RoyGreenhiltNov 30, 2022

Mission Accomplished.

A week ago we had a power surge that flickered the power five times in a row. Of course this is the signal to many #smarthome light bulbs to reset to factory defaults. Joy.

Last night I got the last set of bulbs back online, finally resetting all our group and room configs.

It did remind me of how many Z-Wave bulbs I have (about 6). If I do end up moving away from #smartthings , I'll definitely need a #zwave enabled server.

#homeautomation #homeassistant

Show threadWesley Oman (he/him)Nov 30, 2022
@RoyGreenhilt I just picked up a Conbee stick to move my #Zigbee devices over to #HomeAssistant and phase out my old #SmartThings Hub. Is there something similar for #Zwave ?
Show threadTristanNov 30, 2022
@djweso @RoyGreenhilt I have a Zooz #Zwave plus stick that I use on #HomeAssistant
Show threadDerek

@reemi @djweso @RoyGreenhilt

I second the choice of the Zooz stick. I have the 700 series and it's been rock solid. #ZWave #HomeAssistant

Nov 30, 2022 at 3:31pmWeb
Show threadRoyGreenhiltNov 30, 2022

@Colone1Sanders7 @reemi @djweso Are ya'll using a dedicated small PC to run your HA stuff, or a Pi or or or? I recently picked up an IBM Thinkstation (really small formfactor PC) that has been super-good running Plex. I could just get another one to run HA.

#plex #homeassistant #raspberrypi #homeautomation #zwave #ibm

Show threadWesley Oman (he/him)Nov 30, 2022
@RoyGreenhilt @Colone1Sanders7 @reemi I'm running out on a #RaspberryPi 3. But I think I will need to upgrade this year as I move more and more to it.
Show threadMichaelNov 30, 2022
@RoyGreenhilt @Colone1Sanders7 @reemi @djweso Hi, I hope you don't mind me chipping in! I started with a #RaspberryPi with an SSD (and still have one running a small instance), my main instance is running as a virtual machine. Have you considered using your thinkstation as a Proxmox host and running Plex and #HomeAssistant on the same box? It might not work for your use case, but might be something to consider. I'll butt out now!
Show threadRoyGreenhiltNov 30, 2022

@michael @Colone1Sanders7 @reemi @djweso Doing a clustered / virtual hosting box is definitely a consideration. I haven't set one up from scratch though, other than a single box that just runs tons of docker containers (I did that on my Synology).

I'll look into proxmox though. It seems to be basically a hypervisor that can run a ton of VMs. I suppose you'd just allocate USB ports to VM's directly?

COuld just use my synology for disk. Hmmm :)

Show threadMichaelNov 30, 2022
@RoyGreenhilt @Colone1Sanders7 @reemi @djweso Proxmox is fairly simple to setup and manage, you can either use their ISO or install it on debian. Yup it's a hypervisor and you can run a ton of VMs (and LXC containers), I have a couple of VM's just for messing about on. Yup USB device or port passthrough. Again yes, you could just NFS disks from Synology too... It opens up a whole new world of home labbing. You also have the option to snapshot or take a whole VM backup before you start messing :)
Show threadAlan Jeskins-PowellDec 1, 2022
@michael @RoyGreenhilt @Colone1Sanders7 @reemi @djweso +1 for Proxmox. Or if you favour the command line then just use LXC. Download the #homeassistant OVA, import into LXC, start a VM (LXC supports VMs), zero to HA instance in a few minutes. My main HA VM runs that way. Only takes a few minutes to spin up a test HA instance to try something.
Show threadDerekNov 30, 2022

@RoyGreenhilt @reemi @djweso

I've got a dedicated Intel NUC with a NVME drive running HA myself. It's probably a little overkill but it sure is nice not having slowdowns from an SD card or crashing when the SD card dies.

#HomeAssistant

Show threadzaddymagicNov 30, 2022
@Colone1Sanders7 @RoyGreenhilt @reemi @djweso me too. I don't think it's overkill (I have another system running on a pi). VM or dedicated x86 hardware are the way to go.
Show threadocdtrekkieNov 30, 2022

@RoyGreenhilt @Colone1Sanders7 @reemi @djweso This is the way. Intel NUCs, off-brand NUCs, Dell and HP USFF form factor PCs, all good options, and usually pretty darn cheap if used.

Raspberry Pis are for toys, PCs are for reliability.

Show threadsudo nymDec 4, 2022
@RoyGreenhilt if you have the tech background (or at least not put off by tech challenges) - consider an HP Z420 - you can find them for < $150 (mine was $120). It has 32Gb RAM and 12CPUs - so it's ideal for running MANY virtual machines to more than cover all the stuff you mentioned.