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Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

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Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#231

Post by BackBlast »

mindslight wrote: post #140
spookthesunset wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can fix that SD problem by booting off a USB SSD instead. Much faster and more reliable.

I want to use a Pi4 8GB as an arm64 build host so I'm going the USB SSD route there. But adding on additional hardware ultimately seems like the "stone soup" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Soup ) version of setting up a server. Furthermore I'm hesitant to rely too much on the arm ecosystem in general. If one pops a drive with a Linux installation into any amd64 machine, it straightforwardly boots. Whereas just…

I've gone this route as well. I had good luck with certain SD cards, and earlier versions of the Pi for small things. But I've tried to use them as wireless APs, and they fold under any real use. Wireless firmware hangs requiring a full reboot to fix. Pi4s have given me a ton of trouble, and I've been on the losing side of the SD card roulette and had USB drives fail under load. There is always some kind of IO or sagging voltage problem with a power supply wigging out or I got a bad one.

Moved to using low power thin clients on liquidation for similar pricing, and it's all been a breeze. I get real disk IO. I get a real wireless card which runs an AP night and day better. I get a real USB power budget with a much more trustworthy OEM power supply. Power profile and size is about double, but it's a very worthwhile trade. I like the 1L system profiles and lean to the HPs.

I don't mind ARM in the cloud, but at home I just want real hardware.

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#232

Post by jamil7 »

bmurphy1976 wrote: post #219
tomxor wrote: post #192

Unless it magically cleans and tidies everything I really don't see the appeal of home automation. Pressing a switch is far more convenient to me when walking into a room than fishing out a smartphone - whether it be through a raspberry pi or otherwise. Same with central heating, I rarely need to adjust it and I don't see the appeal of messing around with some integrated interface, i'd rather an old fashioned radiato…

All my lights have a physical switch or button. The smarts come in subtle ways: 1. Turn lights on 45 minutes BEFORE sunset at any time of year 2. Turn lights on and off at specific times, automatically adjust for Daylight Savings Time (I'll never have to listen to my wife complain about the lights needing adjustment again) 3. Start warming up/cooling off my house BEFORE I get home from vacation 4. Double click a butt…

I’m happy it all works for you and it sounds almost like a bit of a hobby for you too which is great. But from someone less interested in it from that angle it still just sounds a lot like a bunch of work and expense for marginal levels of convenience. I also just find interiors more aesthetically pleasing and relaxing with the least amount of technology possible, maybe a side effect of working in this industry.

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#233

Post by rmi0 »

wyager wrote: post #68

I've been doing a bunch of home automation work recently. Here are some observations I've made: 1. Most extant home automation software is totally unreliable garbage. Buggy, slow, poorly designed. You want to reduce the amount of code you pull in as much as possible. 2. Raspberry pis are totally unreliable garbage. The hardware is just bad. There's no way to make them reliably operate for long periods of time without…

I'm sorry but this is just BS. Raspberry Pi are not garbage.

With good software, and by that I don't mean barely tested Java or Nodejs HomeKit wannabe services, Pis are rock solid.

I'm into SDR (software defined radio.) I have written software which processes 8MB of samples per second, and runs for months without reboot. It means 90-100% CPU load, 100% of the time.

Oh, and the same Pi also hosts AirPlay server and manages ~10 Arduino devices in spare cycles.

Bad software can make any device useless.

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#234

Post by sam345 »

scottlamb wrote: post #57
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…

I'm still figuring out Home Assistant. I love that it has a real ecosystem and that it seems to have a decent HTTP/WebSocket API (that I just started playing with). Some things I don't love: * A lot of the integrations seem half-baked or to not quite fit the generic Lovelace cards. I think to some extent this is an inherent problem in supporting a lot of devices that have crappy, non-standardized APIs. Example: if I…

Try using nodered for HA automations. Much simpler and flexible.

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#236

Post by sam345 »

janitha wrote: post #84
dheera wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also hate that you have to install it as an OS or VM to be fully featured. If you use the docker version it is crippled with no "supervisor" mode. Also every now and then a light or switch will go greyed out in HA, their official apps still work, and I have to restart HA to be able to use it in HA again. Pretty annoying when you get home after a long day, soaked in rain, fumbling in the dark to turn on lights and n…

How is the container version crippled? An anecdotal data point, but I've been running the home-assistant container image on k8s without any issue, and I have a lot of integrations.

Same here. Running on a pi 3 with nodered, both in docker containers. Works perfectly and reliably with hundreds of entities, numerous automations, etc. Just make sure you have an official pi ac adapter and boot off an SSD drive not SD card otherwise you will have problems.

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#237

Post by sam345 »

giobox wrote: post #175
dheera wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't run HACS, supervisor mode, Kelvin-sun matching plugin ...

I'm running HACS in the container release right now, it's worked for a long time. So long as you have your HA configuration folder as a volume etc it will preserve across restarts/upgrades. I'd go as far as to argue the (officially supported!) container release is the best way to get a production quality install of HA - containers are a great way to package and release complex web apps like HA. Mines automatically up…

Totally agree. I use the docker containers and persistent volumes and works great. No loss of function,.

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#238

Post by sam345 »

late_groomer wrote: post #69
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…

Home Assistant has been nothing short of amazing. I started out just wanting to control my Christmas lights back in early December; tried going the HomeKit with HomeBridge route, only to realize I needed an iHub or some other (i) device on my network to have it work remotely. It was a bad experience even while on my network, luckily stumbled upon Home Assistant looking for better options a week or so into the journey…

I've had luck running HA and node red on a pi 3 but with 250gb SSD drive, responsive and reliable. I think that's the bottleneck. You can't use SD card. Also must use AC adapters specifically for pi, usually slightly above 5 volts and 2 amps I think. Also pinhole must be on separate device I agree with that.

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#239

Post by fomine3 »

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…

Old tiny desktop computers are expected to getting very cheap, due to Win11 dropped support. Intel platform is decent for idle power consumption.

Here's great article by STH https://www.servethehome.com/introducing-project-tinyminimic...

Re: Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

#240

Post by Semaphor »

not1ofU wrote: post #97
Semaphor wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have my PI running off a USB-SSD instead. It works very well, though initial set up can be a bit of a hassle.

If you dont mind, do you have some link to hand that you used to set that up? Edit: - sorry, nevermind, I should have read the rest of the comments, there is a link below this comment (at time of writing)

I don’t see a link, so here’s the post I used: https://jamesachambers.com/new-raspberry-pi-4-bootloader-usb...

Make sure you use the right adapter, I got an enclosure at first that wasn’t on the list, and it ended up not working. I switched to the recommended StarTech 2.5″ and everything worked.

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