What should I run home assistant on?

[cursive brook]

I have a small budget from work to buy "educational stuff" and I wager I can justify buying a home assistant yellow or whatnot.
I was wondering what the best platform to run Home Assistant on is and what would be somewhat painless but also educationl (i.e., learn more abotu MQTT, how IoT works and so on).
What best fits the case? Cheers!

I'm partly asking this because I've heard of horror stories of people running Home Assistant on RPi 4 and it having tremendous issues.
I also see there's a Helm Chart if I wanna run it in a k3s cluster, but it doesn't seem maintained really, etc. etc.

[placid hollow]

I have a write up on my opinion of hardware choice here - https://gist.github.com/MichaelMKKelly/7a7bfed8610491a2c93acb44a2400866

I generally recommend going the n100 mini pc route. running on top of proxmox. this would be great in a learning environment as you could potentially spin other things up too

[cursive brook]

I'll read that in-depth tomorrow as it's about 11PM here, thanks a lot!

[placid hollow]

cool, hope it helps. can ping me here if any questions

[cursive brook]

This goes right up the alley of me wanting to get a 3 mini PC setup for kubernetes shenanigans

so I will have further quesitons most likely 👀

cheers!

[stone plank]

As an aside, I was running HA on an 8GiB rPi5 + 256GiB Nvme SSD (connected via the hat adapter) with no issues, but switched to a Proxmox VM to repurpose the pi5 for something else.

[desert yew]

I'm using a full HA OS instance on my Proxmox machine with 4 E cores and 8GB of RAM. Basically emulates one of those Intel N100 mini PC you can find cheap on Amazon. It's quick for all my 300+ entities and compiles Esphome firmwares quickly.
I suggest using the full OS because it's much easier to manage.
If you want a three mini PC setup you can always deploy an high availability Proxmox cluster and deploy an HA OS VM.

[left beacon]

pls be more specific. what is your budget exactly? how much energy consumption is okay for you?

[cursive brook]

I was thinking something like a Lenovo ThinkCentre M710q, Intel Quad Core i5-7500T, 8GB DDR4, but the N100's look kind of sweet.

unless a proxmoc cluster could someone distribute the load (assuming not)? I haven't touched proxmox at all practically, only heard about what it can do here and there

[cursive brook]

Part of me is unsure, as little as possible is best. I won't go crazy with the amount of stuff I have, but based on this discussion a Mini PC with Proxmox seems ideal.
I was under the impression that the Home Assistant Yellow/Green were vastly superior for running HA.

[cursive brook]

Are there any notable support issues differences from the N100 to the N150?

[placid hollow]

there should not be any support issues as long as you are not running an old kernel which wouldnt be the case in most situations.
but there is basically no performance difference between n100 and n150. so unless you specifically want something else that an n150 system has over a n100 then its not worth paying more for the n150

[cursive brook]

Noted, cheers! I may go for it due to it just being in stock, but otherwise yeah, I'd go for the N100.

[placid hollow]

fair enough, one being in stock is as good a reason as any to prefer it 😛

[left beacon]

ah with the "Lenovo ThinkCentre M710q" you should consider the noisy fan. if you want to go with proxmox in the future i recommend a still very small mini-itx mainboard and maybe i5 8500 or better

[rare crater]

Proxmox vm

[old tangle]

I've been running an RPi4 with minimal issues for 4 years now. I'm planning to move to a VM on my server largely because the large number of entities I think is starting to slow it down. FWIW...

[desert yew]

That's about the same amount of power as an N100, but higher power consumption
If you want load balancing you can't rely on Proxmox. Proxmox high availability just moves VMs around on different nodes if one goes down

[cursive brook]

Yep, read up a bit, still seems like the way to go. Especially as it's going to be effectively just one user (me) and for that I'd require L7 balancing if I'm not wrong.

[cursive brook]

Thanks for all the answers. 🙏

[left umbra]

What ssd did you use with what hat? Started with a sd card with ha on it, but it died in 1 week... are you able to sent me some links? No idea what to get. (Never used a hat, or used a ssd in combination with a ssd)

[stone plank]

I used the actual raspberry pi hat and SSD. https://vilros.com/products/raspberry-pi-m-2-hat-for-raspberry-pi-5?variant=40931912122462

[left umbra]

Is this the mini pc you recommend? (Hope it is oke i link to aliexpress here) https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/1005004290430507.html?src=google&pdp_npi=4%40dis!EUR!200.27!116.99!!!!!%40!12000041530756264!ppc!!!&src=google&albch=shopping&acnt=272-267-0231&isdl=y&slnk=&plac=&mtctp=&albbt=Google_7_shopping&aff_platform=google&aff_short_key=UneMJZVf&gclsrc=aw.ds&&albagn=888888&&ds_e_adid=&ds_e_matchtype=&ds_e_device=c&ds_e_network=x&ds_e_product_group_id=&ds_e_product_id=nl1005004290430507&ds_e_product_merchant_id=100971169&ds_e_product_country=NL&ds_e_product_language=nl&ds_e_product_channel=online&ds_e_product_store_id=&ds_url_v=2&albcp=20730513328&albag=&isSmbAutoCall=false&needSmbHouyi=false&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=20726902985&gbraid=0AAAAAoukdWPT6aEXCsLV6O3FjDwA2p0tf&gclid=CjwKCAjwvO7CBhAqEiwA9q2YJTu71s1gt-Q7qK4Q50fsXPsPjYl_e9cWTETptegfSZ2EmFSNlVtj_xoCDVUQAvD_BwE @placid hollow

[placid hollow]

the n100 version of it

[left umbra]

The n150 won’t be “enough”? This one has a big sale on it, from 170 to 115.
I just want to run ha on it, nothing else.

[placid hollow]

the one the link goes to shows a n150 in the photo but in the description model it shows its a n5095

you gotta be careful when selecting models

for a n150 version you could look at something like the s13 or eq14 model

[left umbra]

I know, you can navigate left to right, prices change each hour 🫣
So you recommend, really get the N100 version, no other. Kinda overwhelmed what it to be found. Just want HA yo work in the end, without to many fuss like with my pi at the moment.

[placid hollow]

n100 or n150 are fine. but they are performance wise basically identical but the n150 cost a little more and uses a little more power

[placid hollow]

AE website is awful for these kind of things sometimes

not sure if its people or bots but someone doesnt know what they are doing

if its not "clear" what your actually getting or there is conflicting info then i would look for another listing

that particular listing you linked is dreadful

e.g. its got a model like
N5095 8G 128G N100 16G500G
so when you break that down its:

8gig ram
128gig ssd
n100 cpu
16gig ram
500gig ssd```
my guess is that its intentionally confusing and they might just send you a worse thing than what you actually want

THIS listing has options that are more clear
e.g.
Intel N100 16G500G and Intel N150 16G500G which is in line with the images too

and is also fromthe actual beelink AE store

i think a lot of listings are bad to make people think they are getting something they are not and hoping they dont notice until its too late

[left umbra]

In the end, you pay when you reveive the item. But ye, dealing with people like me; i wouldnt have noticed....

[placid hollow]

AE is a lot better than it used to be but there is still some scam type behavior. if something is confusing then its probably on purpose and you should avoid it

[left umbra]

Agree, but Ali is the only one selling the blink for an oke price, Amazon has one, but it’s 300,- 🫣
That’s a huge difference compared to the pi 115,- or so.
I’m willing to pay, if it works, but where does the price difference come from?
I’ll have to pay AFTER receiving the items, so could give it a shot, and come back with you (if that’s oke) when I receive the hardware (to check if they delivered the right stuff?) If you are oke with that?
BUT it indeed looks shady. “They will sent the items based on stock, either 2x ssd or (old) an ssd and hdd.”🫣

[placid hollow]

how are you paying after? you mean your just using a credit card and dispute it if there's an issue?
AE is fine but beelink have an official shop on there, so just use that instead of a random other suspicious listing