I was just comparing Pi3 and Pi4. With the Pi3, as I pointed out above, there was still some noticable delay e.g. when switching something with the app or after a PIR fired. With the Pi4 (and the SSD), this is gone.
The board you suggest looks very promising, by the way, I will have a look into it. I am somewhat new with SBCs, so far only worked with Raspis, but I am curious about everything new, so thanks for this hint.
It has to be some improvement, but if you only plan to use it for OpenHab - the same (good enough) speed and reliability can be achieved with something like this Nanopi Neo 2 Black - Armbian
My OpenHab setup runs on a similar hardware - the same Allwinner H5 chip, running from eMMC but different form factor and more memory (which is actually not needed). No delays whatsoever.
You are welcome.
When you step outside over-hyped mainstream, whole new world emerges. Its a lot to explore and to learn …
Yeah you are right, only after buying a Raspi I got aware about the alternatives (e.g. like Orange Pi).
But mainstream is not always bad, especially for a beginner it is an advantage to start with something well known and well supported. For the Pi, there are virtually thousands of forums, and almost every beginners question is already answered somewhere 
For software deployment this could be nice advantage, but for learning … If everything just works (but it doesn’t, especially not to Linux beginners), you will not learn things, unless you are self motivated and want to learn. Very little people will go that path, beyond prepared “learning” kits …
Most of the questions have nothing to do with Rpi and were already answered in Debian / Ubuntu communities years ago (Google do wonders, but it happen that lots of people have extremely low Googlefu). Rpi low level stuff problems are not understandable to beginners. They are also totally off for most of the Linux users. They live in so called user land which can be / it is pretty much the same and it doesn’t function on the UX of Android / IOS … which is why a lot of Rpi users creates so much (repeated) content. Its good for business …
Reading through this topic I conclude that cooling the Raspberry PI 4 Model B for OpenHAB(ian) comes down to using a heatsink and not a fan. A case around it would not be an issue.
But this was 2019. Has experience so far confirmed that a fan is not needed?
Assumptions: environment temperature under 25°C (77°F) and fix for the USB3 host adapter firmware installed.
I’ve been running a Pi 4 with 4GB for well over a year in a case with a heatsink. During the summer, my home is regularly between 25-28°C, and heat waves have pushed it up to 39°C. So, I don’t think you need a fan.
I run OH3 on a RPI4 4GB in an Argon One case. The fan setting is 10 percent at Temp > 55 °C. See below screenshot for ambient and cpu temp.
Update. I did replace the supplied fan with this
Thanks a lot, Russ and Daniel.
@rpwong
Next to the CPU, did you also put a heatsink on the RAM, on the USB controller and on the Ethernet PHY? Or did you use a ‘cover-it-all’ sink, enveloping the PI?
@Daniel_Linder
As your (Sunon) fan only ran a few times over 4 months (your graph tells that the OpenHAB load was higher the last 2.5 months) we may conclude that the Argon One case without fan was sufficient for the majority of the time. The critical points in time are the peaks on the white graph. Do you think that these were OpenHAB load bursts or were these gentle hills in a smoothly running process? I.e. in the first case you need your fan and in the second case you could do without
Hi,
I was running the fan at 100% for temps > 40°C for the first months of the graph. But the case did cause a high pitched whine that was driving me crazy (working from home due to corona restrictions). I then increased the temp threshold, which basically means it was passively cooled, hence the jump in approx. 10 degrees. However, my ambient indoor temp is quite constant at 20 °C due to my HVAC system.
So, with a good heatsink (in my case the Argon One) you can run in without fan.
I have a CanaKit, which comes with three separate heat sinks. Interestingly, they now come with fans.
I feel like you might be overthinking this. If openHAB is putting a lot of strain on a Raspberry Pi 4, then something is wrong with the installation.
Russ, Daniel, thanks a lot again, I now know how to start. And Russ, I take your advice (for not overthinking this). I am brandnew in this and both of you have helped me kicking off the first step in this.
