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Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

pragprog.com

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Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#41

Post by rhinoceraptor »

iandanforth wrote: post #18
kkielhofner wrote: post #5

Home Assistant[1] is the best approach I've found for this. It's pretty amazing but has a pretty steep learning curve (although they're getting better and better at this). The real power of HA is the rich integration ecosystem[2], the Community Store[3], and that it runs locally (more reliable and much faster for things like motion sensors, etc). It expresses everything from every integration as an entity in various…

How do you handle network security? I wouldn't trust an IoT device on the same network as any of my family's computers or phones for example.

One, I avoid WiFi products entirely if there is a good alternative. Zigbee and ZWave are two good ecosystems, you get a USB radio, plug it Home Assistant machine and you're up and running.

A second option is finding devices that can be flashed with Tasmota or ESPHome. This could also mean putting together your own devices with an ESP8266, ESPHome is basically plug and play for simple things like temperature sensors. You assemble the device, configure which pins to use via YAML, and then flash it to the ESP.

You don't even need to download a local build toolchain, the ESPHome add-on to Home Assistant can flash devices plugged into your computer just from the web interface, and then do OTA firmware updates.

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#42

Post by djanogo »

Better yet, run your home on Dell/HP micro computers that get decommissioned by enterprises/hospitals/big-orgs every 3 years. Find them on Offerup or FB or Craigslist market place for $100-$200.

These are built solid with metal enclosures, fan cooled, UL certified PSU, ~7k CPUbenchmark.net. Usually i5 6thGen Intel CPU, 8GB-16GB RAM and have REAL storage(SSD) and M.2 NVMe. If you are lucky you might find vPro version with remote management.

Currently running a HP G2 bought on Offerup for $70 with i5-6600T, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD running Ubuntu server with HomeAssistant VM and few containers. It idles at 7w, with I tried Raspberry Pi with HomeAssistant with it's piss poor antique storage solution, it idled at 5W, it went straight back to store.

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#43

Post by scottlamb »

nerdjon wrote: post #7

I have to ask others, have people had good luck with this? I have tried to do this multiple times, with multiple models of Pi and every time after 6ish months it just seems to completely stop working. I can't get it to boot even off of a new sd card. Am I doing something wrong or does the hardware really not want to be run consistently in this manner? I have since decided to just run some home automation VM's on my m…

You have bad luck or are doing something wrong. I've had a Pi2 running for years and a Pi4 running since they were released in 2019. I had to replace a SD card once (and now am using a SATA SSD on a USB bridge instead). Otherwise, no hardware failures.

> I can't get it to boot even off of a new sd card.

Best guess: power adapter problems. Either the power adapter itself is dead or it misbehaved, killing the Pi.

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#44

Post by mindslight »

iandanforth wrote: post #18
kkielhofner wrote: post #5

Home Assistant[1] is the best approach I've found for this. It's pretty amazing but has a pretty steep learning curve (although they're getting better and better at this). The real power of HA is the rich integration ecosystem[2], the Community Store[3], and that it runs locally (more reliable and much faster for things like motion sensors, etc). It expresses everything from every integration as an entity in various…

How do you handle network security? I wouldn't trust an IoT device on the same network as any of my family's computers or phones for example.

I prohibit IoT devices from connecting to the Internet at all, and only use devices that can be controlled by the local network [0]. Thus firmware updates don't matter (as long as the manufacturer hasn't included any logic bombs), as the trust model is that devices are just an extension of the network segment.

The least-involved way to set this up would be to set up an old wifi router to create a second network, don't connect this router to your existing network or uplink, and then set up your home automation server with two ethernet ports.

[0] eg TP-Link Kasa, although I heard this may have changed for recent ones? Either way, with this setup you'll be immediately aware of whether local control functionality works, so you're well within the return window. FWIW I stay away from Amazon's GENSYM brands, even though they'd be easy to flash with Tasmota etc, because I don't trust them to get line voltage design considerations right and I don't feel like QAing every single device.

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#45

Post by krnlpnc »

I find running my home servers on USFF x86_64 systems to be much more reliable. You can find them used for the same price as a kitted out raspberry pi, and they are faster, have more ram, and more durable disks.

I like USFF because it's essentially laptop components in a mini desktop case. With power saving features turned on (currently I force all power saving features on using powertop) they don't use many watts.

I don't rely on raspberry pi for anything that needs to run 24x7 because of sd card wear and the hassle of downtime and replacing/reflashing/reconfiguring a new card causes.

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#46

Post by syshum »

iandanforth wrote: post #18
kkielhofner wrote: post #5

Home Assistant[1] is the best approach I've found for this. It's pretty amazing but has a pretty steep learning curve (although they're getting better and better at this). The real power of HA is the rich integration ecosystem[2], the Community Store[3], and that it runs locally (more reliable and much faster for things like motion sensors, etc). It expresses everything from every integration as an entity in various…

How do you handle network security? I wouldn't trust an IoT device on the same network as any of my family's computers or phones for example.

For me I mainly use Zigbee and Zwave Devices not WiFi Devices.

I am sadden that wifi seems to be taking over and ZigBee and Zwave are starting to lose favor.

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#47

Post by phreeza »

kkielhofner wrote: post #5

Home Assistant[1] is the best approach I've found for this. It's pretty amazing but has a pretty steep learning curve (although they're getting better and better at this). The real power of HA is the rich integration ecosystem[2], the Community Store[3], and that it runs locally (more reliable and much faster for things like motion sensors, etc). It expresses everything from every integration as an entity in various…

Does anyone have some experience to share with integrating home assistant with Homematic devices? I'm stuck with those for controlling my heating but really dislike the interface.

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#49

Post by justin66 »

krnlpnc wrote: post #45

I find running my home servers on USFF x86_64 systems to be much more reliable. You can find them used for the same price as a kitted out raspberry pi, and they are faster, have more ram, and more durable disks. I like USFF because it's essentially laptop components in a mini desktop case. With power saving features turned on (currently I force all power saving features on using powertop) they don't use many watts. I…

> I don't rely on raspberry pi for anything that needs to run 24x7 because of sd card wear and the hassle of downtime and replacing/reflashing/reconfiguring a new card causes.

One can always use an SSD. They work great.

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#50

Post by creeble »

nerdjon wrote: post #7

I have to ask others, have people had good luck with this? I have tried to do this multiple times, with multiple models of Pi and every time after 6ish months it just seems to completely stop working. I can't get it to boot even off of a new sd card. Am I doing something wrong or does the hardware really not want to be run consistently in this manner? I have since decided to just run some home automation VM's on my m…

I’ve had good luck running pi’s for years between (power fail) reboots.

One thing though - I don’t think any of my pi’s run x windows, I think they’re all console mode. I get the feeling that they do fewer writes in general this way, but I don’t really know. Anecdotally, I had a pi that ran x that I was experimenting with, and after a couple of months found it locked up/dead to the network. A reboot brought it back fine, but I unplugged it a few days after that and haven’t been using it.

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