Best raspberry device for a dash? | Home Assistant | Page 1

steep ingot Oct 6, 2025, 5:10 PM

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I'm building a family calendar dashboard and I have a 32", 4k monitor to display it. I bought a raspberry pi 4b to power the dash but I think that might be overkill and I may need the pi anyway.

I recently updated my home server PC because my services were piling up and figured I should do something more efficient. I have been keeping HA as a VM but did some reading and it's probably better on a pi as the main OS.

To that end, would one of the lighter raspberry devices be sufficient to power a 4k monitor for a simple kiosk dash display?

sand forge Oct 6, 2025, 5:28 PM

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Why would a pi be better than a VM?

harsh oyster Oct 6, 2025, 5:38 PM

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use home server to run haos vm on it and use your rpi as mediaplayer or so. Haos on pi is, as impact stated, never better then running on server pc.

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or use pi with ubuntu and use browser to show desktop.

steep ingot Oct 6, 2025, 5:43 PM

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I was hoping not to use a VM, I went the process of making a change to primarily use docker so I didn't lock up resources in a dozen VMs (I don't have that many locally hosted services yet but...). I've got HA in a VM right now but I've read that, through docker, Add Ons are a challenge. I've also had issues with Bluetooth integration (my Mobo doesn't have bluetooth).

I've currently got a raspberry pi 4b with raspberry pi OS on it that I'm just going to open a browser and make that the view but I was thinking it might be useful to use that raspberry pi as my HA dedicated device. I'm fine using a VM for now

sand forge Oct 6, 2025, 5:51 PM

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I'd rather use that pi as web client for the screen, not as a server. VMs are awesome, pis are not: https://gist.github.com/Impact123/6ee130240bdc6a7fed2d5224616544a0
What do you have against VMs?

steep ingot Oct 6, 2025, 5:51 PM

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Mostly that I don't want a VM taking up a quarter of my PCs resources for one service - it's mostly abour resource efficiency

sand forge Oct 6, 2025, 5:54 PM

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Where are you hosting the VM on right now?

steep ingot Oct 6, 2025, 6:15 PM

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Windows (or did you mean hardware? ). I'm actively switching to Ubuntu though which is why I'm thinking about my system

sand forge Oct 6, 2025, 6:16 PM

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Yes, hardware and specs.

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I can recommend Proxmox VE: https://gist.github.com/Impact123/c23c36eafe1672ec056233e450a86ae2
I have a debian VM on there which most of my docker containers run in. Including HA. I also have a HAOS VM to help people here and test stuff. Lots of flexibility.

steep ingot Oct 6, 2025, 6:20 PM

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Ryzen 7 3700x
16gb ddr4 2400
1080ti
512 GB Nvme drive

Plenty of space but HA it's a quarter of my resources

sand forge Oct 6, 2025, 6:23 PM

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Just the memory. Check with the glances addon if it really needs 4G. RAM is cheap, by the way.

steep ingot Oct 6, 2025, 6:26 PM

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Yeah and it's the AM4 platform so I don't need the more costly ddr5.

I'm fine running it as a VM but if I end up needing a second with similar demands and using up half the device... I might switch.

I'm not doing a lot with my HA right now, think 2G ram is enough?

sand forge Oct 6, 2025, 6:26 PM

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2G is the minimum but might be enough. Check with glances or top -o %MEM in the CLI of the VM after entering login . My test VM only gets 2G at max.

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I just think running HA on a pi will be a big downgrade. See first link.

steep ingot Oct 6, 2025, 6:29 PM

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In what sense? Compute power? Ease of maintenance? I want to be sure I understand the tradeoffs

sand forge Oct 6, 2025, 6:29 PM

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My first link has lots of my personal reasons. Performance, reliability, etc. Not everyone agrees with them, of course.

#Best raspberry device for a dash?