Best Platform for Running Home Assistant

Forums › Gadgets, robotics, home automation, electronics (including wearables) › Best Platform for Running Home Assistant

sfrasernz

227 posts

Master Geek

#228705 18-Jan-2018 10:50

I'm ready to invest a little more time and money in my home automation setup and want to move to a more permanent setup.

What are people using to run their Home Assistant server on?

I have been using a VM but don't need my PC running 24/7. I am considering purchasing a Synology NAS and running within Docker. It needs to work reliably with my USB Z-Wave stick and have read conflicting reports on whether this is truly reliable.

I'll also need to run HomeBridge from somewhere (I want to use Siri in conjunction with Alexa) and see it can also run on Synology.

I am interested to hear where you guys have your HASS and HomeBridge instances running and any issues you've experienced please.

gcorgnet

1078 posts

Uber Geek

#1941895 18-Jan-2018 10:53

Started playing around with Home Assistant a couple of weeks ago. First I ran it on my Synology NAS (in Docker) without issues. (can;t speak of z-wave dongle as I don;t have one yet)
Problem is I like to put my NAS to sleep at night as no one uses it which would also turn off my HA...

I then bought a RasperryPi 3 to run HA on it and it seems to be going well. Always on and small power draw... Again can't say about z-wave but would be curious to know how you get on.

Out of curiosity, which dongle do you have?

lxsw20

3552 posts

Uber Geek

Subscriber

#1941896 18-Jan-2018 10:54

RaspberryPi? We have this Home of the future thing at work running home assistant on a Pi.

sfrasernz

227 posts

Master Geek

#1941910 18-Jan-2018 11:07

I've got an Aeotec Z-Stick.

A Raspberry Pi is certainly on the list and would be a pretty low risk (i.e. cheap) option to see how it works.

davidcole

6029 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#1941921 18-Jan-2018 11:34

I had openHAB on a raspberry pi 2. Just for the zwave usb connectivity. The rest of the system was in a vm. I found the rpi2 a little slow.

I then moved to a gigabyte Brix a6 and which I had for an htpc which now works much better. There’s pros and cons to vms and physics systems.

Previously known as psycik

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amanzi

Amanzi
1292 posts

Uber Geek

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Lifetime subscriber

#1942031 18-Jan-2018 14:44

I run mine on an old 13" MacBook Pro (2009) running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. The advantage of this is having built-in speakers, microphone, Bluetooth, WiFi, a battery to protect against power outages, plus more than enough storage, and a built-in display. :-)

Something to consider if you have an old laptop lying around.

jnimmo

1097 posts

Uber Geek

#1942032 18-Jan-2018 14:47

I'd suggest either an old laptop or a Raspberry Pi - then you can use the Hass.io image which keeps things simple!

EDIT: Although it would be nice to have something you didn't have to worry about SD cards getting corrupted etc with the database writes like a NUC etc

davidcole

6029 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#1942057 18-Jan-2018 15:48

Yeah if I was going to rebuild I’d use an old laptop, especially having had the odd small power cut.

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sfrasernz

227 posts

Master Geek

#1942063 18-Jan-2018 15:55

davidcole: Yeah if I was going to rebuild I’d use an old laptop, especially having had the odd small power cut.

Well I've got no shortage of old laptops laying around the place! Could be a good place to start :-)