Hello,
long time ago i started with Openhab on a Raspberry pi 3b. Now I get an battery to store solar power and I want to go on with OpenHab. But I found this:
“Our current recommendation is to get a RPi model 4/5 with 2/4 GB of RAM”
The price for a RPi 4/5 is high so what are your suggestions for a new beginning? Or should I update the actual system (OpenHab 4.0.24)
Greetings
Depending on what you are all running on that RPi 3 you are very likely to not have enough RAM and run into some very significant performance problems and latency issues. There are a few with very minimal setups who are able to make it work but almost everyone else it is not enough.
For the same price as an RPi you can get and intel or amd mini computer which comes with plenty of RAM and it comes with stuff like a case, disk, etc. Even a used ten-year-old laptop would be sufficient so long as it has enough RAM. It doesn’t necessarily have to be an RPi.
Are they so expensive? They may have increased over previous generations but they are still quite cost effective. I would recommend a 4 gig RPi 5. If you buy a NUC, generally you still need to source RAM, and an SSD.
Don’t forget the cost of electricity. Savings for any cheaper, second hand option can easily be lost by an increase in power consumption.
Ahem. No. A RPi4/2GB is 60 €.
You won’t get a reasonable NUC for that (and not to mention the hassle it would come with).
And note that x86 requires about twice as much RAM as ARM does.
I just had to enlarge my x86 openHABian development VM from 4 to 8 GB while at the same time I was able to install a RPi3/1GB with that image I generated there.
@FireFlyer you can keep using your RPi3, but install from scratch (use the 32bit image).
But since you’re starting from new, I’d spend those 60 or 100 bucks.
Not much to become future proof if you can afford a solar battery, isn’t it.
An alternative is to use a used SFF computer from Dell, Lenovo, HP. They sell them on ebay for around $60-$100, usually already including 8-16GB RAM, 256GB SSD, Windows 10, probably also including the power cord. Usually from offices that upgraded their computers. They usually have a CD ROM drive too.
The power draw is around 10W I think.
Just install Ubuntu on it.
With SD card, power supply and case? I think not.
Without even looking at the used market (like @jimtng points out where pretty powerful machines can be had < $100) I can get a more than adequate mini computer brand new in the $150 range: Amazon.com: KAMRUI Mini PC Computers, AK1 PRO 12GB RAM 256GB SSD Mini Desktop Computer Intel Celeron N100 Mini PC, 4 Core Micro PC, Desktop PC 4K, Support 2.5’’ SSD, 2.4G/ 5.0G WiFi, Gigabit Ethernet, HTPC : Electronics
If I shopped around a bit I can find one even cheaper.
The cheapest I cna get an RPi 5 with half the RAM at 8 GB RAM and with half the storage at 128 gig storage and a case is $160: Amazon.com: CanaKit Raspberry Pi 5 Starter Kit PRO - Turbine Black (128GB Edition) (8GB RAM) : Electronics
Again I can probably find cheaper but not if I bump up the specs to 16 GB RAM and 256 gig storage. Amazon.com: CanaKit Raspberry Pi 5 Starter Kit MAX - Turbine White (256 GB Edition) (16GB RAM) : Electronics
NUC is not the only manufacturer of mini computers. BeeLink is a tad more expensive than the Kamrui I link to above but my experience with them so far is they are rock solid.
What hassle? Install Debian an one can still use openHABian, right?
16 GB is not enough?
I’m not against RPis by any means but if price is the primary concern, RPis are no longer the cheapest option. By the time you add all the extra stuff you need they cost as much or more than prebuilt minis. If you go used, you can get really well speced out machines.
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That would be 70 € then (unless you reuse some smartphone charger as your PS).
And yes, mind its power consumption, too.
Not a snap for everybody. And you’ll be missing some features.
I myself run Openhab on a refurbushished HP Mini Elitedesk G3. Idle power usage almost the same as an RPi and the hardware is widely available in the Netherlands. Cost effective too: 4GB, 256GB SSD around 120 euro.
I had some performance issues with my RPi 3 and this website persuaded me to buy a HP mini instead of upgrading to a RPi 4/5.
https://louwrentius.com/the-raspberry-pi-5-is-no-match-for-a-tini-mini-micro-pc.html
I replaced my Raspberry Pi3 installation by a Intel N100 GMKtec-G3 Mini PC, bought on Aliexpress. It was cheap and te power consumption its round about 6 Watts (measured at the wall socket). I’m super happy with it.
I virtualized the installation and I’m now using Proxmox with a LXC virtual machine where I run openHab (using an openHabian installation).