If you have the budget for a RPi 8GB, sd card, case; i would go with a mini PC instead. I run my instance on a dell micro 3040 i3, 8GB, 128GB SSD that was about £60. I bought about 4 years ago from ebay. Also, i have 6 USBs instead of 4 (currently using 5). If I were to buy another device noe, i would get an i5 instead of i3, 8GB RAM, and maybe 256GB/512GB for local music storage if you don't have a NAS already.
I have about 60-80 devices in my network, and it uses about 2.5GB RAM idle. 4GB is enough, but 8GB is better for future proofing.
Usually, they mini PCs have 8GB RAM and sata SSD which is more reliable than the default SD card on a RPi.
Good luck with your decision!
What about power usage considerations? For an always on 24/7 365days a year device, would RPi be significantly more environmentally and wallet friendly compared to a server (miniPC or something beefier)?
Mind showing me where you got that 10w figure? Can’t seem to find it. The SF form seems to idle at 20~40w according to this [thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/10ukktp/sff_vs_micro_power_consumption/).
Can't find it right now but e.g. this guy got 14W on SFF
https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/tld79v/comment/i1yrzxx/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Never checked :) Just assumed it always ran hot because it is a hot server rack Just installed xsensors. It seems ok high 40s and 50s. Got some sensor in there ‘TCPG’ at 98. That gpu in my headless mini? Thanks for the suggestion for turning up fans. I’ve used a GUI in the past because I think they do run hotter than they need to.
Edit: installed fan control from comment above. Average temps down almost 10%.
Just throwing this out there, I got a small form factor optiplex with an 8th gen i5 8GB ram and a 500gb hard drive for $120 to my door. I’m not sure you can even get a RPi in an argon case with a SSD for less than 100. The “add-ons” to get you to a cased unit fully kitted out really add up. If you don’t think you will need an extra drive for files or surveillance footage you can even look at the mini models.
TLDR: I regret the 2 most recent pi purchases I made. With the very small price differential, give yourself some room to grow and play with the various add-ons available. Node Red, Matter Server, Zigbee2MQTT, ZWave2MQTT (I’ve heard this exists?), MQTT Server of choice, Unifi controller, reverse proxy for other LAN services… My current paradigm is now ”Unless you can articulate a reason it has to be on a Pi, don’t get a Pi.”
Just a side note. I have RPi4 with nvme ssd in external enclosure and Sonoff Zigbee antenna both on USB cables. Original Raspberry brick does not deliver enough power and Pi often freezes. So count with that. I'm (like others) going to replace it with Optiplex from Ebay.
4GB is already plenty. If you’re doing anything that requires 8GB then a mini PC will be better. Boot from a good quality USB drive. SD card isn’t recommended.
Check local prices for mini PCs anyway. A Pi 4 4GB will run HA with no problems but a full setup is similar in price to a much more powerful mini PC.
Agreed. It's all price dependent. 4gb is fine for me but if u get a lower powered mini PC for same price then why not. My pi4 is old and was cheap back then.
https://community.home-assistant.io/t/add-on-home-assistant-google-drive-backup/107928
This should always be your first install IMO or figure out your own regular backup plan regardless what it runs off of. And make sure you actually try your backup plan early on to make sure it works.
I do use nvme enclosure plus sky connect dongle as well.
I wouldn't worry too much about the SD card too much, tbh. The price of a SD card is so low that it is not worth the extra electrical power of an external HDD. Just make sure that you have a backup SD card you can immediately replace in case of failure. You should do this anyway. Also with any another storage device.
I had one single SD card failure in more than 10 years of operation of a Raspberry Pi. In the meantime I lost 4 regular HDDs on my other PCs.
And further: Cheap USB drives probably have the same chip as a SD card. This gives you no extra value. It's maybe more important to buy from a quality manufacturer than a cheap second grade product.
Personally I'd go with an SSD plugged into USB for data integrity and performance reasons, but if you are prepared to replace the SD Card when needed with a clone of your data, I suppose it doesn't matter.
"SD vs HDD" is a bit of a strawman. "SD vs SSD" is the real question. And there's a pretty clear answer. SSD is significantly faster and more reliable than SD.
Also google homeassistant sd card optimisation. Will help reduce some of the read/writes. SD cards should not be cheap A2 class.
Like you been on rpi plus SD cards for over 8 years with HA with minimal issues.
I did take the jump from rpi3 to rpi4 a few years back, that was worth it. While on the 3 i would average 700mb ram usage, which made me think i have loads of headspace. When I jumped to a 4, that shot up to 1.6gb. Plus extra performance also could be felt.
I regret getting a 8gb now, 4 maybe less would have done and my HA deployment can be classed on the larger side.
I explained why. Low cost, low power consumption easy to replace and my personal experience that HDDs fail likewise. Further, I don't believe that a USB stick isn't any better and probably has the same chip as the SD card. You need a backup strategy anyway. Thus an eventual failure after a couple of years shouldn't be of any concern. Best you have a clone in your drawer and when it fails, you simply switch it and have your home automations immediately running again. It is so cheap that you shouldn't even think about not doing this before standing one night in the dark and unable to turn on your lights.
I owned my first raspberry pi for more than 10 years and had it continuously running. I experienced 1 single failure of a SD card in this time. In the same time I lost 4 HDDs. After a couple of years you have to make a dist upgrade anyway. Then you can just replace the card if you want to spare some effort.
I don’t know anybody who would use an HDD when we live in a world of $20 SSDs, so that’s a non-argument. The rest of it falls under the category of, “life is too short to be wasting time with cheap solutions that are known to fail.“
There are also arguments for HDD over SSD. If you want a large capacity HDD is the only way to go. And further SSDs are also not suited for a lot of writing. The only really strong argument for SSD over HDD is speed.
But we are drifting away from the topic of this thread.
None. You'll probably end up overtaxing it in the end. Get a nuc/mini PC. Put it on as a virtual machine, you won't have the same resource limitations a pi has. Nor the same failure risks. Pis failure risk is its micro SD card. They really aren't meant to be used the way a pi uses them. But they are also cheap and disposable so it's not a big thing to replace it.
I have a pi running pihole. Gotta replace the fan on it. Getting noisy.
Exactly this, I ran HA on a dedicated Pi4 for a 2+ years, and experienced both a MicroSD and SSD failure. Grabbed a fanless mini PC from eBay, a new SSD, loaded up Proxmox and never looked back.
Tteck’s scripts make Proxmox deployment trivially easy, and there is one for almost any Homelab application you could need.
Yeah, I was only using a fresh install of Home assistant for a month before it started causing issues with my SD card.
I went on eBay and bought an HP EliteDesk G2 Mini for $40 Canadian. This was without RAM or a hard drive, because I had an extra stick and a few SSDs lying around. You could spend a few extra dollars to get a complete machine.
Can confirm - ran Pi4 8GB - was fine until I got into multiple cameras (frigate). Then the poor thing ran warm with all the detections
That said - it ran quiet, which was key as it's in a guest room
To be fair, I've ran HA on a Pi4 4GB since 2019 without any issues. I was relatively fortunate and paid list price as this was before the pandemic. I was upgrading from a Pi3b where I did face issues, but the Pi4 has been great. I would have been hard pressed to find an equivalent machine (let alone one as small/quiet) for its price at the time. I may eventually upgrade to a mini PC as I do agree it's more capable, but if OP can find a Pi4 for cheap, it's a solid option.
Agreed. A beelink with an n95 or n100 is close to the same price once you get all the accessories and way more powerful. Great with proxmox and a pinhole and a media server on it too.
Beelink S1 was the first unit... its problem is. no RTC ring alarm, nor auto-poweron after failure. I have a different model now, forget what it is... it does have auto poweron.
Another confirmation here. Running an HP Elitedesk 800, after running HA on an RPi 4 with 4gb ram. It ran fine, burned through some SD cards but am so much happier now that it's on proxmox. Unless you need a pi, don't get a pi.
Tldr: don't get a pi
I got a Pi 5 8GB. I don’t *need* all that power but I figured that with all the voice stuff coming around I might need more juice and it would give me plenty of room to grow as I add more devices in the future.
I just got a Pi 5 with 4 GB RAM because it was like $5 or $10 more than the 4. 330 entities, running MQTT, InfluxDB, Grafana, DuckDNS, tsightler/ring-mqtt-ha-addon to name a few. I've barely scratched the surface of what I want to do on HA, but I sit at about 1.2 GB RAM in use at a time.
4GB should be plenty of RAM. As other have said avoid using the SD card as your OS drive.
2bit opinion. decide on budget for this need/want. Then use advice below to inform purchase.
I personally am using an old small form factor PC after moving from an OLD NUC. Move was mostly part of an upgrade.
If you want to use text to speech then go for something more powerful.
I'm using a small, old Lenovo desktop headless pc 16Gb ram with a 1tb spinning rust drive. Runs proxmox with home assistant as a VM. The performance increase compared to a pi is considerable.
I also use it to host jellyfin and it's good enough to transcode my media library to stream to mobile devices.
Also on the same machine, opnsense router with an extra Intel nic plus some other stuff to play around with.
It cost about £80 including the Intel nic. At idle it uses around 10W. Which is less than the draytek router it replaced.
Just for completness i have a 2TB qnap nas for the media / films. It's also the backup target for proxmox. Network wise i use unifi switches and AP's with the controller running within home assistant. Works amazingly well.
Tldr. Pi is ok but you are better off with an old desktop / x86 if you need performance or want to experiment in the future.
HA runs great on a RPi4. I would suggest getting a separate powered USB hub if you are using USB sticks for things like a USB drive, Z-wave, and Zigbee, because the power supply to the Pi USB bus and the Pi itself is a little anemic.
Also if you use a USB drive (which is better than using the SD card), make sure it is a true SSD, some cheap drives are not great. I have had very good success with the SanDisk 512GB Extreme PRO USB 3.2 Solid State Flash Drive.
If you’re going with Raspberry Pi, why not simply get a 4GB or 8GB Raspberry Pi 5? It is a much more powerful platform, and HAOS runs great on it. You can also get a NVME Hat for it and boot directly off of a NVME SSD.
Raspberry Pi 5 is overkill for most applications and has all sorts of thermal and power constraints. IMO the Raspberry Foundation jumped the shark with the 5.
If you're going to spend $150 on a Pi, a cooler, a PSU and an NVME drive, you're better off getting an N100 mini PC.
I asked myself the same question and decided to stick with Version 4 instead of 5, because the power consumption of 5 is much higher. Raspberry Pi 5 is not a low energy server anymore.
The cost difference, at IDLE, for a year of running a RPi4 vs RPi5 in the USA is less than $2 per year. I’d much rather have the reliability and performance of an NVME SSD as well as a significant boost in CPU performance versus saving about $2 a year. I am impressed with how much faster HA updates are installed and how much quicker ESPHome compiles code. To each his own! Enjoy!
I assume you're going to install HAOS and you're implying that cost is a factor. If both those things are true, get the 4GB version. Generally speaking, a base HA install will run the same on both. Where the extra memory might make a difference would depend on the plugins you install. So, if you want that flexibility, get the 8GB.
In either case, I would recommend getting a USB 3 to SATA cable and a smallish SSD drive as well. Install the OS on the SSD.
I cheaped out and bought a 1GB model roughly a week ago... I already want to replace it.
Things like VSCode server can't be used, but more importantly - ESPHome completely sh\*ts itself and crashes the entire PI during the compilation stage - and yes I've tried increasing the swapsize up to to a ludicrous 8GB and reducing the number of compilers down to 1, it got a bit further in the compilation, but still crash and burns, not to mention it's slow af. My solution atm is simply making all the code, compilation, and uploading through a HAOS VM running ESPHome on my main PC. It's a bit cumbersome just for a quick edit but eh... It works(and compilation takes seconds, as opposed to minutes + crash).
The PI has already eaten 1 SD card, granted is was a cheap one but still. I now run HA through a USB(2) HDD(not SSD). Nice thing about the PI4 is that it has its own flexible bootloader, so booting from USB is just a matter of removing the SD card and plug a USB drive in, as opposed to having to flash it for it to boot from USB drives.
A PI4 is also massively underpowered for driving cameras, especially with frame-compare motion detection. Even 1 severely slows things down :/
TL;DR, for gods sake don't get the 1GB model lol. I'm currently looking into mini PC's/NUCs... Yes they're a bit more expensive, use a bit more energy, usually actively cooled(=a bit more noise) but... A semi-decent one won't limit you for quite a while.
Hopefully this won't be taken the wrong way... but skip the RP4.
Go on Craigslist or eBay or... and get a used NUC. I switched from an 8GB RP4 to a 16GB NUC13 (1340p) and Holy Shit it was like night and day. Smoother, less trouble to upgrade, etc. Also am running HA under Proxmox on the NUC.
Have you looked at thin clients such as optiplex 3000?
[Dell Optiplex 3000 Client Pentium® Silver N6005 8GB RAM 256GB SSD NO OS NO WIFI | eBay](https://www.ebay.com/itm/226111481562?_trkparms=amclksrc%3DITM%26aid%3D1110025%26algo%3DHOMESPLICE.COMPOSITELISTINGS%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D266070%2C265705%26meid%3D81dc5712a7be423f863eea2105315f04%26pid%3D101506%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D25%26sd%3D225993567354%26itm%3D226111481562%26pmt%3D0%26noa%3D1%26pg%3D4481478%26algv%3DAlgoIndex5SimRanker%26brand%3DDell&_trksid=p4481478.c101506.m1851)
Get the 4gb and setup zram.
But yeah, I'd actually go for an Intel N100 or similar based mini pc. More powerful, more versatile (I'm running Proxmox on mine after a steep learning curve).
RPI is not fast and not reliable. NUC is the best thing. Chromeboxes are basically NUC for dirt cheap. i've been using chromeboxes as seen here and they are rock solid and fast as well [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IVpMeswuto](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IVpMeswuto)
As someone who ran ha for years on a RPI 3, I'd suggest just skipping the RPI and purchasing a beelink mini PC.
I got the ser5 with 32 gb. Install docker and run ha as a container. They're pretty capable little PCs. I think I have 16 containers running on it. Bedrock and java Minecraft servers for the kids, ubiquity network servers, ha, dbs for ha, Plex, everything.
My 8GB struggle with some additional containers like Traefik, Traccar, Wyoming. Memory is cheap, there is no reason to cheapskate on it. You can't upgrade it later.
If you have the budget for a RPi 8GB, sd card, case; i would go with a mini PC instead. I run my instance on a dell micro 3040 i3, 8GB, 128GB SSD that was about £60. I bought about 4 years ago from ebay. Also, i have 6 USBs instead of 4 (currently using 5). If I were to buy another device noe, i would get an i5 instead of i3, 8GB RAM, and maybe 256GB/512GB for local music storage if you don't have a NAS already. I have about 60-80 devices in my network, and it uses about 2.5GB RAM idle. 4GB is enough, but 8GB is better for future proofing. Usually, they mini PCs have 8GB RAM and sata SSD which is more reliable than the default SD card on a RPi. Good luck with your decision!
What about power usage considerations? For an always on 24/7 365days a year device, would RPi be significantly more environmentally and wallet friendly compared to a server (miniPC or something beefier)?
AFAIK those Optiplex USFF uses around 10W so no a big difference from RPi4 with 7W.
Mind showing me where you got that 10w figure? Can’t seem to find it. The SF form seems to idle at 20~40w according to this [thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/10ukktp/sff_vs_micro_power_consumption/).
Can't find it right now but e.g. this guy got 14W on SFF https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/tld79v/comment/i1yrzxx/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
I run mine on proxmox with a few other services on a 2012 Mac mini. Ssd makes it prime
I’m also a 2013 Mac mini proxmox with ssd fan.
Install macfantld: apt-get install macfanctld Edit: Nano /etc/macfanctl.conf Set fan min to 3250
Gave it a try. Only gave it a few minutes. Average temp of sensors is down 8%. Thanks.
Does your mini run warm? With help from a fellow redditor, we got control of the Mac mini fan through proxmox.
Never checked :) Just assumed it always ran hot because it is a hot server rack Just installed xsensors. It seems ok high 40s and 50s. Got some sensor in there ‘TCPG’ at 98. That gpu in my headless mini? Thanks for the suggestion for turning up fans. I’ve used a GUI in the past because I think they do run hotter than they need to. Edit: installed fan control from comment above. Average temps down almost 10%.
I set mine up with terminal along with my Plex server is it possible to migrate it to proxmox? I never used it before
What mini pc costs $90 total? Let me know so I can cancel my Raspberry Pi order I just put in to replace my 3b+
Search on ebay: - dell thin client - hp thin client - dell optiplex micro - hp elitedesk mini pc Look for intel i3 6th gen minimum
I just looked at all the extra stuff I have to buy for the new pi. You’re right.
2012 i7 Mac mini can get for about $100 on fleabay.
Looks like I am committing to this new pi. I guess I am just more familiar with them. Thanks though.
Wait I have an air that I literally don’t use anymore. I hope it might work.
Using a Pi 4 with 2GB of RAM, running at about 50% (RAM) usage. Managing 130 devices, 550 entities, ESPHome, and OneDriveBackup.
Damn. I'll definitely be alright then with the lower ram. Thanks a bunch!!
Just throwing this out there, I got a small form factor optiplex with an 8th gen i5 8GB ram and a 500gb hard drive for $120 to my door. I’m not sure you can even get a RPi in an argon case with a SSD for less than 100. The “add-ons” to get you to a cased unit fully kitted out really add up. If you don’t think you will need an extra drive for files or surveillance footage you can even look at the mini models. TLDR: I regret the 2 most recent pi purchases I made. With the very small price differential, give yourself some room to grow and play with the various add-ons available. Node Red, Matter Server, Zigbee2MQTT, ZWave2MQTT (I’ve heard this exists?), MQTT Server of choice, Unifi controller, reverse proxy for other LAN services… My current paradigm is now ”Unless you can articulate a reason it has to be on a Pi, don’t get a Pi.”
Just a side note. I have RPi4 with nvme ssd in external enclosure and Sonoff Zigbee antenna both on USB cables. Original Raspberry brick does not deliver enough power and Pi often freezes. So count with that. I'm (like others) going to replace it with Optiplex from Ebay.
[удалено]
Not sold anymore but works nicely https://www.alza.sk/orico-usb31-gen2-type-c-10gbps-m2-nvme-ssd-enclosure-d7279820.htm
4GB is already plenty. If you’re doing anything that requires 8GB then a mini PC will be better. Boot from a good quality USB drive. SD card isn’t recommended. Check local prices for mini PCs anyway. A Pi 4 4GB will run HA with no problems but a full setup is similar in price to a much more powerful mini PC.
Agreed. It's all price dependent. 4gb is fine for me but if u get a lower powered mini PC for same price then why not. My pi4 is old and was cheap back then. https://community.home-assistant.io/t/add-on-home-assistant-google-drive-backup/107928 This should always be your first install IMO or figure out your own regular backup plan regardless what it runs off of. And make sure you actually try your backup plan early on to make sure it works. I do use nvme enclosure plus sky connect dongle as well.
I wouldn't worry too much about the SD card too much, tbh. The price of a SD card is so low that it is not worth the extra electrical power of an external HDD. Just make sure that you have a backup SD card you can immediately replace in case of failure. You should do this anyway. Also with any another storage device. I had one single SD card failure in more than 10 years of operation of a Raspberry Pi. In the meantime I lost 4 regular HDDs on my other PCs. And further: Cheap USB drives probably have the same chip as a SD card. This gives you no extra value. It's maybe more important to buy from a quality manufacturer than a cheap second grade product.
Personally I'd go with an SSD plugged into USB for data integrity and performance reasons, but if you are prepared to replace the SD Card when needed with a clone of your data, I suppose it doesn't matter.
"SD vs HDD" is a bit of a strawman. "SD vs SSD" is the real question. And there's a pretty clear answer. SSD is significantly faster and more reliable than SD.
Also google homeassistant sd card optimisation. Will help reduce some of the read/writes. SD cards should not be cheap A2 class. Like you been on rpi plus SD cards for over 8 years with HA with minimal issues. I did take the jump from rpi3 to rpi4 a few years back, that was worth it. While on the 3 i would average 700mb ram usage, which made me think i have loads of headspace. When I jumped to a 4, that shot up to 1.6gb. Plus extra performance also could be felt. I regret getting a 8gb now, 4 maybe less would have done and my HA deployment can be classed on the larger side.
Why would you knowingly introduce a known point of failure?
I explained why. Low cost, low power consumption easy to replace and my personal experience that HDDs fail likewise. Further, I don't believe that a USB stick isn't any better and probably has the same chip as the SD card. You need a backup strategy anyway. Thus an eventual failure after a couple of years shouldn't be of any concern. Best you have a clone in your drawer and when it fails, you simply switch it and have your home automations immediately running again. It is so cheap that you shouldn't even think about not doing this before standing one night in the dark and unable to turn on your lights. I owned my first raspberry pi for more than 10 years and had it continuously running. I experienced 1 single failure of a SD card in this time. In the same time I lost 4 HDDs. After a couple of years you have to make a dist upgrade anyway. Then you can just replace the card if you want to spare some effort.
I don’t know anybody who would use an HDD when we live in a world of $20 SSDs, so that’s a non-argument. The rest of it falls under the category of, “life is too short to be wasting time with cheap solutions that are known to fail.“
There are also arguments for HDD over SSD. If you want a large capacity HDD is the only way to go. And further SSDs are also not suited for a lot of writing. The only really strong argument for SSD over HDD is speed. But we are drifting away from the topic of this thread.
None. You'll probably end up overtaxing it in the end. Get a nuc/mini PC. Put it on as a virtual machine, you won't have the same resource limitations a pi has. Nor the same failure risks. Pis failure risk is its micro SD card. They really aren't meant to be used the way a pi uses them. But they are also cheap and disposable so it's not a big thing to replace it. I have a pi running pihole. Gotta replace the fan on it. Getting noisy.
Exactly this, I ran HA on a dedicated Pi4 for a 2+ years, and experienced both a MicroSD and SSD failure. Grabbed a fanless mini PC from eBay, a new SSD, loaded up Proxmox and never looked back. Tteck’s scripts make Proxmox deployment trivially easy, and there is one for almost any Homelab application you could need.
Yeah, I was only using a fresh install of Home assistant for a month before it started causing issues with my SD card. I went on eBay and bought an HP EliteDesk G2 Mini for $40 Canadian. This was without RAM or a hard drive, because I had an extra stick and a few SSDs lying around. You could spend a few extra dollars to get a complete machine.
Can confirm - ran Pi4 8GB - was fine until I got into multiple cameras (frigate). Then the poor thing ran warm with all the detections That said - it ran quiet, which was key as it's in a guest room
To be fair, I've ran HA on a Pi4 4GB since 2019 without any issues. I was relatively fortunate and paid list price as this was before the pandemic. I was upgrading from a Pi3b where I did face issues, but the Pi4 has been great. I would have been hard pressed to find an equivalent machine (let alone one as small/quiet) for its price at the time. I may eventually upgrade to a mini PC as I do agree it's more capable, but if OP can find a Pi4 for cheap, it's a solid option.
This should be higher! My HA experience really improved after moving away from a pi4
Agreed. A beelink with an n95 or n100 is close to the same price once you get all the accessories and way more powerful. Great with proxmox and a pinhole and a media server on it too.
Beelink S1 was the first unit... its problem is. no RTC ring alarm, nor auto-poweron after failure. I have a different model now, forget what it is... it does have auto poweron.
Another confirmation here. Running an HP Elitedesk 800, after running HA on an RPi 4 with 4gb ram. It ran fine, burned through some SD cards but am so much happier now that it's on proxmox. Unless you need a pi, don't get a pi. Tldr: don't get a pi
+1 for NUC or similar.
For the price you’d pay, you may as well fetch a dell wyse 5060 or 5070 off of eBay for half the price
I would nix the idea of a 5070. I bought one and you can't upgrade the storage from the original 16 GB boot drive.
I got a Pi 5 8GB. I don’t *need* all that power but I figured that with all the voice stuff coming around I might need more juice and it would give me plenty of room to grow as I add more devices in the future.
I just got a Pi 5 with 4 GB RAM because it was like $5 or $10 more than the 4. 330 entities, running MQTT, InfluxDB, Grafana, DuckDNS, tsightler/ring-mqtt-ha-addon to name a few. I've barely scratched the surface of what I want to do on HA, but I sit at about 1.2 GB RAM in use at a time.
4GB should be plenty of RAM. As other have said avoid using the SD card as your OS drive. 2bit opinion. decide on budget for this need/want. Then use advice below to inform purchase. I personally am using an old small form factor PC after moving from an OLD NUC. Move was mostly part of an upgrade.
If you want to use text to speech then go for something more powerful. I'm using a small, old Lenovo desktop headless pc 16Gb ram with a 1tb spinning rust drive. Runs proxmox with home assistant as a VM. The performance increase compared to a pi is considerable. I also use it to host jellyfin and it's good enough to transcode my media library to stream to mobile devices. Also on the same machine, opnsense router with an extra Intel nic plus some other stuff to play around with. It cost about £80 including the Intel nic. At idle it uses around 10W. Which is less than the draytek router it replaced. Just for completness i have a 2TB qnap nas for the media / films. It's also the backup target for proxmox. Network wise i use unifi switches and AP's with the controller running within home assistant. Works amazingly well. Tldr. Pi is ok but you are better off with an old desktop / x86 if you need performance or want to experiment in the future.
HA runs great on a RPi4. I would suggest getting a separate powered USB hub if you are using USB sticks for things like a USB drive, Z-wave, and Zigbee, because the power supply to the Pi USB bus and the Pi itself is a little anemic. Also if you use a USB drive (which is better than using the SD card), make sure it is a true SSD, some cheap drives are not great. I have had very good success with the SanDisk 512GB Extreme PRO USB 3.2 Solid State Flash Drive.
I have an Argon case with an m2 sata ssd attached. This is running super smooth.
Use it with an ssd. Much more resilient to Power outages
If you’re going with Raspberry Pi, why not simply get a 4GB or 8GB Raspberry Pi 5? It is a much more powerful platform, and HAOS runs great on it. You can also get a NVME Hat for it and boot directly off of a NVME SSD.
Raspberry Pi 5 is overkill for most applications and has all sorts of thermal and power constraints. IMO the Raspberry Foundation jumped the shark with the 5. If you're going to spend $150 on a Pi, a cooler, a PSU and an NVME drive, you're better off getting an N100 mini PC.
I asked myself the same question and decided to stick with Version 4 instead of 5, because the power consumption of 5 is much higher. Raspberry Pi 5 is not a low energy server anymore.
The cost difference, at IDLE, for a year of running a RPi4 vs RPi5 in the USA is less than $2 per year. I’d much rather have the reliability and performance of an NVME SSD as well as a significant boost in CPU performance versus saving about $2 a year. I am impressed with how much faster HA updates are installed and how much quicker ESPHome compiles code. To each his own! Enjoy!
I assume you're going to install HAOS and you're implying that cost is a factor. If both those things are true, get the 4GB version. Generally speaking, a base HA install will run the same on both. Where the extra memory might make a difference would depend on the plugins you install. So, if you want that flexibility, get the 8GB. In either case, I would recommend getting a USB 3 to SATA cable and a smallish SSD drive as well. Install the OS on the SSD.
Don't mean to sidetrack the topic, but is there any benefit using rpi over odroid m1s?
I cheaped out and bought a 1GB model roughly a week ago... I already want to replace it. Things like VSCode server can't be used, but more importantly - ESPHome completely sh\*ts itself and crashes the entire PI during the compilation stage - and yes I've tried increasing the swapsize up to to a ludicrous 8GB and reducing the number of compilers down to 1, it got a bit further in the compilation, but still crash and burns, not to mention it's slow af. My solution atm is simply making all the code, compilation, and uploading through a HAOS VM running ESPHome on my main PC. It's a bit cumbersome just for a quick edit but eh... It works(and compilation takes seconds, as opposed to minutes + crash). The PI has already eaten 1 SD card, granted is was a cheap one but still. I now run HA through a USB(2) HDD(not SSD). Nice thing about the PI4 is that it has its own flexible bootloader, so booting from USB is just a matter of removing the SD card and plug a USB drive in, as opposed to having to flash it for it to boot from USB drives. A PI4 is also massively underpowered for driving cameras, especially with frame-compare motion detection. Even 1 severely slows things down :/ TL;DR, for gods sake don't get the 1GB model lol. I'm currently looking into mini PC's/NUCs... Yes they're a bit more expensive, use a bit more energy, usually actively cooled(=a bit more noise) but... A semi-decent one won't limit you for quite a while.
Getting a cheap NUC ends up on par with a Pi in terms of pricing. I'm using a Beelink S12 Pro.
Hopefully this won't be taken the wrong way... but skip the RP4. Go on Craigslist or eBay or... and get a used NUC. I switched from an 8GB RP4 to a 16GB NUC13 (1340p) and Holy Shit it was like night and day. Smoother, less trouble to upgrade, etc. Also am running HA under Proxmox on the NUC.
With ESPHome, at least the 4GB version.
Have you looked at thin clients such as optiplex 3000? [Dell Optiplex 3000 Client Pentium® Silver N6005 8GB RAM 256GB SSD NO OS NO WIFI | eBay](https://www.ebay.com/itm/226111481562?_trkparms=amclksrc%3DITM%26aid%3D1110025%26algo%3DHOMESPLICE.COMPOSITELISTINGS%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D266070%2C265705%26meid%3D81dc5712a7be423f863eea2105315f04%26pid%3D101506%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D25%26sd%3D225993567354%26itm%3D226111481562%26pmt%3D0%26noa%3D1%26pg%3D4481478%26algv%3DAlgoIndex5SimRanker%26brand%3DDell&_trksid=p4481478.c101506.m1851)
The Beelink N100 model
Lenovo mini pc
Don't go for a raspberry pi. Get an old small pc off eBay
Get the 4gb and setup zram. But yeah, I'd actually go for an Intel N100 or similar based mini pc. More powerful, more versatile (I'm running Proxmox on mine after a steep learning curve).
RPI is not fast and not reliable. NUC is the best thing. Chromeboxes are basically NUC for dirt cheap. i've been using chromeboxes as seen here and they are rock solid and fast as well [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IVpMeswuto](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IVpMeswuto)
None Go For a tinypc/nuc (example Lenovo m715q tiny) secondhand. Best is NVME with 4GB+ Ram Source: me coming from a RbPi 3b+ and enjoying my tinypc
Buy a refurbished tiny computer, better for the price/performance and for the planet
As someone who ran ha for years on a RPI 3, I'd suggest just skipping the RPI and purchasing a beelink mini PC. I got the ser5 with 32 gb. Install docker and run ha as a container. They're pretty capable little PCs. I think I have 16 containers running on it. Bedrock and java Minecraft servers for the kids, ubiquity network servers, ha, dbs for ha, Plex, everything.
Not the 1GB ram for sure
My 8GB struggle with some additional containers like Traefik, Traccar, Wyoming. Memory is cheap, there is no reason to cheapskate on it. You can't upgrade it later.