Home Assistant alternative to Raspberry Pi - Thin Client

[@Icebeam47]

RP are so expensive now, a thin client is actually cheaper its amazing that it has come to this.

[@Foggy3657]

Just wanted to say a big thank you for your videos. You take the time to explain everything slowly and is a great help. Please continue. Best wishes.

[@BioSniper]

I've used a WYSE N03D for this earlier this year (I went via the Debian > Supervised route). Glad to see others trying it as well 😊 They offer great value for money and aren't too high powered.

[@onnoj6166]

Many thanks for this very informative video. I am just starting to step into the world of HA and with today's crazy RPI-prices I today got a Dell Wyse TC with 8Gb RAM and 64Gb SSD for €95 (shipping incl) to follow your guide!

[@octothorpian_nightmare]

I used a Dell Wyse 3040, very small, quiet, and capable but the 8GB embedded flash isn't awesome for HA, once you put some addons like ESPHome on it. At one point an upgrade left an old docker image behind and I only had a few tens of MB left, so I had to go in via the command line and get rid of it. Good call on the slightly bigger thin client, I just wanted to make sure others kinda know what they're getting into.

[@RuhjedVentula]

if you have a USB flash drive you can use ubuntu to run from the USB then use belena etcher to install HAOS to the boot drive without opening the Thin Client

[@petercresswell170]

Great video, but you do need to check for and remove any unwanted partitions on the ssd before you copy the image across. If you don't it may not auto boot at power up.

[@SmartHomeAddict]

Correct, I should have added this. However, Balena Etcher is normally good at taking care of this.

[@paulweston1106]

I've been running mine on a Dell Thin Client using the AMD G series processor. I think I paid about £25 including the power supply. The obvious downside is that there are no GPIO pins but you can buy USB devices that will provide GPIO if needed.

[@SmartHomeAddict]

I've got round this in the past using an ESPHome device, this is worth looking into. ESPHome is also being looked into for a future video so might be worth looking out for.

[@nickieredshaw7835]

Great job and easy to follow info how is this done with a laptop that can’t get hard drive out ? Thanks , I’ve tried following instructions on ha site but get lots of error like can get live Linux to boot but can’t get access to the hard drive to copy the file over or get ether to detect the laptops hard drive its 5 year old kid’s laptop spent days trying to reliably get ha to work something get errors straight away or hours or days in tried virtual box with mixed results so wondering if they damaged hard drive as can get virtual box to run ha with no issues on main laptop other than vb goes to sleep after 24 hours and can’t connect the ipad app without restarting the virtual machine then is ok for next 24 hours but not so on old laptop any advice thanks

[@harryjohnson615]

Saw an RPi going for a 3 figure sum the other day. I don't know what's worse, those inflating the prices or those foolish enough to pay. Problem with the RPi it's accumulated an undeserved cult status when there are better alternatives such as cheap thin clients.

[@ryan39584]

Thin clients are power hungry, which is why the RPi4 is so popular for a NAS/Plex/HA client

[@SmartHomeAddict]

At the moment they're the best option if you don't have a RPi4. If you're looking for a new RPi and don't have one laying around, you could be waiting months to get hold of one. Compared to a full PC or a virtual host, this is the next best option for people who want to set up a Home Assistant server.

[@LocostR1]

@@SmartHomeAddict Any idea how much power it draws when running HA?

[@dankarau2307]

@@LocostR1 Many have been tested, obviously depends on chipset but typically under 20 watts when working and 12 - 14 watts when idle...so peanuts and very comparable to a RPi.

[@shuhead24]

Can the thin client handle running InfluxDB and Grafana?

[@SmartHomeAddict]

I haven't tried it, but there's no reason why it shouldn't. Most thin clients have equivalent or better processing power than a Pi 4b 4GB. The only thing I would suggest is upgrading the storage, an 8Gb one is going to struggle. It's worth looking into adding an SSD of at least 64Gb.

[@Fine_i_set_the_handle]

you shouldn't be running home assistant on RPI anyway the sd cards are prone to failure and an ssd expander is unreliable with rpi right now. RPI has always been for testing home assistant then you should start a new installation on a 100-150$ mini pc (if you like it)

[@1over137]

You know that for £100 you can get a Dell Optiplex with an i7-4770, 8Gb of RAM and a 500Gb SSH? It's what I use and HA is just a single tiny docker instance amount dozens. I mean that's a real computer. Why go with the thin clients with mickie mouse CPUs?

[@SmartHomeAddict]

Because for many people, they want a device that pulls only a few watts and don't need a CPU that's wasting cycles generating heat. The point of this video was to offer a nearly like-for-like alternative to the Pi that draws similar power and for a similar price. Yes you could use a PC - in fact my main installation runs on an Optiplex. I may make another video covering the PC install.

[@ericapelz260]

They idle at about 5 watts, so if you don't have a use for the PC, this is an excellent option. Also, the docker version of HA has some differences that may matter to some folks. Different folks have different needs, and therefore make different choices.

[@dankarau2307]

@@SmartHomeAddict With the current price difference, you can pay for about 10 years worth of electricity that the Thin Client will use over the RPi.

[@NacNic-di5se]

For $8 you got a tv box (running HA container) with 3 watt power consumption lol 😂😂😂