Home Assistant 2022 - Which Hardware to Buy + Full Install Guide
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 31 พ.ค. 2024
- The What and the Why on new hardware I chose for Home Assistant and a complete install guide from end to end of it. ⚡Dell 3050 Ebay - ebay.us/OTlSlU ⚡ Dell 3050 Amzn - amzn.to/38yJCDN
⚡Hardware
Optional m.2 256gb NVME SSD - amzn.to/3ksox08
M.2 Enclosure - amzn.to/3y0r1uR
SATA Disk Adapter - amzn.to/3vPYeXg
UPDATE: Stuck at tsc clocksource error at boot? thanks to sumasage on my discord for the fix! Go into the BIOS then System Configuration then SATA operation then change to AHCI mode. You most likely will have to reimage the drive again using the etcher process.
⚡Resources
Getting Started with UnRaid - • Getting Started with U...
#homeassistant - home-assistant.io
#frigate • Camera Person Detectio...
Dell Drivers - www.dell.com/support/home/en-...
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00:00 Intro
01:13 The Why
05:38 Hardware Guts
11:39 Hard Drive Adapters
13:51 Install Process
17:43 Computer Settings
20:19 Boot up!
23:37 The BEST Part!
#tasmota
#esphome
Just putting this info here incase anyone encountered an issue with installing HA using nvme ssd. If it hung on "clocksource: Switched to clocksource tsc" when booting, you have to disable Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST), dell word it Intel Rapid Restore Technology in their bios. GO into the bios > System Configuration > SATA operation > change to AHCI mode (This is bios for the optiplex 3050). This fixed for me.
Added this to a couple comments as well the description but I will pin this comment as well. Many thanks!
Thank you!
I was stuck on that clocksource step during booting for too long, I should have just read the comments first haha.
Thanks for that, I too was stuck at that boot point and thought I would have to put nvme in external usb case.
Haha, worked like a CHAMP!! Thanks a milli
Thanks for the info It really saved my bacon.I was tweaking every wrong thing, it gave me so much grief! UDMAN
Thank you for keeping it fair and sharing your preferences in a convincing and productive way. Too many videos of people saying this is the best way without substance as to why. Much respect
Thanks bro! The couple of clips of the complete boot and just app boot were really eye openers for me.
Another great video Travis. Thanks for all your work!!
Dude! Wow - this has to be one of the best builds and vids I have seen in years. You rock Dude. Thanks so much for the time spent setting this rig up, testing it then telling us all in so many easy steps. (and answering my prev dumb arse questions) Up and running in under couple hrs on "stupid fast" samsung 970 Evo NVMe SSD (that one also has the built in cache) on a Dell 7050 with i5 7000T. I just measured this all set up at 7-8W. Insane speed and power conservation.. Great stuff Travis! Subscriber 4 life!
Many thanks! Glad to hear back that it is working well. Hard to get new stuff these days but the cool thing is so many refurbs out there for us to run this exact thing. Put the hardware to use. So much faster than a Pi4!
Hello, great video! This helped me in first trying out HA on the Raspberry to realize transiting to the Dell Optiplex was the configuration I was looking for. Copying over the configuration from Raspberry to the Dell was totally seamless. Thanks for taking out the time to create this video.
Thanks for the feedback! It is a pretty awesome setup and pretty solid with all the refurbs out there they are usually pretty cheap to get as well.
Thanks for doing this video! I did mine on an old HP using Debian and a VM because I didn't understand how easy it was to load onto machine - this was tremendously helpful, thank you! Much appreciated!
Sometimes the KISS solutions of just letting one machine do it all is the way to go.
Yes this! Home automation running as a stand alone appliance on a usff PC with a small UPS.
Rock solid setup that is fast and not impacted by any other non smart home systems
Thanks for doing this video. I just ordered my 3050 last night to start doing my first smart home and first HA
Great video as always Travis. Keep it up
Thank you!
Thank you! with this video I installed HA in a Lenovo M93P, and it's working beautifully. Great video!
Glad it helped
I was searching high and low, Thank you Bro !
No problem 👍
Great Job as always.
Just what I needed, I had an old repurposed (twice) HP Prolient Microserver running HA on Proxmox hard crash just over a week ago. Finally managed to get it running again but remembered this video. After re-watching I ordered a 3050. Very happy to say it took less than 2 hours from unbox to up and running today. Very pleased with the ease of restoring an image and it just finding the Zigbee and Zwave sticks. Much faster too! Thanks! If you ever make it to Northern Colorado I'd happily buy you a burger 😁
Nice! Really whatever old hardware you can get your hands on that will run what you need reliably and cheap is key. I went with the 3050 since it was small and lightweight on power yet probably overkill for this a bit. Glad to hear you got up and running! I do actually plan on going to CO next year, never been and I need to go!
Great job for dumbing this down for me. This was the 10th video I watched and now I have a great understanding.
Woot!
After listening to the other smart home channels I listened to you for about 5 min and I'm thinking, "I like this dude" def subbed brother can't wait to learn it all.
What's up!? 😎 Keeping it real!
Great video! I've used both a Raspberry Pi and an i5 pc for HA. The price of the pc used was comparable to the Pi, but its performance is so much better! It may use a few extra watts, but to have it be quick and able to do additional services like Plex and frigate without noticing any strain on the system is great!
Are you running HAOS on the i5 pc?
@@finebrian2247 Yes, although its now an I7. I found an i7-3770k cheap that worked in the same motherboard. Came with an i5-3470. ITs older, but is way more than enough for HAOS, Plex and a few other services running. The switch from i5 to i7 did drop cpu usage about 10% and reduced overall power consumption a little. It runs 24/7 so any reduction is a win.
Great video, really easy to follow. I'm going to get into Home Assistant for the first time, but was put off by the lack of Raspberry Pi available. I'm going to go down the thin client route thanks to you!
It is a blessing in disguise. Find a cheap refurb x86 box kind of like I showed. Doesn't have to be exact of course. Miles ahead of the Pi
Thanks for this, I wasn't aware of Frigate (must have been living under a rock!). Your video spurred me on to order a Dell 3050 like yours on eBay today. I have been running HA for many years on a Virtual Box VM, but it didnt cope too well with trying out Frigate with 6 cameras today! Really excited to get the the golden unicorn of the Coral device sometime in the next 20 years.
They keep pushing back the orders on a few websites with them. Maybe end of this year type thing. Frigate is awesome. You can use the cpu detectors for now though.
Great video, few problems that I ran into, but got them all squared away.
Woot woot! Nice job!
The "T" means the chips is designed to use less power while also having less performance than the standard chips without any letters. The "U" means the chip is designed for laptops and mobile devices, as "U" chips are Intel's "ultra-low power" models.
Man, your nailing it!
Thanks yo!
Wow. Great Video. I have ordered Home Assistant yellow and it will be shipped 6 months from now. I was afraid of building one but with this video I just purchased the Dell 3050, Zigbee dongle, Z-wave dongle and the M.2 drive. Looking forward for hours of fun.
Not to mention you will have a faster system as well. Thanks!
I switched to an old HP thin client from Raspis. Better performance, a power cable that doesn’t get connected and hardware clock. Proxmox allows a searx install, PiHole and HA to all run in their own space.
Wow! Thanks 🙏
Great video I’m at more of a Apple HomeKit guy as of right now but the way it looks I might be switching to home assistant just because of the customization that you have control of so definitely watching videos trying to learn more about how to get home assistance started up before I dive in
Awesome! I know there is a lot homekit support right in Home Assistant.
I use home assistant to gateway non HomeKit devices to HomeKit. Works great.
@@JoeyMoreland yeah, I decided not to do home assistant and do home bridge to get my non-Apple devices working with HomeKit
After stumbling through various videos promoting fruit machines, I followed this setup and was successful. Very pleased. Thank you.
Great to hear!
Great video! Love the Dell OptiPlex micro form factor. I use mine to run ProxMox with HA and everything else in containers. If you go just one model higher 3060/XX60. You will get intel vPro which is AMAZING! It’s like a built in PiKVM. I personally prefer the 7060. Simile price point on EBay and you get more horsepower and vPro.
Thanks for the watch! Yes I looked at a few models and was trying to keep it under a certain budget for the user at a time so we stuck with what was widely available on Ebay refurbs at a decent price.
What is the advantages of vpro with Home assistant?
Thanks Travis.
very useful, thank you.
Glad it was helpful!
Find the clock ticker when booting your system super interesting as I always wondered whether my system is slow or fast. Your Dell setup did the booting of HA in 51 secs, I get 53 secs on my QNAP NAS - seems to be not so bad, after all... Great video, thanks
I knew it was faster but didn't realize how slow even the Pi4 was until added the clock. Blown away for sure!
I was working on an OptiPlex 3050 as this video came up. I definitely want one, and a Zigbee dongle. Should blow the chips off my pi 3 Homebridge setup!
Great video!
The CC2652 is an awesome little zigbee setup especially with Zigbee2MQTT backing it.
Running mine on Proxmox on Macmini 2012 i7 16gB RAM 512gB SSD. Runs great!
Beast! I like it.
Good video, thanks. Moved from RPi to Dell-Wyse 3290 thin client with 8GB RAM/64GB mSATA. Works like a charm. Bonus: fanless! (Less than $75 total)
Very nice!
Using an old Thin Client sounds like an excellent solution from a RaspPi . The Celeron N2807 dual core CPU only consumes around 4 watts. I may give this a try.
can you run 8gb ram on N2807? 🤔
@@ggcub25 I have 8 in mine. I suppose you can too!
Those Dell Optiplex Micro's are great!!!
I will have to try one of those when I outgrow my raspberry pi. The pc is cheap enough. I do like having all the options for disk drives with faster interfaces.
Amazing stuff, thank you
It’ll be amazing if you get the full frigate and z2mqtt setup going on this machine 👍
I think once the corals are available this build will need to go Debian build with Frigate running on the docker stack for full access to things and not be limited by supervisor.
@@digiblurDIY I see, then may be it’s better to go with proxmox install with coral on lxe or Debian vm with docker and a separate vm to run HA 🤓
Or just HA docker and no supervisor at all. Woo!
@@digiblurDIY haha, that as well for brave! I love me some supervisor simplicity 😅
Pros and cons to everything. Of course on my production one I cheat a little with unRaid and love the simplicity of no supervisor and the restrictions it brings.
Thanks great video. Would like to see the different between all the installs pro/cons
Which types are you interested in?
Thanks!
Thank you!
Thank you for this video. I am going to start setting up an HA server and was looking for the best hardware for it. Many TH-cam videos say that the best is a raspberry Pi or the HA Yellow. But my experience with the raspberry pi told me that it was not the best option until I saw your video, as you say it is more economical and powerful to go on ebay and buy the parts on your own, than to buy the complete package.
Probably channels that don't tell it like it is. The Pi is definitely dated and slow for this now days especially with the price of many refurbs out there being cheaper. I see the yellow as more of an open the box solution for someone that doesn't want to tinker with HA or use it for much. Trust me.. Get something better for cheaper. There are other ways to support the HA project.
Decent video with some really good points. I'm using an HP EliteDesk i5 system for my Home Assistant installation. I do run Windows on it so I can run BlueIris camera software as well. Home Assistant runs on VirtualBox.
I agree that an actual PC does run the system faster as is, but I also found a speed increase by using an SSD instead of a spinning drive. (You'll get the same, probably even better with an M.2 SSD like you used in the video.)
On the whole, I'd rather go the route you went installing a "native" OS rather than running on VirtualBox if I didn't also need BlueIris.
Only downside to that is the VM in Windows issue, reboots, stability etc. I get the advantage of the one box though. It's awesome we can run this thing in so many different environments to fit the various needs, budgets, etc.
Hi man, I want to do exactly the same. What i5 do you have? 6500T/8500T? Cannot decide if it's worth paying extra for 10% cpu power
Sometimes people, especially tinkerers, over-complicate installations. Sometimes something simple is all that is needed, even to tinker on.
HA Yellow has its place and it really depends on what you use it for. I use the Odroid based HA Blue box which works pretty well. It all depends what you want to do with it. A Home Automation device is not the type of thing you will be constantly rebooting. Once they are running, there is little difference in the end user experience.
I know a lot of optimisations have been made since you made this video so boot times are a lot better now on Pi 4 and Odroid based systems, but will never quite match a full PC.
Indeed. That's why I went with the HAOS install for this. One and done then let it boot. If the owner wants to go to Proxmox or something they can choose to do it later.
Awesome hardware choice... I just built my HA box... OLD pc Pentium 3 AMD-64. Docker-compose setup. For a dual core with only 2 gigs of ram it rocks!!! So antique I had to load Ubuntu from a dvd...😁 Nice to know there is powerful stuff like this that still uses a tiny amount of power to run!!! Much better than raspi for this task, and I am a Pi fan... I also built a media platform just for HA... An OLD model b pi running kodi with no addons installed. It's connected to a bluetooth speaker via 3.5 MM audio jack and as a bonus..... It has my music library scanned into it... I can use it as an audio system via Yatse (as controller).HA messages interrupt playback so I always get prompts.
Pi's are great for things. Like Retro Pi, Octoprint etc. HA has outgrown them for me.
But and old dualcore like this will use around 15-50kwh ?
@@black11189 Yes, a bit more power than an sbc to be sure but the system is idling most of the time, that may change if I push it to handle my cameras... Also it gives me a full modern linux server install with docker to learn while running HA beutifully.... It also gives me solid handling of its hard drives.... No sd fragility here.... Running a 1T main drive and an 80 gig backup drive...
I just purchased an HP Prodesk 600 G2 ( i5-6500T, 8GB DDR4, 2.50GHZ, 120GB SSD) Mini PC on eBay, added 32GB Ram, all for about $250, and still have an option of upgrading the hd to pcie ssd. It's a little smaller in size than your dell and runs my ha along with other vm's all on proxmox. It was a great upgrade for me.
That must be the mini right? About the same baseline and such great little machines.
Hi Travis, great tutorial, somehow you manage to answer questions in the videos before I even think of them, but do you think this project be done on a laptop, for example a Dell Precision M4700, to get the advantage of the battery (built in UPS so to speak), screen and keyboard?
Yep! Laptops are great for this, built in screen, power savings, battery etc. Just have to disable the sleep on close thing if it wants to go to sleep.
@@digiblurDIY totally!!! Thsi si the way to go! can you boot up HA from an external SSD on the laptop, run it on that, then reboot into Windows when the SSD is pulled out?
Raspberry PI with SSD works very well. I believe the bottle neck with the PI is the speed of the storage ( SDcard).
Processor hurts it pretty well once you start to get loaded up with stuff. That x86 is also pretty sweet combined with the iGPU.
Awesome video great hardware and value for HA OS! Any plan to do a full walk though of HA on unraid and remoting in with reverse Proxy?
Possibly as I do have some UnRaid stuff I need to take care of will probably document in a video as I go through things.
Until recently I used a Raspberry Pi 3b+. It was doing OK, but I didn't like the SD card corruption that occasionally happened. Now perfectly happy with HA running on a HP T630 Thin client. Much faster, no sound at all (fanless) and it did cost half of your setup! Which is great btw.
Yes! This is the way! Cheap as possible yet fit your speed needed and get off that slow Pi. Those are great machines. I encourage everyone to dig around locally and whatever refurbs they can get their hands on. It also helps prevent stuff from going to a landfill that is perfectly usable for our homes.
Hey Travis your build here is the best yet!!! Rock solid for months. You mentioned maybe being able to use that fixed hard drive space later on for recording or whatever. I'd like to use it to playback music using HA directly. Either via media browser or the HACS available music assistant. Would you be so kind as to make a vid how to format, add a HDD into that space using the linux version that HA uses here.. also how to samba into the drive so can add/remove files etc. That would be awesome! Wap
I don't think HAOS allows that due to how locked down it is. It is probably something I'd have to switch the box to Linux, Proxmox, etc.
@@digiblurDIY Ah ok. Not allowing this is HAOS is madness. Why is this?
Guessing it is to keep support issues down so they lock al the fun stuff down. There are other methods to run HA luckily as we grow and want to do our own thing.
I've spent probably over a dozen hours trying to figure this out over two days and I have to give up for now. There's nothing else I can even think of to try.
What part are you stuck on ?
@@digiblurDIY I've flashed HA onto my NVMe SSD (at least half a dozen times by now, just to make sure) and set the BIOS settings to EUFI enabled and Secure boot disabled. I'm met with a blank black screen or some other seemingly irrelevant text, but HA will never start on boot-up.
I've also specified the path to the EFI file as \EFI\B00T\bootx64.efi
I also tried using Ubuntu live to set the drive name to nvme0n1 but that didn't seem to work, even with sudo.
I also made a post about it in the Home Assistant Community titled, "Cannot boot after installing Generic x86-64 Version on Dell Optiplex 3050 TD".
I have been running HA in a proxmox setup I have running on an old PC. After seeing my electric bill I decided that I need to go green. I bought a Dell 5070 on eBay for less than $50, waiting for it to arrive in the mail.
Great little machines still.
Great video! Don't know why but somehow i was afraid you were gonna praise the raspberry pi! Maybe because most youtubers do!? I absolutely i agree, next video: install proxmox and howto run HA in a VM :)
Do you have power usage for when HA is fully setup and running?
It's worth trying this in a virtual machine before buying any hardware, just so that you can easily start over as many times as you need to when tinkering. It should also be good enough to decide whether this is even right for you. It's not a good long term solution as you have to leave the computer running the VM on whenever you're using it, but for testing that's fine.
Yep perfect use case for many to fire up a VM on their windows box to test stuff out then later move to a stable platform with no windows reboots, crashes, etc.
HA can run on VM without affecting ur desktop usage like gaming, video editing
It cost damn low resources.
You should take a try
When I started HA I ingested RPi 3+ but in a few weeks the quality SD card went out! Moreover, the RPi got restored when copying ESPHome! I was wondering what device, finally I chose the ODROID N2+ 4GB RAM 64GB eMMC storage! Absolutely sufficient and powerful device! (Same hardwer used by Home blue) A new even better device came on the market ODROID M1 8GB RAM and the possibility to insert SSD storage! I think it's more competition to Home yellow!
The issue I have with those is they aren't x86 and that was one requirement I had and didn't cover that aspect.
@@digiblurDIY Yes, everyone has different requirements, and that's the way it should be! 😊
Those esphome IDF and vscode x86 requirements combined with the onboard GPU was mainly the x86 choice.
Another well explained video! Thanks Travis!
If I moving my install from a Raspberry Pi to a Dell 3050 and I restore from a previous backup would I just then change my router to point the Dell 3050 to the same reserved IP address that the Raspberry Pi pointed to?
Yes. That is one of the cool features of HAOS with the snapshots to restore configs. That is my recommendation of things to set a DHCP reserved address on your router for the HA device. Then if you want to swap them just change the address of each and swap them out as needed.
@@digiblurDIY Thanks for the quick reply just picked one up on eBay! BTW been following you for years...Best channel for anything in home automation!!
I discovered HA when replacing a hard-wired alarm panel. Definitely need the GPIO pins from something like an RPi for that. Plus it does home automation too.
I would probably go with an ESP chip for that. Isolation there.
Or a Konnected board for the alarm system, if you want something a little less DIY. Makes wiring in a hardwired alarm system almost trivial, and integration with HA is straightforward.
Hey, thanks for great video. Just got a optiplex 5050 i3 thanks to you instead of a raspberry pi.
There is sata sdd 256 GB installed right now and I'm considering to upgrade to NVM sdd. I'm totally new to HA and don't know really how much space I will need. Any recommendations? Is sata sdd 256gb enough as a start or should I start with more space?
256gb is plenty unless you get into video/media storage. The reason I went nvme was to allow for a spinner hard drive for security camera storage.
I started HA on Raspberry pi and Orange pi, unfortunately after a few months the data on the card was corrupted, now I have ASRock Q1900-ITX with Openmediavault and Docker has been running for a year and something without problems.
I installed it on a virtual box image on windows 10 with an SSD drive. It works well
Nothing wrong with trying it out on Winders'
Great video. Subbed! Got my small pc up and running with the NUC version of home assistant. Quick question, looking for a restart and shutdown function in HA. Can you point me in the right direction?
It's in the system menu to shut down the host. I do have to dig for it myself at times.
Just purchased a Dell optiplex 9020m i7 16gb ram with WiFi, Bluetooth, 1gbe network, ssd and a m.2 sata drive for cheap locally! Used the Sebrent usb case and transferred my existing HA from the rpi4 to pc. Not done transferring the z2mqtt yet but so far it was a breaze!
Would def be interested on how to setup an nvr on a separate ssd on the same system!
Thanks for the vids
Wow! Beast mode! Performance is probably night and day on that system.
I do have some upcoming things I want to cover with NVR stuff so look out for that.
@@digiblurDIY The boot times alone make it well worth the upgrade. I am currently in an apartment but will be moving to a house hopefully soon. So my plan was to future proof my setup for the move. I will def keep my eyes peeled for the nvr stuff. Would be great to be able to have it all on one system. This pc has a m.2 (ha) and an ssd slot. Hopefully I can have a cam or two
I use either the first, or I believe second Nuc. It has an I5, 16GB of. RAM and a mSata drive. Both the HDMI and display port outputs went out. Glad I'm a pack rat because 8y was compatible with Home Assistant. It probably sat around for 2 years and it's been running HA for 5+ years I believe. I still ordered a yellow but part of that is because this thing isn't going to be around forever, it's getting old. I used a USB adapter to image it with Etcher and then restored my backup from my pi 3. It was night and day regarding performance.
Sadly the yellow is an Rpi4 processor.
Thank you for this video. I have been pondering about this for some time ... I have tried a few different configurations:
1. Raspberry Pi 3 - this is where I started, super reliable and easy to setup ...booted every time and was stable for the longest time but as I added stuff it would take longer and longer to boot.
I did not experience the SD card failures that people reported as I probably didn't run it long enough. I decided to migrate to the next method
2. Home Assistant on Virtualbox on Mac mini. I had a Mac mini running as a mini server for some time and Home assistant ran very fast on it in the background on Virtualbox. But for some reason the computer would hang after a couple of weeks of running untouched. The fans would run constantly and the Mac would be completely unresponsive. It would only seem to do it when running virtual box so not sure if it is a virtual box issue. So I decided to run on my Synology NAS:
3. Synology NAS. Not all Synology NAS can run docker (there may be some hack way to do it on non-supporting models) Mine was a 1812+ (2018 model). Home assistant was simple enough to install and has been super reliable. But it does not allow you to install the supervisor version. I also decided that I did not need to have my NAS on 24 hours a day. It consumes a fair amount of energy and is quite loud with 8 bays running and fans blowing. I can turn it off and if I need to use it, I just do a wake on lan command, use it and then can shut it back down. So I needed an always on device.
4. I saw this video and bought a Dell 3050 from Ebay and power supply and SSD from Amazon. I struggled with the TSC clock error mentioned. I did not check back here for a solution unfortunately. Just tried to change a bunch of settings .. to be honest I don't recall which ones and rebooted and it was fine. Had to do it a few times. It seems to work well. Doesn't boot from "cold" as fast as the Virtualbox version but seems to be good and stable. I have not had to reboot for about 3 weeks now. Seems like overkill to run only home assistant on it, but the hardware was pretty inexpensive. I would probably have bought the Home Assistant yellow version but looks like they won't be in stock for a long long time and the others just seem like slight upgrades to Raspberry Pi. This seemed like a sensible alternative. I didn't feel like experimenting too much so just followed this and it's great! Thanks! I will probably add a z-wave stick for some of the legacy devices I have and add more devices and will be good to go!
As most will say on the SD card failure. Not an if but when.
Luckily between a few of us we identified and recreated the clocksource error and documented it in the comments here and description.
That little bit of overkill is nice for doing esphome compiles, frigate etc. But then again this isn't a massive i7 that others run their HA on. So I found it a good balance ratio for price and speed. Yellow was just too slow for this day and age and had some limitations.
I am interested in point 3 and 4 of your comment. I did setup NAS as an simple Raid1 drive using ORICO USB4 station attached to older i5 8GB fanless small pc. Speed is good (80MB writes through my 1Gbps Cat5 network). Drives configure in ZFS, dont have any issues for past 4 years. recently for about a year I have connected two security cameras and additional SSD drive for continuous record of front and back yards (motion activated through MQTT broker that running on the same i5 ubuntu. ZFS is great on managing spin on/off of drives and drives are rotating only when necessary. So I dont need any NAS, Orico USB station cost ~$30 at Amazon. Everything is cold, no fans at all (even if it standing in garage I dont like noise). I measured total power of idle system, seeing 15W (Orico, with two 18TB drives(connected, idle, not spinning) + Ubuntu i5 + 16 port unmanaged switch POEthernet, cameras are not active, POE powered). Now I want to add Home Assistant to this setup. As my i5 is older and has only two cores, I am wandering if I need newer 4 cores CPU?
Great video! Is there a reason why you didn't install HA on the SSD that came with the 3050?
I covered that as the ssd was no brand plus I wanted the NVME speeds and the larger hard drive in the slot later for video storage.
Gracias por el video, thx.
Thanks for this. I just bought the same Dell based on your video. Hoping you can answer a quick question. I know you connected your SSD drive to your Windows computer via the dock (and USB). But I have an ExpressCage MB322SP-B, which is an SSD docking device for my server case. It's easy to swap an SSD inside. The problem I'm having is at 15:38 of your video. When I press Select Target, my drive doesn't appear. I suspect it's because BalenaEtcher is trying to protect me and now allow me to choose an internal drive. Is that correct? I don't even have that option to "Show Hidden". What do you think? If my theory is right, is there anything I can do to the SSD drive to get Etcher to allow me to choose it?
You might be right there. You could try Rufus maybe?
Love the information. I'm new to trying Home Assistant. What is the minimum size computer specs does it need to run home assistant?
I see all kinds of thin clients from 1.7-3.5 clock speeds, different chips, I3-I5 CPUs.
Thanks
Really anything faster than a Pi4 that you can get your hands on that doesn't break the bank in power usage and initial cost is the goal.
I have a cluster of hp g1 mini desktops running proxmox and docker swarm. They perform amazingly well and have 2x m.2 slots as well. Just wish there was more Ethernet options
Great choices! Very similar computers.
Is it correct to say that the HASS OS installation option will only recognize external USB connected storage? I haven’t had any success getting it to recognize any internal storage other than where the OS is installed. Apparently FSTAB is read-only. (Which would make sense for Nabu Casa. The single board computer HASS OS solutions they sell don’t have multiple internal storage disks and USB 3.0 is comparable to SATA III. And those of us repurposing servers have the hypervisor/container option which hides the actual hardware from HA.)
That I do not know of how it deals with a secondary hard drive attached to the system as of yet. Honestly once we crossed that bridge of going Frigate with the coral and adding a 2TB or so hard drive to the unit they'd probably jump to Debian anyways to control all the storage stuff and not have the storage issues I've seen others fight with of Frigate underneath supervisor.
Thank you for the great video, been looking for a good and solid HW option to switch to. Been using VM for past 2 years but it's time to switch!
My only question is, how do you install something alongside this if you're running HA OS?
What do you mean by that? HAOS is all that runs on the install type did. However you can do whatever you like from proxmox, docker, etc.
@@digiblurDIY thank you for the reply!
I definitely think I'm lacking some information lol
I guess what I'm trying to ask is: if HAOS is installed as the base OS, how do you install/setup separate docker containers alongside HAOS?
For example: Windows/MacOS I can run HA Supervised in a VM, and I can run docker containers through the host OS. But I don't believe the same is true for HAOS?
While you can install other docker containers that aren't setup as addons with some workarounds. The install of HAOS is more for a hands off user that just wants a reliable system with supervisor doing all the things. I definitely would never recommend anyone running this in a windows box due to the issues windows brings.
Being an Intel box you can install things however you want. Like even Debian with Docker-compose and no supervisor, no VM, etc. Ultimate flexibility there!
@@digiblurDIY okay great! That's kind of what I suspected :)
I thought I missed something in the video, but I didn't.
Guess I'll be doing some Docker when I get the box!
Thank you again for the replies :)
Two things for an appliance that is left on 24/7. 1 reliable 2 low power. Basic rule of thought, if you turn off a light when you leave a room the power for that light is significant. Yes an I3 is more capable/ powerful but are you using the extra capabilities? That is an individual question and there is no answer that fits everyone. My HA runs mainly lighting so I will keep the lowest possible solution I can.
Yep. This is why I didn't go i7 went with the T model. All about that balance of cost to cost of ownership. I was pretty impressed with the ratio myself, I am sure there are some slightly better options in efficiency but probably cost a little more so it doesn't play out in the time this will be used.
So I have a vera plus that's several years old and of course discontinued. I'm looking to maybe move over to a setup like this. Especially since I have about 60 devices and sooner or later my vera will die and I'll be in a pickle and have to start from scratch anyway. All my devices are Zwave. If I went with a setup like this what should I use for the Zwave connection? Just plug a aeotec z-stick into this pc? Or is there a different dongle or hub I should go for?
Yep. You would get a Zwave USB stick on plug it in and Home Assistant would control all your devices. Same as with Zigbee
Great video, need a bit of explanation about using GPU to offload frigate. Thank you
Pretty simple copy and paste based on your GPU docs.frigate.video/configuration/hardware_acceleration
Great video :) Though I have to mention that you seem to exaggerate the slowness of the Pi, since once it is setup it will run just fine and not feel slow (restart or restore from backup I agree will always be slow)
Could you maybe share your criteria for choosing the small PC? I've been looking at Aliexpress too, and what worries me is that I have no basis for comparing the low power Intel CPUs since I've never used a computer like that. So how do you "make sure" the CPU in the PC you buy is powerful enough for your needs?
also, want to know since the models you suggested all have 65+ USD shipping on them to where I live, making them less of a deal >_
I let it speak for itself. I was kinda shocked with the differences to be honest. I would start by digging around some local thrift stores, PC repair stores, offices upgrading computers, etc. Their old products are great to use.
Love this build!!! ❤. Instead of the ssd, like you said, if for example you put in a 2tb hard drive, how would you get Frigate to use that , rather than wear out your m.2 drive? Cheers
If using HAOS, I'm not aware of a configuration of the Frigate add-on at this time to map to different storage options. The methods I've seen is to use portainer and install Frigate manually so you can control the storage mappings.
@@digiblurDIY Thanks, on my current build I have similar setup with Unraid, HA in a vm & Frigate as a docker saving to an unassigned drive. It's fine but pulls about 130 watts and prices for electric in the UK is going crazy! 😪 so I need something more energy efficient but I do not know yet how I could run a usff also as a NAS ? I love the parity protection of unraid and my 4 hd, 3 ssd's. I may be better swopping. Motherboard, memory and cpu instead? But I don't think I will get anywhere near 10 watts doing that!😪
Those spinners are definitely going to eat up some power there. That's difficult to do with a USFF as you need more ports and room
Great video. I currently have HA running on a VM in Windows 10 on a NUC. Definitely not the best solution as Windows 10 causes some instability issues. I think this would be a much better solution, however, I do use the NUC as a Plex server so getting a dedicated second hand PC might be the way to go.
I do believe they have the Plex addon in HA but I don't recall what issues it has. Proxmox might a little better solution for you on running these both with some higher reliability.
Thanks for all the help I now own 2 Dell 3050 one all in one the other Mini. Questions after some review it appears that the second looking M.2 card (mini) is truly only used for WIFI it appears to have a 1630 plug (e) style. Have I misreading something.
Probably the regular wifi module slot types. I know some will put the corals in there too. www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000144170/how-to-distinguish-the-differences-between-m-2-cards
before you boot the Intel nuc, did you mean to include to plug in the usb boot media that has etcher on it and will the nuc pc then automatically boot from the plugged in usb driver or do you have to tell the intel nuc to boot from the drive?
I don't have any usb media on the PC. The drive goes inside the computer.
I plan on doing this on an Alderlake N95 which is only 16W. Then also double it as a media PC. I'll let you know how it goes but I was wondering if anyone has already tried this.
I have one sitting on my desk in testing. The results have been great. Only have HAOS on it right now though.
Great video very well explained. I just bought this machine used to install Home Assistant on it. My use will be temperature readings, actuators and video security. The machine will come with 4 GB of RAM. Should I increase the memory, and how much do you advise me to put on this Dell Optiplex i3 7100 T? Thanks ! Alain Hervais
4GB is just perfect to get started! Only if you find yourself doing a lot of camera stuff and other heavy tasks would I worry about going to 8 or more. Now if you decide to go to say Proxmox or some other VM type of multitasking that would also be a time to add ram.
@digiblurDIY so putting this on an old Windows laptop would be really cool... So If I have HAOS connected on an external SSD big enough to run HA and store all the HA data on the SSD- can I boot up HA (leaving Windows on the laptop), then when I want to use the laptop in Windows mode again, just remove the dedicated HA SSD and the bios will boot up Windows again?
I would do a dedicated machine to be honest or do something like Proxmox so you aren't flipping back and forth. Running HA and Windows isn't a great combo.
@@digiblurDIY Ok I have take your advice. I have sourced a Dell Micro form factor i5700T 8 RAM 256 2.5 inch SATA SSD. Will that do the trick? I can take out that SSD, load on HA to that on a different machine right? then slot that back into the DELL and boot up using that. Sure it won't be quite as fast as the NVEM - but I can add one of those later and move HA onto that later if I need to.. Correct? That what you do? All good? thanks!
awesome, thanks!! I'm looking to switch from a pi to a PC... Can this be done from a usb3 external ssd (Samsung T7 for example)? it seems like that would be similar to usb boot from a pi to avoid the sd card courruption issues... thanks for the info!
I would stick to a NVME/SSD in the PC myself for booting and not something external.
is this guide will be same for mini PC? plus what is the diff between run in the VR machine.. n install HA as OS like this? i am thiking to buy mini pc like beemax to run HA and this mini pc to act like my home server for NAS and so on.
Probably want to use Proxmox or something else to virtualize things.
Didn't notice if you said so, but is there a reason for going for the flashed version, and not install HA in WIndows on the Dell?
Have recieved my Dell 3050 today, and is about to start doing this.
Don't know why, but all the way thought I would go with the windows version of HA.
Running Windows on HA for more than just testing isn't a good idea. Windows has too many issues trying to keep itself running, updating, driver issues etc. Trust me...don't do it. If you want simple and more hands off go with HAOS like I show or if you want to dig a little more then check out Docker Compose or Proxmox.
I thought I had to use an official IntelNUC to use the HA NUC image. But NUCs are not cheap. This is what has held be back from going the NUC route.
NUC is just a small intel based box with a name. Easy as you can see to put this on some wide range of refurbished hardware out there.
now that a local voice control is a thing, having a Dell 3050 is much more appealing than any arm based ha install. seriously, HA yellow took 5-7seconds to process 1 voice command while a 3050 will probably process that voice command in 1 second or less.
that 5-7 second processing time on HA yellow can possible be worse than 7seconds depending how much stuff you put on it.
I saw the future!
Somewhere you say that when with that Dell you can later on also install other things like proxmox etc. but if you install that generic Home Assistant OS I believe you can't put anything on the device anymore other than from within Home Assistant (so the plugins/addons etc, of Home Assistant itself). Right?
Or can you still install separately Portainer or something?
If you go Proxmox then you'd need to install that instead of HAOS. HAOS is more of install and hands off and let them do all the updates etc. Some people like that... some don't depending on their needs.
Which Zigbee dongle is currently recommended with this set up?, and does HA automatically recognise all zigbee devices plugged into this NUC as it first boots up? Thanks
CC2652 based USB dongles with an extension cord to get it away from the machine a bit. It should recognize the adapter and prompt to install ZHA but you'd need to pair things up with your network.
USB CC2652P Zigbee - amzn.to/3f1ZRfN or cloudfree.shop/product/slaesh-zigbee-stick/?ref=digiblur or shrsl.com/39qo2 Ethernet Model - www.tubeszb.com/
I have a gaming laptop sitting around that is unused now. Would you recommend using something like that? Load HAOS or use a virtual machine on it?
Try it with HAOS first and see how you like it. Then you can take further steps later to virtualize things if you want. Baby steps.
I would add that I'm seeing more Optiplex units with I5s on eBay and not the I3s and you really need to check Dell support and the manual for the unit to determine if it supports the nvme ssd. Some of the Optiplex models do not. I'm getting a good deal on a Dell OptiPlex 3050 USFF Intel i5-7500T 2.70GHz 8GB RAM 256GB SSD... Fingers crossed. Any advice on performance difference between the standard SSD and the nvme ssd?
If it has a name brand SSD I would stick with that as it probably isn't too major. I mainly went NVME since I wanted the room for a spinner hard drive later in the same box and not an external.
If my machine comes with windows installed do I have to uninstall windows first somehow? Or does this run in tandem with windows?
You do the install process on another computer to the SSD, right? Then install the SSD to the Dell. Then startup directly to BIOS so we never actually go into Windows OS? So now HASS is installed on the Dell, but you don't use that computer after that? Just go through another computer in the browser and type in the IP?
Sorry, so many questions. I just ordered everything, and this will be the third machine I've ordered trying to get this right. It's been a struggle so far to say the least.
I also need to figure out how to add a wifi board. Not sure where to start.
Once you swap in or reload the SSD in the box with HAOS then it becomes the operating system. You could run windows on it and put HA in a VM but I wouldn't recommend it more than just testing it for a couple days type thing. Feel free to jump in the Discord chat, newbie friendly. discord.digiblur.com
Interesting trivia... Last one I bought for blueiris use changed its MAC address after a power cut when the mobo lithium was dead. DHCP was tied to the MAC and it took me a bit to realize why I couldn't connect remotely. 🤦🏼
Reminds of a camera once. Rebooted it and it would change between two MAC IDs. Drove me nuts.
@@digiblurDIY I have one kinda like that. It loses its settings at random intervals. Need to replace it. Probably 10yrs old.
Hello Travis, if the power goes down, will the home Assistant start up automatically when power is back on?
Yep! As long as you have the power state set to last power state or power on after loss.
Managed to buy the same Dell model with 12GB ram.
Did you install HA on the system itself or on an Hypervisor (proxmox,esxi) etc ?
I feel like that the I3 and 12GB of ram is overkill for HA alone.
Totally agree there. HAOS probably won't benefit between 8 and 12, hell even 4 to 8 depending on what you run. However that does give you the opportunity to jump to doing more if you want to do the VM thing. This user was going for more of a hands off install at this time. Eventually they may move to doing VMs or just bare docker compose.
@@digiblurDIY Thank you for your reply. I have been running HA OS in a promox environment on a I7 however this is not power efficient for 24/7 thats why i've been looking for something else.
My Pi4 2GB feels limited so thats why i got the dell with I3 and 12GB of ram, more future proof and seems like it will do OK with power efficiency. More then HASSOS, a simple file server and perhaps frigate i won't be doing so should be enough.
How are you running HASS in your production environment?
what would be awesome is if you can show us how to run a plex off it too. (with your home assistant setup on the m.2) i just bought one of ebay too isnt here yet. but i want to put in teh m.2 HD and use the sata for plex . how would that work. does it just boot into one system. like lets say windows on the ssd. then i put hoem ass aon teh m.2 drive would that work as it woudl alwasy be goign into widnows
I think that's the issue with HAOS and their locking down stuff to make everyone the same. Probably want to load something like Proxmox if you want HAOS and full flexibility Plex. Or go supervisorless with just Docker-compose too.
Thanks for the info, do I need Wi-Fi or Bluetooth on my computer to install or operate the home assistant?
Nope. You don't need those.
@digiblurDIY Thanks for the info, I'm a beginner in the topic, but I'm very interested in it, and I'm looking for information on where to start and what is needed.
Will a HA software backup on this set up work in the future on other platforms (like the Raspberry Pi)? Thanks
It works all the same as it is the official HAOS image and setup from Homeassistant.io
What do you think of the Wyse 5070 Thin Client versus the 3050's? Refurbed on Dell they're only around $114. Not sure if it has the right slot for an NVME drive.
Not much savings there for the lesser machine. Maybe if you were getting them less than $100
What hardware setup would you opt for if you had to stick to 12v DC power? (Off grid RV)
Something super low power...like maybe even Pi3 if you can bear it? Given it runs off 5VDC too.
@@digiblurDIY it would literally just be to have battery monitor, water level/temp/control, diesel heater, lighting. No media just a tablet or phone as the controller as such.
for my use, nothing beats and oldish laptop.
specially because they have a UPS inside (AKA battery!) and I had a couple just collecting dust...
Indeed the favorite! Screen, keyboard, power efficiency, battery all rolled in one.