Home Assistant beginners

Bluecube said:
Yes, you’ll need to get the HAOS file and install using that. However even an N97 will be a massive overkill for HA. I know I’m sounding like a stuck record, but why not at least try HA on your Plex NUC before you splash out?
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Just looks more involved getting it working, from my limited knowledge it'll have to go in docker which I have never used. If I make any big mistakes it could potentially impact Plex which works perfectly and gets used a lot.

In the new year I do plan to start playing around with this sort of stuff but on a dedicated machine, get more comfortable with Linux and try all these things like Docker. At the minute I need a dummies guide for it all.
 
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Don’t use HA in docker if you can avoid it.

It is supported but it’s not a recommended configuration because you can’t easily deploy HA add ons because they themselves are effectively docker containers.

If you are not running it on bare metal, you want to be installing it as a VM.
 
robj20 said:
Maybe something like this, any reason that wouldn't work?


Pi5 I'll stick a Linux os on it to have a play.
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Yes it'll work perfectly for HA - It should be night and day difference compared to a Pi

Only reservations are that the N5105 is getting old. Maybe N150 with 2.5 gbe / better power consumption is a better option, also it's supplied with an mSata drive but believe you can upgrade it to Nvme as per the video below


Overall she's hot but when you get her home the carpet is a disaster.
But as you say... you like single purpose machines so you can just get her to cook for you don't expect any more than that
 
Subliminal Aura said:
Yes it'll work perfectly for HA - It should be night and day difference compared to a Pi

Only reservations are that the N5105 is getting old. Maybe N150 with 2.5 gbe / better power consumption is a better option, also it's supplied with an mSata drive but believe you can upgrade it to Nvme as per the video below


Overall she's hot but when you get her home the carpet is a disaster.
But as you say... you like single purpose machines so you can just get her to cook for you don't expect any more than that
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Double the money for an N150
 
You defo don’t need N150, it’s not really much of an upgrade over N100 or N97 in terms of processing power anyway and it’s totally overkill for HA.

N150, N100 and N97 are all 6w parts.
 
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b0rn2sk8 said:
You defo don’t need N150, it’s not really much of an upgrade over N100 or N97 in terms of processing power anyway and it’s totally overkill for HA.

N150, N100 and N97 are all 6w parts.
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N97 is 12W.

Gone for a GMKtec G3 N100, 8GB, 256GB for £120.
It won't take me long to set everything back up, i have a light in the garage on a motion sensor, a back garden light using the camera to detect people, a front door light with a door sensor and a camera for person detection, a light in my daughters room that comes on at 19:00 and off at sunrise. Then a few switches and sockets.
Ill put some effort into taking a backup once its all up and running as well.
 
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b0rn2sk8 said:
You’re right it’s the other way round, either way, both are completely overkill for home assistant!
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and yet without going for something older, that uses more power and generally costs the same or more, N100 or N150 seems the sweet spot. My daughter can have the Pi5 with Linux Mint on it to play around with.
 
Have you considered just one better machine that's running multiple VM's or docker containers for all your services instead? smaller footprint, lower power consumption, simpler setup. You can run everything you've mentioned in both VM/Docker and that way you can mess about with each one to your hearts content without breaking another, plus benefit from easier backups/snapshots. virtual single purpose machines.
 
He has and didn’t want to which is also a perfectly fine position.

The N100 will probably run all the services even most nerds need and you wouldn’t even need anything more powerful.
 
cokecan said:
Have you considered just one better machine that's running multiple VM's or docker containers for all your services instead? smaller footprint, lower power consumption, simpler setup. You can run everything you've mentioned in both VM/Docker and that way you can mess about with each one to your hearts content without breaking another, plus benefit from easier backups/snapshots. virtual single purpose machines.
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I had and people keep telling me to go that route but it's just more to learn. My Plex machine is plenty powerful enough it runs windows 11 and just Plex, works perfectly (I struggled getting it working under Ubuntu)

I've gone down the rabbit hole of reading about entity ID naming conventions and best practices not using device id instead use entity. Just getting Home Assistant working is proving challenging enough I don't then need to with about learning about virtual this and docker that.
 
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It might be a bit of a learning curve to start with, but there are community developed scripts that do the deployments for you. Longer term I can assure you it's worth the little investment, that's why so many of us are running it the same way.

If you've already got a second device coming, then just budget a weekend to have a go setting up proxmox and installing the necessary VMs/Containers, and if you genuinely can't get on with it then revert back. It'll only be a bit of time wasted.
 
Bluecube said:
Go for a PoE dongle if you can as that’ll give you more flexibility with placement. The SMLight range are well regarded and I have the SLZB06 myself
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looking into getting this, there are so many different models im a bit confused.

SMLIGHT SLZB-MR4U

the above looks like it does everything
 
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Ok. After some more reading I’m going to stick with the SLZB06

Question.

I assume in don’t need this for the devices which have their own hub such as hue
 
Slzb06 is a great controller. Your call whether to move hue bulbs to this or leave them on their own bridge. They can't connect to two controllers though.
 
Dr House said:
Ok. After some more reading I’m going to stick with the SLZB06

Question.

I assume in don’t need this for the devices which have their own hub such as hue
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The SLZB06 is what I have and it's been excellent in all the time I've had it. As Semple says above, you don't need to transfer over devices which have their own hub. When I was starting out, I certainly didn't however in the years since, I've moved all my Hue bulbs and motion sensors over as well as my Hive radiator valves. This opened up a few more sensors to use but mainly because I didn't want three competing Zigbee networks in the house.

The big decision to make right now is whether to use the built in ZHA or Zigbee2MQTT to control your Zigbee devices. I started with ZHA but moved over to Z2M as more Zigbee devices were and are supported. Do your own research here but my advice is to use Z2M and be done with it.
 
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