Raspberry Pi 4 availability / suggested accessories like case / fan

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#2893239 28-Mar-2022 20:04

timmmay:

Interesting about cards. I have a new Samsung card which should be fairly reliable, and have Sandisk as well. Do you have an easy way to do a snapshot of the SD card over the network? It will be in a somewhat inaccessible physical location. Looks like image-backup might do the job.

I haven't used Zigbee but I imagine it's more reliable than WiFi. I have no Zigbee devices though.

I'm no expert in this, but from my (limited) understanding it's too many/continuous write operations. You will have no issues if you're just experimenting, but if you're using it long term you need to be a bit leery about hammering the log files or continuous database logging. High endurance cards (designed for security cameras) can help, and there is lots online about using a database on an external USB or similar. You might like to have a read of:

https://community.home-assistant.io/t/ha-corrupted-another-sd-card/195073

https://community.home-assistant.io/t/sd-card-corruption-problem-couple-tips/95596

HASS has a built in backup feature. I now make a point of making a snapshot before and after every time I tinker with a config or add a device. I also make sure I download a copy of the snapshot when I do it (you can do this all from the web UI). There are also various plug ins to do backups automatically and upload it to your choice of cloud provider but I have never quite managed to make it that far down my to do list.

Just FWIW, my long term (bulletproof WAF) solution to the SD card issue was an @xbmcnut NUC running HASS from SSD 👍. But a RPi will be perfect to take you a long way down the home automation path. HASS's UI is _really_ good now, especially when I consider what it was once like.

timmmay

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#2893276 28-Mar-2022 21:11

Interesting, thanks. I might just disable all logging, and I'll get a high endurance Sandisk card next time I do an Amazon order - it's only $13 for a 64GB. Someone on that forum said only partition half or less of the card so there's spare blocks for wear levelling, I wonder if that's true.

I find the HASS UI a bit blah, but for open source it's not bad. Also when I change settings on the app for the AirTouch it takes ages for HASS to update if it does it at all. Might be that plugin that's not great.

nzkc

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#2893281 28-Mar-2022 21:37

If you're worried about the amount of writes to a SD card, you could always boot (and run) from USB stick instead. Can often get faster IO performance too.

timmmay

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#2893282 28-Mar-2022 21:41

nzkc:

If you're worried about the amount of writes to a SD card, you could always boot (and run) from USB stick instead. Can often get faster IO performance too.

I'll just use a high endurance SD card and disable logging I think. I just want something that works. Surprised USB sticks are more durable, but I guess they are bigger.

Whatever I have in my old Pi 2 running Pi Hole has worked fine for ages. I do backup the config occasionally just in case, but my backup for Pi Hole is to just use standard DNS.

peejayw

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#2893327 29-Mar-2022 06:51

If you run Home Assistant on a SD card there is a high probability that the card will eventually fail. The preferred setup is to set the Pi to boot from usb and then use a SSD to boot Home Assistant.

There is a good guide on how to do this here.

I'm supposed to respect my elders, but it's getting harder and harder for me to find one now.

richms

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#2893334 29-Mar-2022 07:19

timmmay:

Interesting, thanks. I might just disable all logging, and I'll get a high endurance Sandisk card next time I do an Amazon order - it's only $13 for a 64GB. Someone on that forum said only partition half or less of the card so there's spare blocks for wear levelling, I wonder if that's true.

I find the HASS UI a bit blah, but for open source it's not bad. Also when I change settings on the app for the AirTouch it takes ages for HASS to update if it does it at all. Might be that plugin that's not great.

PB have these Kingston High Endurance 64GB microSDXC at the moment on sale - actually a reasonable amount off which is rare for their sales ($16.52 +GST) or the 32 for a little less. I dont know how they compare to sandisk but I have had a lot of sandisk extreme fail on me recently both in camera and pi usage so I figured its time to go to another brand.

Partitioning less of the card will prevent you from filling the drive as a full partition will not be a fill drive, so there is always space left but if you're operating a drive that full just get a bigger card and sort out your retention so you have space left.

I am not convinced on SD card wear levelling being a thing, as I have had 64 gig cards die that I have probably put thru the camera less than 100 times and only put an hour or so of video on each time, so probably only writing to the start of the drive each time. Formatted in camera each time after moving the content off it so should be totally up to the card where it writes things onto it after an erase.

Richard rich.ms

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#2893336 29-Mar-2022 07:36

I'd definitely recommend booting off USB rather than SD card, you'll get much better performance and endurance.

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richms

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#2893337 29-Mar-2022 07:38

I am surprised that its not documented how to get a minimal boot loaded on a SD card and then use 2 USB drives in a mirror for the pi to run on, meaning that you have resiliency against failures because flash memory is pretty crap.

Richard rich.ms

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#2893340 29-Mar-2022 07:52

You don't need an sd card at all to boot a Pi since the 3b from memory - my pihole is on a usb alone.

The usb mirror sounds like a really good idea though.

peejayw

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#2893342 29-Mar-2022 08:00

+ for Zigbee devices, a much better option over wifi for home automation.

I'm supposed to respect my elders, but it's getting harder and harder for me to find one now.

timmmay

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#2893344 29-Mar-2022 08:08

Interesting, thanks all. I guess my options are to disable logging and use a high endurance SD card, or use an SSD with an appropriate cable. I don't think I have a spare SSD right now, so I'd have to buy an SSD and adapter cable which is probably $125 or so. Not sure I want to spend the same amount as the R.Pi to save a $15 SD card that should last a year or two. I reckon a high endurance SD card and disabling writes will do me, if it fails I'll think about SSD then.

I'm not planning on installing Home Assistant OS as I want to run multiple services. I'm planning on installing Raspberrian 64 bit then doing manual installs of HASS and Pi Hole, and whatever else I want. I might put SyncThing on there to add to my growing network of nodes. A tip - Oracle Cloud gives you an "always free" two servers one core 1GB RAM which works very well for many things, much more generous than AWS / Azure / GCP.

michaelmurfy

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#2893358 29-Mar-2022 09:08

Just FYI...

USB Flash drives do suffer from the same problem as SD cards in terms of having a limited number of writes - this is not a fix, and I have a whole lot of SBC's here too. Instead you're better to use high endurance SD cards which are cheap, and work totally fine for most applications. Since getting high endurance SD cards I have not had any issues (have a Raspberry Pi running Home Assistant and has done so for about 2 years now totally fine).

I've actually had a number of flash drives fail on me. Don't look at the size of a flash drive and think "it is bigger so must last longer" as the actual controller / storage is normally built into a single chip and is actually tiny often taking up the footprint of the USB port only - the rest is often just wasted space.

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Tinkerisk

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#2893391 29-Mar-2022 10:27

I‘d never use a RPi 4 without at least passive cooling (i.e. a FLIRC case) and a bootable SSD via USB3. If it doesn‘t need cooling, it is completely underchallenged, hence a less power hungry Pi Zero W2 could do the task in a better way.

Despite this, for Home Assistant I‘d recommend something like THAT. or a Pentium based intel NUC for 139 USD (no RAM, no SSD). If you are serious with HA, you will end up sooner or later on it, especially when you like to integrate cameras and AI motion detection (frigate). If you add all the costs (case, power supply, storage media, etc.) for the Raspberry, it‘s not much more expensive and has a considerable amount of CPU performance at a low power consumption level. I bought one two weeks ago for my son and he is quite happy with it (for test, he installled a hypervisor and virtualized Win7 plus ubuntu just for fun and found the performance ‚very impressive‘).

- NET: FTTH, OPNsense, 10G backbone, GWN APs, ipPBX
- SRV: 12 RU HA server cluster, 0.1 PB storage on premise
- IoT: thread, zigbee, tasmota, BidCoS, LoRa, WX suite, IR
- 3D: two 3D printers, 3D scanner, CNC router, laser cutter

timmmay

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#2893419 29-Mar-2022 10:54

Tinkerisk:

I‘d never use a RPi 4 without at least passive cooling (i.e. a FLIRC case) and a bootable SSD via USB3. If it doesn‘t need cooling, it is completely underchallenged, hence a less power hungry Pi Zero W2 could do the task in a better way.

Despite this, for Home Assistant I‘d recommend something like THIS. or a Pentium based intel NUC for 139 USD (no RAM, no SSD). If you are serious with HA, you will end up sooner or later on it, especially when you like to integrate cameras and AI motion detection (frigate).

Thanks. I got an Argon Neo case which is meant to perform similarly to FLIRC as an aluminium heatsink. Yes the Pi4 may be overkill, but if I decide not to use HASS I will use it for something else. I can always upgrade to better hardware later if I need to, but R.Pi 4 will be fine to start. I'm very unlikely to do anything like cameras, my wife doesn't like them.

richms

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#2893438 29-Mar-2022 11:27

Is the wifi on the zero 2 as bad as the orig zero? Because if so that would mean adding ethernet by USB and all the adapters etc adding to the mess and complexity whereas the pi4 is going to be a much cleaner installation.

Richard rich.ms

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