i said above, the beelink S12 is a pretty solid option but theres plenty of other options which are simalar

[twilit oriole]

Are any of these suitable?

Thank you

[sweet tartan]

@flint berry sent you a DM

[thorny adder]

As long as the CPU is not EOL

[thorny adder]

What would be fast enough?

[thorny adder]

What advantages does the BeeLink have over the other mini PCs?

[flint berry]

probably not alot, but its just i have had good experiences with the beelink devices and not tried the others. i have also heard good stuff from others about the beelink

[flint berry]

it depends what whisper model you want to run. if you want to run a bigger model you are better off running faster-whisper with gpu accelleration on a system with a gpu

[thorny adder]

How big are you thinking of?