Fist Time Setup Hardware Suggestions

[keen zealot]

Hey! Looking for some suggestions on what would be the best start - hardware wise - for my HomeAssistant plunge.

I'm currently tossing up between the Home Assistant Yellow or utilising my old Dell XPS by installing HA OS on the entire thing, HA (in some form) in a VM, or in a container. I own the latter, not the former, but I have no issues with buying a Yellow and RPi CM4 and soldering them together.

I am very new to HA, home networking, and the like, but I do have the willingness to learn - and a university course on networks - for all that's worth. I eventually want to be able to build a neat HomeLab/Home Server with Plex and such, so if one option/variant is more beneficial with this 'end state' in mind I'd love to hear your 2 cents.

;D

[fringe vigil]

honestly if you have something old laying around then you can just install on that to get started. its very easy to move to different hardware later if you want. you just make a backup and restore it onto a fresh install on the new hardware.
the quicker you start the quicker you can learn about things and work out what you want in the future.

install haos bare metal or in a vm on a hypervisor. HAOS gives a better experience and functionality than container.

there is no soldering involved with a yellow. the CM4. I( sure as well wouldn't want to try and solder the 200 tiny pins anyway)

long term I suggest looking at something like an n100 mini pc. pretty powerful and low power

I have a post about my opinions on hardware selection that may be of interest to you.