Hardware setup ok? Do I miss something?

Hey guys

I’m lurking around the openhab community for quite some time :alien:
But now I have the time and the money to start with it - I’m very happy! :nerd_face:

I’d like to buy this setup for openHAB2:

  • Intel Arches Canyon (Intel Celeron J3455, HDMI, USB 3.0 Typ-A)
    Link to product

  • Corsair Value Select (1x, 8GB, DDR3-1600, SODIMM 204)

  • Intenso High Performance (120GB, 2.5")

  • ZIGBEE TRANSCEIVER MODULE, 2.4GHZ, USB ETRX357USB+8M By TELEGESIS
    Link to product

I’ve got a spare USB disk for backups as well.
I plan to use CentOS because I worked with it in my office.

Have I forgot something?
Do you suggest something else?

Thanks for your adivce

Cheers

Well that’ll do for a server - although any Raspi 3 will do as well.
Just make sure you start with a proper OS setup including backups. I’d recommend to install openHABian (yes you can also install it on top of CentOS).

Can’t comment on that ZigBee stick because you didn’t mention what you want to do with it, except that
I’d spend some more thoughts on whether really to use ZigBee as it is not quite up to speed in many areas of application (except maybe lighting).

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Hallo Markus

Thanks for openHABian input! I had a glimpse and it looked great :+1:

Yes, you are right about ZigBee. I’d planed to use it for lightning. But maybe I don’t need it because I have hue lights (with a bridge) and a google home? On the other hand, it could be useful as well for other projects…
I was planing to add a ZigBee and a Z-Wave stick. But - yes, why spend money if you don’t need it :thinking:

i use a plain debian vm with the apt setup, works like a charm - don’t know why you should use openHABian, but i’m not familiar with the additional functions!
I had OpenHab running on a NUC as well for years, ideal platform without annoying SD-Cards!

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Hello @DiViNe

Nice to meet another swiss openHAB User here :slight_smile: greetings from the east-side.

Depending on where you plan to place your “server” a fanless solution could be the stable way. As @mstormi mentioned, a Raspberry PI works great and have enough power (but be aware about the SD Card challange).

If you have already a hue bridge and you are not afraid to use a cloud-service, there are no arguments against using the hue, controlled by openHAB. And with google home you can control openHAB for sure.
Generally I recommend to use as less different technologies as possible. Why?

zWave and ZigBee build up a mesh network. That means, the more devices you have, the more stable is your network. If you use 2 different technologies, you divide the nodes and have less per network topology.

You need to maintain more bindings, Gateways … which means you double the work.

Regards, Michael

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michael_sutter
Greetings back from the north-west side :smiley:

Thanks guys for the input :+1:

I couldn’t resist and I bought the NUC. But I didn’t buy the ZigBee-stick - thanks for the advice! It’ll arrive tomorrow :black_heart::nerd_face:

I have a lot a question’s but I don’t wanna rape the threat :blush: So I’m gonna read a lot the next hours :sunglasses:

I used the frontail install part of the openhabian-config on debian 9 and apt install. It contains many helpfull scripts.

openHABian eases Linux and OH setup, not everybody is familiar with that (and even those who are like it).
You also get a properly configured Amanda for system backup, mosquitto as MQTT server and a couple of other tools.

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If you only plan on running just OH and maybe some satellite services like Mosquitto or InfluxDB, this configuration is way overkill. It will work great for OH but if money is a concern, a RPi or similar SBC would be more appropriately sized.

If you do plan on growing this machine to host other services (e.g Plex MediaServer, OwnCloud, etc) then I’d say this is a pretty good choice.

CentOS should work. OH does have Yum repos for installation. However, you will be in the minority of users on this forum so getting help might be harder. That may not be a big deal if you work with CentOS day by day as you won’t need much help of that type from us.

I did not know that. I thought it only worked with systems that have apt. That’s pretty cool!

It does a lot more than just installing OH. It can also install and configures (this is not an exhaustive list):

  • Mosquitto MQTT Broker
  • InfluxDB (and others?) database servers for persistence
  • Grafana for charting
  • NodeRed for an alternative way to implement rules
  • Samba for remote access to your OH files on your LAN
  • FronTail to view logs in the browser
  • Lots of minor system tweaks
  • Amanda for backup and restore
  • Scripts to automatically move your system from an SD card to an external drive (if running on a SBC)
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Ouch, sorry. I forgot that CentOS does not provide apt (at least not by default).
So @DiViNe my mistake, please disregard my answer.
Yes CentOS would work but as @rlkoshak points out, you’ll be on the minority side.
Better consider some other OS. Some Ubuntu will be a better choice.

Hey Guys

OpenHABian sounds great, I give it a shot. :+1:
Alright, no big deal! But I’m not sure - what distor should I use for OpenHABian? Do you have a download link?
I’ve got a Intel Arches Canyon (NUC6CAYH). I’m not sure which linux distro works with that NUC :thinking::persevere:

It’s a Celeron processor so any x86/x64 distro should work. I prefer Ubuntu Server but you could run Debian, Mint, or any of the other Debian based distros. The default download for any of them should work just fine.

I’ve been using Debian on the similar NUC7CJYH1. It works quite well although the wifi gave me trouble - I use a hard cable anyway so it didn’t matter. The Ubuntu worked fine with the wifi. I didn’t use Ubuntu long enough to evaluate it - I think either Debian or Ubuntu would work well.

I’m really happy with this little box. It’s self contained and has a nice slot for the SSD. Works great for openHAB and for other tasks such as nginx, openvpn, etc.

Thaks for the input. I first used UEFI instead of legacy, so I had strange troubles in the first place and wasn’t able to install any distro :persevere: But after changeing it, everything with installing went fine.
Wifi worked, but ther’s not NIC present in the Ubuntu OS. Maybe I’ve got to look for some drivers.