Hey everyone, i'm excited to start automating!
What is the best or most effective way to run Home Assistant?
A Few options I've seen are;
-Home Assistant Yellow
-Beelink mini PC
-Raspberry Pi DIY route
What would you suggest and why?
Thanks!
#What hardware to run Home Assistant?
wicked river
polar ether
The middle. Here's a few of my reasons why: https://gist.github.com/Impact123/6ee130240bdc6a7fed2d5224616544a0
wicked river
i have some notes on the subject [here](https://gist.github.com/MichaelMKKelly/7...
If I go the Beelink route, I would need to get zigbee antenna, correct?
polar ether
If you want to use zigbee you need a coordinator. That applies to the last item too.
wicked river
Coordinator? I’m sorry, I am very new to this
polar ether
The zigbee "antenna" is called a coordinator or hub. Also see here:
https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/advanced/zigbee/01_zigbee_network.html
https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/zha/#zigbee-terminology
polar ether
I don't like to recommend specific models as prices and availability are too dependent on too many things.
novel hare
beelink s12 pro - is worth looking at but as @polar ether says. there are alot of variables
wicked river
Looks like it’s around $150 on Amazon right now
polar ether
Sounds like a fair price to me.
wicked river
Then I would just need the coordinators to go with it to work with whatever smart devices I currently have?
novel hare
Then I would just need the coordinators to go with it to work with whatever smar...
what devices do you have?
wicked river
Ring, Google, Amazon, and zigbee light bulbs
novel hare
for the zigbee bulbs you will need a coordinator yes. the other stuff is wifi and varying degrees of intrgration
polar ether
Note that if price is a concern you can get tiny USFF machines like these on eBay for < 100 or so
They can actually have a few advantages like better RAM support, CPU exchangeability, firmware upgrades, sometimes PCIe slots, vPRO, etc.
The mentioned SLZB-06 can also be used as USB device.
wicked river
Note that if price is a concern you can get tiny USFF machines like these on eBa...
Nice! The cheaper the better! As long as it gets the job done without any major downsides
polar ether
Yep something like this works well too. 8th gen intel has a bit more longevity (windows 11 support) if you want to sell it again or something. If you you want to virtualize (much recommended) I'd get at least 16G memory but otherwise that looks fine to me.
See here for specs and review
wicked river
Probably wont sell it but the 16G memory is a good idea. What are the benafits of virtualizing ?
Thank you so much for the help and knowledge
polar ether
I really need to update that article but here: https://gist.github.com/Impact123/c23c36eafe1672ec056233e450a86ae2
wicked river
Heres another option; 16g RAM. Not sure if it is 8th gen intel but it has windows 11 installed; https://www.ebay.com/itm/336042435134
polar ether
You really gotta trim those URLs.
That's 6th gen. Easy to tell from the name. Windows does not really matter here as it will be replaced.
wicked river
You really gotta trim those URLs.
I was just thinking the same
wicked river
for the zigbee bulbs you will need a coordinator yes. the other stuff is wifi an...
What would I need to purchase to get ring, google, and amazon to work with HA?
small anvil
Hehe I think SBC are fantastic for being fanless meanwhile can be powered by PoE, the bonus point being during a power outage you can run SBC for much, much longer with a dedicated UPS.
I have Yellow PoE and CM5, very happy with it so far.
novel hare
What would I need to purchase to get ring, google, and amazon to work with HA?
the ring integration is very simple. when you say "google" and "amazon" you are being very vague. however the answer is likely "no additional hardware" but actually ability to integrate is going to vary wildly depending on device and what you want it to do...
wicked river
the ring integration is very simple. when you say "google" and "amazon" you are ...
Just google a home and Amazon echo. I figured all of their devices used the same protocol when it came to integrating it into HA
wicked river
Here's an eBay option I found;https://www.ebay.com/itm/267308568465 Not a cheaper option but seems like the specs are better than the Beelink S12 for around the same price.
Here's a cheaper options; https://www.ebay.com/itm/277237900920
polar ether
Both look fine to me. Not sure if the M630E one ships with a PSU.
Both support NVMe but the M630E one ships with a SATA drive. This only matters if you want to extend it with another 2.5" SATA drive.
The M630e one only supports 16GB of memory while the M920Q supports 32GB.
See here if you want to compare them further:
wicked river
I reached out to the seller, the M630E will ship with a PSU. Not sure if I would ever need 32gb of memory. I just plan on automating some lights and switches around the house. I wouldn’t think I would ever need more than 250g of storage either.
What situation would I might want more than 16gb?
polar ether
In case you want to virtualize or run a few more things than just HA(OS).
There's lots of possibilities:
wicked river
Is it possible to have home assistant on a VM on my main PC while I wait for my dedicated mini PC to arrive?
polar ether
Sure. You could use virtualbox, for example.
wicked river
Would you suggest loading home assistant as its own OS on a mini PC? Or when you said "Virtualize" did you mean just run a VM with HA on the mini pc?
polar ether
The idea is that you install Proxmox VE as OS and then run HAOS as a VM with it.
This is a popular quick start guide for it: https://www.derekseaman.com/2023/10/home-assistant-proxmox-ve-8-0-quick-start-guide-2.html
Benefits: #1389336215291166972 message
lusty jolt
I went a different route. I had a spare 1TB SATA SSD, and a barely functioning Optiplex 790 from 2012 or so. I was running proxmox on it, and had a VM for HAOS on it. It was already running Plex along with a few used SAS drives I picked up for 20 bucks. Found a Supermicro X10SLH-F server board including an E3-1275 Xeon and 32G of ram on eBay for 120.00. ripped out the guts of the Optiplex and shoehorned that server into the case. That is now running proxmox, with TrueNAS, plex HAOS, and a few other servers. I have my eyes on a cheap rack about an hour away from me and I may go grab that, and go full home server. 🤣
wicked river
I went a different route. I had a spare 1TB SATA SSD, and a barely functioning O...
Nice! That would be ultimately the end goal for me too! Having my own server!
What's the point of running Proxmox instead of justing using windows with a VM?
Pardon my ignorance.
polar ether
I will not 😄
If you want to compare you need to compare KVM/QEMU which PVE uses against the possible options like VirtualBox, Hyper-V, VMware, etc.
If you want some answers I'd google something like why is linux used for servers instead of windows as this is only mildly virtualization related.
rapid stone
go for 16gb ram minimum, watch ENERGY costs (newer hardware recommended)... and go the PVE proxmox way
who needs windows if you have Gates..
😉
PVE is lightweight
wicked river
go for 16gb ram minimum, watch ENERGY costs (newer hardware recommended)... and ...
Any hardware recommendations?
rapid stone
Cant help you with that, running dedicated server with a lot of power consumption 😉
maybe a thin client, they use less power, look for 16gb RAM and a decent CPU, maybe M.2 slot and extra SSD slot for expanding in future are desirable
polar ether
Any hardware recommendations?
The two USFF PCs you linked are fine.
wicked river
@polar ether I managed to picked up an USFF pc locally, Do you recommend a SMLIGHT SLZB-06/M or a SONOFF coordinator?
polar ether
The former.
wicked river
I know the 06 works with Zigbee2MQTT and the 06M work with ZHA. Do have and preference and why you would pick one over the other?