[randusername]

I also feel overwhelmed with HA homelab stuff.

HA on my RPI is just not reliable, requiring a reboot 4-6 times a year for reasons I don't understand. Frustration at being in the literal dark doesn't translate to the right mindset to root cause.

What I need is an opinionated guide on minimum viable virtualization, but so much of the resources online are from folks that are homelabing maximalists.

I feel the same temptation as parent to create a spartan solution.

[zer00eyz]

> What I need is an opinionated guide on minimum viable virtualization

Get a nuc or a mini pc: i5-8500 or better (used, ebay https://www.servethehome.com/introducing-project-tinyminimic... for a baseline of what's out there)

Ram is your friend (but prices are gross). Dont be cheap on storage.

Get an external USB drive (3/2/1 rule).

Install proxmox on said device.

Use the proxmox community scripts to install HAOS as a VM. https://community-scripts.org/categories?category=operating-...

Pass through what ever USB devices you need (or spring for POE devices ).

Enjoy your HA setup.

Proxmox is the way to go here. Once you have a working install dont over commit before you learn to: 1. back up, 2. restore. These should both be local and remote (HA can enable this to various sources).

As a bonus you now have a runtime (proxmox) that can do tons of other things (see the whole community scripts link).

I have been running HA for years now, and this method makes things a pleasure and is easy (at least if you're a nerd) and cheap (the solutions are lower power).

[dgacmu]

An enthusiastic two thumbs up to this approach. It's exactly what I run at home that has been working solidly. I run on an N100, which is just a hair smaller than an i5-8500, with 32GB DRAM and a 1TB SSD (total overkill). I keep it under proxmox; the box also runs my unifi SDN controller, pihole, and a linux VM for various little services. Two USB dongles for z-wave / zigbee / matter (because I'm a glutton for punishment). Backed up to a NAS. It's fast, easy, and has been very reliable.

[jabroni_salad]

1.get a cheap used miniPC from ebay

2. Buy a relevant dongle/antenna for the protocol you want to use. I recommend the ones from Sonoff or from the Home Assistant foundation (I started with the sonoff for zigbee, but added the ZBT-2 for matter/thread. they are both good)

3. install proxmox to the metal.

4. use tteck's install script to make the HAOS vm. Don't make the containers, make the HAOS VM specifically: https://tteck.github.io/Proxmox/#home-assistant-os-vm

5. Plug in your dongle(s) and don't forget to assign them to the new VM. You should now be able to start using home assistant. If you're using zigbee, choose zigbee2mqtt rather than ZHA, it's more reliable overall.

My setup is around 2 years old and I haven't had to administrate it at all.

[xolox]

If you are at all comfortable with Linux system administration, manually setting up one or a handful of KVM/qemu powered virtual machines is not actually that hard at all (in my experience). If you like a GUI to guide your initial steps, "virt-manager" is pretty okay. I've been running 3-5 virtual machines for several years now based on a pretty vanilla Ubuntu Linux install (Debian would work just fine as well).

Now I do like a challenge every now and then, so I'm currently setting up Proxmox to gain live migrations and high availability for virtual machines, because I've become quite dependent on all of these services in virtual machines actually running successfully :-) even in the face of eventual hardware failure (like what happened to me in the past months).

[the__alchemist]

IMO Linux system administration, KVM/Qemu, Docker, and virtual machines, and third-party tools in general are not something that should be involved in smart light bulb/sensor/pump etc management.

Task for an RTOS or no OS IMO. Or a single executable that runs on any OS without config. Should be simple, fast, "just work".

[ewoodrich]

Home Assistant supports an absolutely massive number of both manufacturer and community maintained integrations that are necessary for a truly universal all-in-one home automation setup without vendor lock-in.

Plus, for the full HAOS experience (as a “server”) running add-ons that are convenient one-click installed Docker-based packages for popular 3rd party tools used for home automation (but not developed by Open Home Foundation themselves) like Zigbee2Mqtt, Frigate (DVR for IP cams), EspHome etc so you can manage everything in one central location.

You could definitely flip light switches and read sensors with a 20kb executable. But you’d sacrifice the core value-add of HA serving as the single lynchpin connecting every smart device you own today plus whatever you may add in the future.

I started with a 100% Philips Hue setup that forced me to use their app, and eventually wanted to add some unsupported Zigbee devices that Google Home didn’t do a good job exposing which pushed me to explore Home Assistant.

Since then I’ve added (and removed) countless different protocols, proprietary cloud integrations for robovacs or air purifiers, ESP32 boards I built myself, web cams, TVs, etc over the years with the only unchanging constant being Home Assistant at the center linking it all together.

[mytailorisrich]

> You could definitely flip light switches and read sensors with a 20kb executable. But you’d sacrifice the core value-add of HA serving as the single lynchpin connecting every smart device you own today plus whatever you may add in the future

Very unclear what is the rationale for this claim.

It's great that Home Assistant supports "n absolutely massive number of both manufacturer and community maintained integrations" but that is quite irrelevant. The point is that running what you need to (mostly) flick switches and measure temperatures should not pull huge infrastructure, software requirements, and hardware capabilities. If it does then it does mean massive bloat.

[subscribed]

exactly. Its stunning it has to be like this.

[vablings]

I have had the opposite experience; I have an old trash intel NUC with a decent SSD and a moderate amount of RAM and it runs several services (on proxmox).

- Smokeping - Nginx proxy manager (with tailscale and - copyparty - home assistant - regular samba fileserver

[_flux]

I got myself a NUC. It's been worth it: tiny, has 16 GB of memory and 504 days of uptime.

I have servers for running VMs and containers but I felt like it would be nice to have this one as a separate device. It's also easy to plug in radio devices.

[benmanns]

Same. The complexity of HA also leaves my family with a bus factor of one re: keeping the lights on.

[Larrikin]

The minimum viable setup is the Home Assistant Green. I run it on a slightly better ODroid, since the green did not exist at the time. Any heavy task, like using Ollama, are passed over to my far more main computer.

[eurekin]

Few years on an OrangePi - zero issues. Few months on an N100 Odroid - no issues.