How do you guys run home assistant?

I tried out home assistant using virtual box on my main pc and I enjoyed what I could do with it so far. So, I ordered a mini pc (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C89TQ1YF/) with the intention of running home assistant’s OS so that it’s always running regardless of Windows doing what it wants with my PC.

I run other things all the time on my main pc too, plex, isponsorblocktv, tartube, things like that. Is running just home assistant on that mini pc going to be overkill? Should I just put Linux on it and run home assistant on there some other way so that I can also run some of these other things there? Will home assistant take a noticeable performance hit?

  • Dave@lemmy.nzEnglish
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    2 days ago

    The house has to work damn near 100% of the time, so I run it on a dedicated Raspberry Pi 4 that has Home Assistant OS with the full stack on it. Works great!

  • kaaskop@feddit.nlEnglish
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    2 days ago

    I’m running it on a pi5. It was able to handle everything including voice easily although the voice thing out of the box is quite limited. I was able to do a lot with it through automations with custom commands though. It was pretty much able to replace my Google assistant system.

    I’ve now upgraded it with ollama and Whisper on a network device (old laptop with i7 CPU and GTX1050 mobile GPU) and that works perfectly with llama3.2:3b. Pretty accurate and works well enough. Especially useful coupled with the local home assistant command processing since that by passes the LLM.

  • spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
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    2 days ago

    HA Supervised running under Debian 12 on a mini laptop with an N200 processor takes about 3% CPU. With the Frigate NVR add-on running 2 security cameras it uses about 10%.

  • Acamon@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    3 days ago

    I had it on a old pc, running in a virtual machine alongside other stuff, but switched to running it as HAOS on its own mini pc. Just felt simpler.

  • EarMaster@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    3 days ago

    I have an Intel NUC (3rd gen I think) which runs Proxmox, which runs several VMs including Home Assistant on HAOS. The only thing I did was upgrade the RAM as the VMs eat this quickly…

    Other services I run on this small box are AdGuard, Paperless-ngx, KitchenOwl, tt-rss and two Nightscout instances.

  • JovialSodium@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
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    3 days ago

    On a Pi4.

    I was running it on a VM on the home server but then any downtimes that machine had were also HA downtimes. Decided that mattered enough to run it on it’s own hardware.

    • tofu@lemmy.nocturnal.gardenEnglish
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      2 days ago

      Also Pi4, with a RaspBee Zigbee thingy on the io. I think 0 unplanned downtime so far after a year and a half on that device

  • kindenough@kbin.earth
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    3 days ago

    Seems a good deal and certainly power efficient.

    Before on a rPi 4…now in a VM on a refurb mini PC and changed memory to 32GB and 2 TB of storage. My PC might be twice as fast as the Beelink on paper but draws 10 x more power. I guess the config of the VM really matters most.

  • Xaphanos@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    3 days ago

    3b+ here. I’d like to upgrade to a 4 or 5 but haven’t had any pressing reason to do it.

    • deadcatbounce@reddthat.comEnglish
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      2 days ago

      Wow! That’s unexpected, because of the memory limitation. I have a Pi3 with Fedora IoT with a target on its back for a Home Assistant container. (I see another comment here notes 400MB of memory use so it seems much smaller than I expected.)

      Could I ask how many devices it’s dealing with, or because I’m not running Home Assistant yet, whether routine number/complexity is a better metric? (That question went bad somewhere, excuse me.)

      • Xaphanos@lemmy.worldEnglish
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        2 days ago

        An Insteon integration with a hub and a bit more than a dozen switches, water sensors, etc.

        Maybe 4 or so z-wave devices connected via a USB dongle on the Pi.

        The Alexa integration for the direct Wi-Fi bulbs. Maybe 6-ish. Also for wife-acceptance.

        So- small and unorganized. I really want to wipe and start fresh to be more organized. I also want to learn how to do cross-integration triggers and actions.

        • deadcatbounce@reddthat.comEnglish
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          2 days ago

          Thank-you.

          I’m not dealing with much more. Maybe twenty IoT devices in total but quite a few routines spread over Alexa and Smart Life.

  • The Zen Cow Says Mu@infosec.pubEnglish
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    3 days ago

    Home assistant in a podman container uses only about 400mb memory and .05% of cpu on my home server.

    Put Linux on your mini PC and you can run dozens of services on it without it breaking a sweat.

  • imetators@lemm.eeEnglish
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    3 days ago

    Got no home assistant for now but plan to do it. I am running jellyfin, nextcloud, traccar and immich on Beelink s12 pro. But technically you can run all that on any other brand which sells n100 minis. This machin is like 12w under load! Magical! Also can do 4k video easy. Besides all my services, I use it as HTPC under my TV.

  • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    3 days ago

    I have HA running as a native service on my home server, which is composed of literal garbage parts from other PCs, and runs many other native services in tandem, including Plex and some VPN gunk. HA has very low system demand, and it only makes sense to use a dedicated system for it if it’s very low-powered and you have no other server in the home.

    What you should do is set all of your services up on your new mini PC and use that to host all of your services, allowing you to power down your likely more power-hungry PC.

  • Badabinski@kbin.earth
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    3 days ago

    Proxmox HA cluster with a SAN. VM migrations go wheeeeeeeeee.

    I’d just run HA on the mini PC. There are a boatload of add-ons that you can install which will allow you to make better use of the hardware.