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“ About Home Assistant Open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts

“ About Home Assistant Open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server”

eternityforest 4y ago
"Run on a raspberry pi" is a little tricky. You seem to need an SSD, or else some careful configuration of what to include and exclude from logs, if you don't want the disk to corrupt in a year or two. It's a wonderful project but I wish they would be more careful about SD wear.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  Counterpoint: I've got 2 instances running for several years now using their default Raspberry Pi image and still no issues.
  - alin23 4y ago
    I’ve just had one SD card with HomeAssistant on it, fail on me last week after a power cut. It’s easy to fall into this fallacy of “it’s been working fine until now, so it will keep working”, I had the same thinking. Luckily I was doing restic [1] backups daily to my Hetzner box, and my last HA backup was there, so I didn’t have to start from scratch. But it’s still annoying to have to buy another SD, flash it and find a way to restore the backup just to get your home running again. [1] https://restic.net/ https://restic.net/
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
  There must be some way to get at least a SATA SSD onto a raspberry without too much hassle. A cursory google search revealed lots of blogposts, videos etc on doing exactly that. Also, if you're using an Rpi, it's also because you like tinkering, so more tinkering could be seen as a bonus :)
  - eternityforest 4y ago
    That's one good reason to use a RasPi, the other is just that they are rock solid, almost bulletproof devices you can really trust, as long as you don't hammer the SD card. Also, they are affordable, small, and low power, and an actually good SSD kinda messes that up.
- oaththrowaway 4y ago
  Running an SSD on a rPi 4b is pretty trivial
- Avamander 4y ago
  I made a post on their forum how to mount HASS logs out of the container onto a tmpfs to avoid pointless wear.
theshrike79 4y ago
"Docker image on a server you'll have running somewhere in your house anyway" is the correct choice. Raspi is fine when you're still setting it up, but not worth the hassle when it breaks.
- balaji1 4y ago
  I think an old laptop in the home network would work well
- cameronh90 4y ago
  With electricity prices being what they are right now, a Raspi using <5W is fantastic for me.
  - theshrike79 4y ago
    My current Docker host is an used Lenovo ThinkCentre M900 Tiny I bought. It's got a 65 watt power supply and it's definitely not using all of it. i5-6500T, 1TB of M.2 SSD, 16GB of ram and running a good two dozen Docker containers. I'd say that's a better bang for the buck than a closet full of Raspberries struggling under the load :)
    - cameronh90 4y ago
      65W would represent about a 30% increase on my average electricity usage or about £15/month, probably more later this year. HA is the only thing I run locally, and I mainly use it to save energy - also for watering plants and scaring foxes out of the garden. I know it isn't going to be pegging at 65W but if it's anywhere in the vicinity, it's cheaper to use AWS instead. I used to have a server that I used for Plex/HA, but in the end the energy cost was higher than a Netflix subscription. I could have upgraded it to more energy efficient hardware but it would have taken years to pay off.
    - int0x2e 4y ago
      I agree - a used corporate small form factor PC from the likes of HP/Lenovo/Dell has tons of power for HA and can still be had for a next to nothing. They also sip power - under 10W at the wall at idle.

eternityforest 4y ago

"Run on a raspberry pi" is a little tricky. You seem to need an SSD, or else some careful configuration of what to include and exclude from logs, if you don't want the disk to corrupt in a year or two. It's a wonderful project but I wish they would be more careful about SD wear.

Nextgrid 4y ago
Counterpoint: I've got 2 instances running for several years now using their default Raspberry Pi image and still no issues.
- alin23 4y ago
  I’ve just had one SD card with HomeAssistant on it, fail on me last week after a power cut. It’s easy to fall into this fallacy of “it’s been working fine until now, so it will keep working”, I had the same thinking. Luckily I was doing restic [1] backups daily to my Hetzner box, and my last HA backup was there, so I didn’t have to start from scratch. But it’s still annoying to have to buy another SD, flash it and find a way to restore the backup just to get your home running again. [1] https://restic.net/ https://restic.net/
mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
There must be some way to get at least a SATA SSD onto a raspberry without too much hassle. A cursory google search revealed lots of blogposts, videos etc on doing exactly that. Also, if you're using an Rpi, it's also because you like tinkering, so more tinkering could be seen as a bonus :)
- eternityforest 4y ago
  That's one good reason to use a RasPi, the other is just that they are rock solid, almost bulletproof devices you can really trust, as long as you don't hammer the SD card. Also, they are affordable, small, and low power, and an actually good SSD kinda messes that up.
oaththrowaway 4y ago
Running an SSD on a rPi 4b is pretty trivial
Avamander 4y ago
I made a post on their forum how to mount HASS logs out of the container onto a tmpfs to avoid pointless wear.

theshrike79 4y ago

"Docker image on a server you'll have running somewhere in your house anyway" is the correct choice. Raspi is fine when you're still setting it up, but not worth the hassle when it breaks.

balaji1 4y ago
I think an old laptop in the home network would work well
cameronh90 4y ago
With electricity prices being what they are right now, a Raspi using <5W is fantastic for me.
- theshrike79 4y ago
  My current Docker host is an used Lenovo ThinkCentre M900 Tiny I bought. It's got a 65 watt power supply and it's definitely not using all of it. i5-6500T, 1TB of M.2 SSD, 16GB of ram and running a good two dozen Docker containers. I'd say that's a better bang for the buck than a closet full of Raspberries struggling under the load :)
  - cameronh90 4y ago
    65W would represent about a 30% increase on my average electricity usage or about £15/month, probably more later this year. HA is the only thing I run locally, and I mainly use it to save energy - also for watering plants and scaring foxes out of the garden. I know it isn't going to be pegging at 65W but if it's anywhere in the vicinity, it's cheaper to use AWS instead. I used to have a server that I used for Plex/HA, but in the end the energy cost was higher than a Netflix subscription. I could have upgraded it to more energy efficient hardware but it would have taken years to pay off.
  - int0x2e 4y ago
    I agree - a used corporate small form factor PC from the likes of HP/Lenovo/Dell has tons of power for HA and can still be had for a next to nothing. They also sip power - under 10W at the wall at idle.