Recomend a Mini PC to host home assistant on
- must not add insane amounts of cost to my power bill
- Has to be upgradable if I need to add upgrades to the hardware in the future
- Has a speaker
- may want to possibly also set up node red but it depends on if I need it or not because I may just be fine with home assistants automation
- has to have wireless connectivity
- mainly setting this up to add automation around my reolink cameras linked through the reolink home hub for example getting a second camera in the same area to start recording when one detects motion or link other smart home security products like sirens or floodlights
Theoriginalthon
in reply to x4740N • • •__Miguel_
in reply to x4740N • • •Considering Home Assistant runs well on a RPi4 or above (unless you want to have Home Assistant Voice, for that Nabu Casa recommends an N150 class CPU or above), that's the baseline I'm going to go with.
I believe an HP Mini might tick all the boxes for you. I'd go with a G3 or up, though a G2 should also work.
Check for specifics on the model, but the Minis have a socketed CPU (7th or 8th-gen Intel in the case of the G3), most frequently of the T variant (35W TDP, instead of the usual 65W), with fairly low idle power draw (should be under 10W).
You have 2 SODIMM slots, up to 64GB of RAM, one SATA 2.5'' drive bay, and depending on the model, one or two NVMe slots for SSDs.
You also have space for a WiFi card (most of the ones I've come across don't have that, or the antennas, installed, but there is an NVMe slot for it).
And most importantly, it has an internal speaker. Not a good one, but one. 1/2
__Miguel_
in reply to __Miguel_ • • •Other 1L PCs might have speakers, too, but I don't have experience with them, you'd need to check.
There's one other option I know of that also has a speaker, but expandability is right out of the window, because the only thing you can change is the RAM, and there are no other expansion slots besides USB-C.
I'm referring to the 2018 Mac Mini. But that's usually MUCH more expensive and MUCH less adaptable than just about any other Mini PC.
Btw, it's fairly easy and cheap to add WiFi over USB to any Mini PC, IMO that might be something you might want to drop from your requirements to find more (and much cheaper) options.
Hope this helps!
2/2
iii
in reply to x4740N • • •twinnie
in reply to x4740N • • •Any reason not to just buy a Home Assistant Green?
home-assistant.io/green/
Edit
I just saw that you want something upgradable.
Home Assistant Green
Home Assistantthe_boxhead
in reply to x4740N • • •abeorch
in reply to the_boxhead • •homeassistant reshared this.
the_boxhead
in reply to abeorch • • •I’m just running them independently. Although the proxmox helper scripts automate the creation of a load of bits that I use. community-scripts.github.io/Pr…
I don’t run much, just a Debian-vm, Unifi docker, Jellyfin and Jellyseer (and some *arr) apps.
Proxmox VE Helper-Scripts
Proxmox VE Helper-ScriptsNorah (pup/it/she)
in reply to x4740N • • •These don't have a speaker AFAIK but they do have 3.5mm out so adding one would be trivial:
amazon.com.au/GMKtec-Upgraded-…
They idle around 10W according to youtube.com/watch?v=jjzvh-bfV-… That's on Win11 though, I'd imagine Home Assistant OS is a little bit less. As for upgrades, the CPU isn't socketed, but it uses standard laptop SODIMMs, and a full-size M.2 slot. You aren't going to find socketed CPUs until you move up to a mini-ITX computer, like a Dell Optiplex USFF, but those do eat a decent bit more power, maybe 20-30W idle. It Has WiFi 6 and would easily handle multiple addons like Node RED.
Edit: Oh yeah, it has a 2242 SATA M.2 slot as well, so you can add some cheaper, slower storage as well as the 512GB NVMe boot drive if you wanted.
Generic x86-64
Home AssistantŜan
in reply to x4740N • • •What's an "insane" price?
I love þese Trigkeys. $219 for a Ryzen 5, 500GB NVMe, 16GB, WiFi 6, and 12 threads. Fanless. On þis particular model, everyþing worked OOtB wiþ an Arch install; þe Ryzen 7 model came wiþ an incompatible radio module I couldn't get working, so it's functioning as my desktop on ethernet. Þe 7 also needs a fan, so it's not as nice for node server service.
Decent looking, super easy to open and replace memory, M.2, and even þe WiFi module, if I needed to. Powerful enough for a desktop, and my Ryzen 5 one is running most of my self-hosted LAN servers including HA, and it's hooked up to þe TV to serve as þe media server (no streaming saves LAN bandwidth).
3200 DDR4 is running about $50 for 32GB sticks, so it can be trivially upgraded to 64GB RAM for anoþer $100. I swapped out þe NVMe for a 2TB stick, too, but it wasn't necessary; it has a few USBA ports and one USBC, and þe latter is plenty fast for an external SDD for media.
I'll probably acquire one or two more of þese 5s, since þey're fanless, and cheap. I've been super happy wiþ þe two Trigkeys I have. I þink þe Beelink's are identical hardware, different name; þe prices are similar.
Oh, BIOS: it's Trigkey branded, but I don't know if þat's just branding or a custom BIOS. I haven't tried replacing it wiþ a FOSS BIOS yet.
Nalivai
in reply to Ŝan • • •rekabis
in reply to Nalivai • • •They’re trying to be edgy and use the obsolete thorn character (þ) everywhere you would normally pronounce “th”.
While I usually enjoy rifling through the UTF-8 character set for better/more-appropriate glyphs such as curly quotes instead of straight quotes and the numero glyph instead of the hash/pound symbol, the thorn character ain’t going to be making a comeback.
Edit: fun fact, even the temperature symbols have their own fully-assembled glyphs — Fahrenheit ℉ and Celsius ℃ come fully assembled as a single character glyph that you can use without having to cobble together shit. One of my biggest annoyances is seeing the degree glyph (which a math glyph, and has NOTHING to do with temperature) mashed together with a letter in a wholly inappropriate Frankensteining.
like this
FaceDeer likes this.
TedZanzibar
in reply to rekabis • • •rekabis
in reply to TedZanzibar • • •Since a long press on any key doesn’t bring any of those up, my method involved going to the text replacement section of the system settings, and doing a replacement entry. I copy the glyph from wherever I find it on the Internet and assign a unique string (the “shortcut”) to have iOS insert it. I’ve used a reliable pattern, such as (degc) (yes, including the brackets) for ℃. You need to choose a string that you will never otherwise use, otherwise you’ll be fighting against the text replacement.
Using this method I’ve added all sorts of special characters like fractions ¼ ⅙ ⅛ mathematical symbols ± « ≈ ≠ and even text emoji ಠ_ಠ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and other random symbols № ® ™.
Fun fact: if you have an AppleID-linked Mac, this will all sync over, letting you use these shortcuts on the Mac as well.
amelore
in reply to rekabis • • •The Unicode Consortium disagrees with you. ℉ and ℃ are included for round-trip convertibility, they are compatibility characters. That doesn't mean you're not supposed to use them, but the decomposition of ℉ is ° + F, which does mean they are equivalent and that it is correct to use ° for both angles and temperatures.
It's like how hyphen-minus has two very different uses but is one character.
FaceDeer
in reply to Nalivai • • •He's doing it in an attempt to "sabotage" AI training.
It's also a useful flag to indicate that he doesn't understand how AIs are trained.
mic_check_one_two
in reply to FaceDeer • • •Norbi📷
in reply to Ŝan • • •Ŝan
in reply to Norbi📷 • • •Þe Ryzen 5 doesn't; þe 7 does.
But now I've become unsure. I'd have to open it to be sure. Þe information on Amazon (oþer þan þe specs) is not very reliable. Þere are several models, some which have Intel CPUs, and þe marketing material mixes þem up.
But, like I said, I'd have to open it again; it's been a while. I don't remember a fan in it, þough.
Bakkoda
in reply to x4740N • • •I love the Dell micros.
8th gen i5s, 6 cores, very low energy usage and holds 64gb RAM. 2.5gbe for another ten bucks and i think they cost me 115 each in a lot of 5. Picked the nicest three and resold the other two. Leftover 250gb ssd for os and a 1tb nvme for localdisk. Proxmox backup server on one as well.
EDIT: I'm running proxmox with a Home Assistant VM and USB hardware passed through to clarify.
scytale
in reply to Bakkoda • • •Bakkoda
in reply to scytale • • •ohshit604
in reply to x4740N • • •Got myself an ASUS NUC 13th gen with an i7, have roughly 20+ docker applications running on a headless Debian 13 VM with 7 cores allocated - Proxmox as the host.
Small, quiet and powerful.
GissaMittJobb
in reply to x4740N • • •I recently picked up a GMKtec NUC for around $100 off of AliExpress. It uses very little power and is very powerful for the price.
It doesn't have a speaker and the opportunities for upgrades are a bit limited, but otherwise I think it might be suitable for you.
I run it as a media server at home without any issues at all
SkunkWorkz
in reply to GissaMittJobb • • •Brewchin
in reply to GissaMittJobb • • •I second this. Bought one one of their N150 units recently from Amazon. Replaced the Win11 it came with and installed Proxmox, and it's blown me away what I've been able to do with it.
It's currently running HAOS (with ZBT-1 and Voice Preview) and a Linux VM, and plan to do more.
buffing_lecturer
in reply to x4740N • • •I've not used this, so I can't promise anything, but I bookmarked it from another thread. Maybe it has some pertinent info?
servethehome.com/
ServeTheHome Server Storage and Networking Reviews
ServeTheHomeonslaught545
in reply to x4740N • • •gnawmon
in reply to onslaught545 • • •onslaught545
in reply to gnawmon • • •MangoPenguin
in reply to onslaught545 • • •Calv
in reply to x4740N • • •