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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

#181

Post by moffkalast »

boringg wrote: post #161

Am I the only one who still has yet to understand the value proposition of a smart home [outside wifi + sonos]? The trade off isn't a clear win to me for me to automate everything else. If it was I would try a raspberry pi set up.

Yeah, I've installed a bunch of PIR controlled LED strips around the apartment to light up as people walk into rooms automatically, and aside from that there really isn't anything else I see I would need.

The "smart" approach would be having all of them wifi enabled, and then being able to change colour, intensity, duration, etc. via web or app. You know what also works just as well for that though? One or two push buttons on each detector lol.

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#182

Post by moffkalast »

tov247 wrote: post #170
boringg wrote: post #161

Am I the only one who still has yet to understand the value proposition of a smart home [outside wifi + sonos]? The trade off isn't a clear win to me for me to automate everything else. If it was I would try a raspberry pi set up.

I concur. I take a Battlestar Galactica inspired approach to appliances in my house. It's fine if they have computers in them, I just don't want them to be able to communicate.

So say we all.

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#183

Post by moffkalast »

squarefoot wrote: post #108
m4tthumphrey wrote: post #55

Slightly OT: > Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi If you can get hold of one! I've been looking for a Pi4 for ages to use with PiHole but sold out everywhere, some have back orders for 2023 O_O Anyone got any recommendations of other devices that work well with PiHole? I have a Mac Mini acting as a home server but from what I've read, PiHole does not run great on it via Docker...

> If you can get hold of one! You don't need any in fact. It's Python so it runs on any powerful enough Linux platform, and there's a boatload of them out there; the Raspberry Pi is just the 1st one to become popular and it's the most advertised. Hoarders depleted all stocks to sell them overpriced? Well, screw them, we're going to the competition instead. Here's a list, updated yearly, of the most known Linux boards…

It's probably not worth going much past something that's also super popular like an ODroid. Otherwise you'll just be spending an inordinate amount of hours trying to figure out obscure bugs that the non-existent community hasn't yet fixed for you.

I once made the mistake of buying a Banana Pi M2 Zero. Specs were great, support looked decent, I thought I'll be getting a Pi 3 in a Zero form factor. What I instead got was a thing nobody uses on which barely anything runs properly with such flaky wifi that it's practically useless. Never again.

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#184

Post by zrail »

xxpor wrote: post #180
zrail wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you feel that using a virtualized router with other things on the box puts you at greater risk? I.e. you're putting an awful lot of eggs in that one basket. I've considered setting that up before but shied away from it.

Availability risk? Sure, but that's 99.9% my own doing (constant experiments, etc) Security risk? Not in the slightest. I'm running an up to date proxmox which is just KVM+QEMU with some scripting and a website on top, basically. I know how to setup IOMMU groups and such. If it's good enough for the big cloud providers, it's good enough for me.

Yeah primarily I'm concerned with availability. I have a "production" hypervisor now with all of the household services running on it that I've promised my spouse I wouldn't mess around with which cuts off one avenue of experiments.

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#185

Post by mr_person »

billfor wrote: post #58
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…

If you don't have any need for bleeding edge devices, Openhab still works on a rpi4 as an alternative to HA. I like that I can just install it as an apt package onto an existing rpi with other things and java just does its stuff, rather than dedicating the entire rpi4 to it or running in a container.

+1 for OpenHab. I have tried HA several times, but always cone back to OH for its super simple ui and app layout editors. Apt install is also nice.

Also, plugging in a half-decent zigbee controller usb dongle and receive native zigbee controls in the system, no need for a bridge like mqtt

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#186

Post by hedora »

bpye wrote: post #106
djanogo wrote: post #42

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…

I'm still running an 8th gen HP micro server, but I would run something else if I could get >=8GB memory and 4 SATA ports for relatively cheap. I haven't seen anything that gets me there yet though.

It sounds like you want a Synology, at least hardware-wise. This one supports up to 6 GB of RAM, four SATA ports, and idles with low wattage and low noise.

Built-in virtualization and docker. It's $500 at Newegg.

https://www.synology.com/en-us/products/DS420+#specs

They make bigger ones, of course.

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#187

Post by vladgur »

xxpor wrote: post #165
vladgur wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you setup a separate VLAN and SSID? None of the "pro-sumer" wifi mesh setups under $500 support VLANs

I use Unifi for wifi gear, which supports it out of the box. https://www.ui.com/unifi/unifi-ap-ac-pro/ for the wired AP, https://store.ui.com/products/uap-beaconhd for the extension into the back of the house. Pricy, but not completely outrageous IMO. For an actual router, I run OPNsense in a VM (on the same box as HA, funnily enough). My server has dual 10 gig ports, so I pass through one of them to OPNsense and run…

Do you know if Dreammachine can work with another ubiquity Access point in a mesh fashion?

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#188

Post by vladgur »

nybble41 wrote: post #163
vladgur wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you setup a separate VLAN and SSID? None of the "pro-sumer" wifi mesh setups under $500 support VLANs

The Ubiquiti Access Point AC Mesh Pro[0] (~$200) appears to support multiple SSIDs and VLANs. Of course you'd need at least two of them to count as a "mesh", which is $400… was your $500 budget per access point or for the whole system (and if so, for how many APs)? [0] https://store.ui.com/products/unifi-ac-mesh-pro-ap

2 will cover my needs. Do they actually work like a mesh? As in use backhaul radio to communicate between them and allow seamless switch from one to another as you travel around your home?

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#189

Post by xxpor »

zrail wrote: post #184
xxpor wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Availability risk? Sure, but that's 99.9% my own doing (constant experiments, etc) Security risk? Not in the slightest. I'm running an up to date proxmox which is just KVM+QEMU with some scripting and a website on top, basically. I know how to setup IOMMU groups and such. If it's good enough for the big cloud providers, it's good enough for me.

Yeah primarily I'm concerned with availability. I have a "production" hypervisor now with all of the household services running on it that I've promised my spouse I wouldn't mess around with which cuts off one avenue of experiments.

Ah yeah, I definitely have the distinct advantage of living with me, myself, and I :)

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#190

Post by xxpor »

vladgur wrote: post #187
xxpor wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Unifi for wifi gear, which supports it out of the box. https://www.ui.com/unifi/unifi-ap-ac-pro/ for the wired AP, https://store.ui.com/products/uap-beaconhd for the extension into the back of the house. Pricy, but not completely outrageous IMO. For an actual router, I run OPNsense in a VM (on the same box as HA, funnily enough). My server has dual 10 gig ports, so I pass through one of them to OPNsense and run…

Do you know if Dreammachine can work with another ubiquity Access point in a mesh fashion?

Yes, the Unifi OS console they talk about is similar to the Unifi controller that you can run standalone on your desktop. It'll handle the adoption, handoff coordination, everything you need.
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