Raspberry Pi 5 w/ Home Assistant - Worth the Upgrade?

[@calebjpryor]

You should have posted the n95 timings for compile and startups. Great video

[@digiblurDIY]

I did think about it but didn't want to make it a full on N95 beat down. I cheated and did sneak in a screenshot of the i7-14700k timing of 7 seconds 😎 I can do some timings and post it in the comments/description

[@digiblurDIY]

N95... same build type. Wrote 0xed560 bytes to file /data/build/test-n95/.pioenvs/test-n95/firmware-factory.bin, ready to flash to offset 0x0 ========================= [SUCCESS] Took 28.24 seconds ========================= So to recap.. Rpi 4 = 137 seconds, Rpi5 = 45 seconds, and N95 28 seconds.

[@digiblurDIY]

Boot time is 24 seconds on the N95 (probably would be faster but it has the delay to go into BIOS being an x86), vs the Rpi4 at 51 and Rpi5 at 39.

[@Razor_Burn]

I've been using an OrangePi 5 as my main Home Assistant host and its holding up great and 16GB is plenty of memory for all the connections. Its nice to see support available for the RPi 5 so quickly. In hindsight I should've just got a budget mini PC to future proof my setup but for my needs the low powered ARM chip with A76 cores does a decent job. Happy New Year to you and the family!

[@digiblurDIY]

They did add it pretty quickly, I figure it will be popular just being a Pi so it was glad to see it added. Happy new year to you as well!

[@bdubs6666]

Thank you so much for this video! I have been wanting to upgrade my HA Pi 3, for a while now. I ordered the mini PC you had the link to, for $129.00 and it showed up the next day. I literally had the new HA up and running within 2 hours I was impressed. Much faster now.

[@digiblurDIY]

Nice job! You are quick! That's a massive upgrade from the 3 and should last you quite a while plus it gives you that extra performance to run any heavy load addons/containers.

[@JBoy340a]

Thanks for doing this video. It is great timing for me. My Pi 5s arrive in a couple of days.

[@keithjackson5604]

Hey. Love your videos. Amongst the best as you're informative, casual, personal and no music. Just saying keep up the good work and happy new year.

[@digiblurDIY]

Thanks! I've dabbled in intros and such before to just show glimpses of the upcoming video but most people skip around anyways so I just to get to it. Chapter markers in YT videos are key! I do sometimes have music with the outros but that's not home automation anyways, all just analog fun out in the world.

[@hummerfixes]

FYI successfully installed RC1 on pi5 with full backup from pi4 and it's now running LIVE. For the moment I stuck with the default IP add, so there's some effort involved going through stuff like frtizbox router, WIFI devices, MQTT which makes switching back equally tricky, the ZigBee stuff just worked (opposite to what I'd read) Most important was setting up SSH web terminal and SAMBA, life savers, no doubt there will other issues with IP, eg InfluxDb & Grafana but nothing critical. As for speed, things seem quicker, especially graphs, loading history, page refresh, Studio Code Server etc, will probably add systemmonitor for system feedback. So thanks again for your video which was key 👍👍👍

[@jochie18]

I run home assistant on a bananapi m2 zero with only 500MB RAM, it runs perfectly fine with monitoring gas, water and electricity usage as well as regulating heating and turning on/off some lights.

[@3G3D]

I just picked up a couple of M4zeros. I wonder how it will run on those

[@OldCurmudgeon3DP]

Went from a Pi3b to a Dell 3060 form factor for HA & pihole via proxmox. Not looking back. Probably repurpose the Pi to my telescope or something.

[@digiblurDIY]

YES! Once you go full x86 build you can't go back.

[@tigrezno2626]

something you guys forget is stability. Rpis have massivelly good linux support, everything works and is stable. With a chinese minipc you will have many problems when your HA start crashing due to random hardware

[@digiblurDIY]

The Intel x86 support runs pretty deep with Linux. I have actually had some projects not support ARM in the past.

[@tigrezno2626]

@@digiblurDIY I mean the rest of the hardware, chipsets, ethernet, wifi/bluetooth etc Linux on my 2 yr old laptop works, but it crashes from time to time due to driver bugs

[@ronm6585]

Thanks Travis. Happy New Year.

[@digiblurDIY]

Happy new year!

[@CarAudioInc]

agree 100% love when I see a digiblur vid drop

[@digiblurDIY]

Woot woot!!

[@user-otzlixr]

I would highly recommend people prop one end of the rpi (i use the top) up. The fan is not very effective if you keep the RPI flat.

[@coedshowers]

Ive used them all and I would say buy a mini pc.... Do not keep trying to use home assistant on a pi4/5 esp if you are running any kind of sql database to log your system.. Its so much better. use ha-OS on them nativly...

[@digiblurDIY]

Only part that people might not like is loading the system on the NVME but it is something everyone should know how to do so they can recover it in the event of a failure.

[@LarryKapp1]

I want to try Home Assistant . After watching your video I just took your advice and ordered for $125 Beelink Mini S12 Mini PC, Newest Intel 12th N95(Up to 3.4GHz) 4C/4T, 16GB DDR4 RAM 500GB SSD which is less than a Pi 5 starter kit .

[@digiblurDIY]

Nice! I just saw that lightning deal. Awesome deal as I have one myself.

[@rolyantrauts2304]

The Orange pi 5 gives even better perf for near half the wattage and the GPU is on another level and has a NPU. Hopefully this will be the last Broadcom/Upton Pi and the Pi6 will be a completely new generation by the excellent Pi Engineers.

[@digiblurDIY]

I haven't tried that one out yet. Pretty impressive for half the wattage.

[@tempacc9589]

@digitalblurDIY 2:50 It gets hotter because Pi uses an older cheaper process node, not just because they added performance. If they used a smaller more recent process node it would stay cooler.

[@zyghom]

100% with you - nowadays, with such comparable prices of mini-PC and power consumption, there is little to none reason to build Smart Home on RPi. Especially if you will ever consider upgrades

[@rolandrohde]

Yes and no. I went with one of the Mini PCs for Home Assistant, coming from a RPi 4. And yes, it is faster (though not as much as I had expected) but after just a few months, the Mini PC just broke down. No idea what happened, but Home Assistant suddenly wouldn't start, everything was extremely slow and I couldn't even get it back to fully operational by restoring a Backup. So I went back to using the Raspberry Pi 4 (with a USB SSD attached) and it's now running stable and reliable again. I am still trying to figure out what went wrong with the Mini PC...it definitely has a damaged fan now (after running for just a few months) but it seems to run Windows just fine without overheating, the fan is just very noisy now. So...a Pi might actually be more reliable since it has fewer "moving parts" and less stuff that might not work that well in a 24/7 scenario.

[@zyghom]

@@rolandrohde with all due respect it proves nothing except that 1 hardware failed (actually you did not even established what exactly happened). Btw "Pi might actually be more reliable since it has fewer "moving parts"" is another incorrect statement - there are tons of miniPCs without fans. I run already 3 (1 for Proxmox Production, 1 for Opnsense/firewall, and 1 for LAB) - none yet failed - everything fails - it is just a matter of time. But the "freedom" the powerful machine gave me (the one for Proxmox) is huge: I can have 10 machines (VMs) running in parallel and plenty of containers - all fast and all with the penalty of 60W only.

[@rolandrohde]

@@zyghom I wasn't trying to prove anything. Just pointing out that if all you need is a 24/7 Home Assistant Server (not Proxmox and multiple VMs) then a Pi might not be a bad choice and a cheap Mini PC might not contain the best components. I am sure a NUC would have been fine, but I got a cheap N95 Trigkey unit which for some reason stopped working (it's not the fan, must be something else) for Home Assistant, but is still working fine as a Windows PC...🤷‍♂️ Whereas I had Pis running for years (started with the first Generation back in the day) for various 24/7 applications and never had a single failure. My experience is not statistically relevant, but I thought it worth mentioning.

[@zyghom]

@@rolandrohde a freedom of choice is superb! I had to move from RPi to something more powerful when I realized that my house automations are getting delayed (more than 200 devices, mostly MQTT but also ESPHome) - simply RPi was not up to the tasks. Will my miniPC fail? For sure - question only when. Would RPi work longer? Probably. But I will have other means to cover broken miniPC then.

[@KCkohler]

@@zyghomwhat mini PC do you use I can’t decide on a good unit for Proxmox

[@northyland1157]

One thing to consider is the PI has tons of support, so depending on your skill level pi might be better option for those just learning.

[@digiblurDIY]

x86 has long term support as well.

[@KaldekBoch]

Wow I have a HA VM assigned four cores of an AMD Epyc 7282 and the Pi 5 beats those four cores fior ESP compile time.

[@digiblurDIY]

Dang...you should get more out of that I would think, might be the 4 core limit then the VM overhead?

[@djashjones]

Every time I hear of a Raspberry Pi, I think of "Driving Miss Daisy"🤣🤣

[@typxxilps]

I guess you might have to adjust the equation if you compare a full kit order for 90$ with a 25 or 30$ tag for the single board only. 512 MB versus 4000 MB is a difference, the first cases were also about 10$ and such power supply was never cheap, especially the PD versions. Then there is a fan added to the case which is another 2 $ if you buy those from aliexpress for cheap. And suddenly a Pi 2 for 30$ with all the upgrades will look quite expensive especially in the moment you compare the specs and performance. Pi2 for 30 + 25 = 55 $ still running with 512 MB or 1 GB with a case and power supply versus the 90$ and 4 GB power house. If prices have gone really up then at the lower end for example Pi Zero 2W and other, but not so much the power houses. At least they are now available. But meanwhile I have gotten a lenovo i3 mini pc incl. 120 GB M.2 and 8 GB for 40€ from ebay, of cause used one and 6 years old but still a power house and quite efficient if you wanna run HA.

[@digiblurDIY]

Yup! Exactly my point in the closing thoughts chapter. Probably best to just cut your Pi ties and get a N95 mini pc. Stick to the Pi's in those weird environments you need just a small board computer and not a full blown computer.

[@JBoy340a]

I want to go with something with a SSD. What was the system you showed briefly at 2:24?

[@digiblurDIY]

That was actually an i7 mini PC I had just covered. Probably a little too much for this unless you want to do something like Proxmox and have it do more than just HAOS. digiblur.com/2023/12/26/geekom-it12-teardown-review

[@zappa555]

the lid is not flush as earlier RPi cases. it has a small gap when seated. Supposedly to enhance air flow.

[@digiblurDIY]

I noticed that when I popped it together. It does seem like enough airflow for it.

[@CapitanHarlockisback]

Can't understand where you got the HAOS image, since they didn't release an image when you uploaded the video...

[@digiblurDIY]

I got it off the HAOS github page github.com/home-assistant/operating-system/releases

[@CapitanHarlockisback]

@@digiblurDIY Ah ok…

[@renaulth2009]

Bro, unrelated, but the bald look really suits you

[@digiblurDIY]

It's always related! 😎Thanks. Loving it.

[@nebiru78]

i just bought a FIREBAT AK2 PLUS MiniPC Intel N100 for 105 euro its seems much better than pi 5, thanks for the help

[@digiblurDIY]

That's an awesome price and definitely better!

[@TheGodOfWar1337]

Idk if I should keep my using a hp elite desk or use this on a pi rack mount.

[@NatesRandomVideo]

It’s not very compelling at current price points compared to numerous competing products that will run HA. They are up into used i7 micro complete computer used pricing now, which isn’t the point of an SBC.

[@digiblurDIY]

I've used USFF computers before for HA installs. Cheap, super quiet, almost fanless and so expandable if needed. The mini PCs now even blow that out the water except for the cost.

[@Mello00820]

I have 2 old laptops that I don't use. Can I use them instead of buying a single board computer?!?!

[@digiblurDIY]

Absolutely! Those are great. Perfect debug screen attached and if the battery works it has a UPS already. Only thing you might have to do is disable any setting that puts it to sleep if you close the laptop.

[@dirtyd1398]

I am mining Monero on 4 raspberry pi 4's and 4 Raspberry Pi 5's, the 5's have more than 3x the hash rates, but what i find strange is the 4gb model actually has a higher hash rate than the 8gb, any idea why?

[@digiblurDIY]

can you limit your app to only use 4gb?

[@geterdnboy]

have you broke even on the prices of the pi's ????

[@deftdawg]

Should probably do your testing running RPi5 booted off a fast USB device, as I understand USB3.1 beats the pants off of the SD Card for I/O.

[@digiblurDIY]

I kept it the same between the Rpi4 and Rpi5 to just compare the processing aspect. I even used the same exact model/type of Micro SD card.

[@jyvben1520]

3:50 no need to leave top of case, there is space for air to circulate

[@RBHMMX]

Is that just an empty esp32 build or is something included?

[@digiblurDIY]

It is just the stock empty ESP32 that ESPHome includes as default. Pretty much, connect to WiFi and be on API type thing. Simple build.

[@hummerfixes]

Installed "haos_rpi5-64-11.3.rc1.img.xz" but both LAN or WIFI are disabled and no network devices appear, stuck at the moment, any help would be much appreciated.

[@digiblurDIY]

I didn't use WiFi on mine since I have ethernet available. I didn't do anything out of the ordinary. Etcher was used to push the image to the micro SD card, I took it out and put it in the Pi5 and powered it up. Waited a bit for it to download/setup things and browsed to the IP address of the Pi5 with port 8123.

[@hummerfixes]

@@digiblurDIY Thank you for the background. Essentially I did exactly the same with ethernet and etcher, I'll double check again, I know the pi5 works, so I must have overlooked something...

[@digiblurDIY]

For kicks you might just try to throw raspbian for the pi5 on and see if you can get any network connectivity etc to verify your device is working.

[@hummerfixes]

@@digiblurDIY got the pi the day they were released, so already done that and browsed the web, so the h/w is ok.

[@hummerfixes]

thank you for your support, swapped out the network cable and hey-presto the ethernet works!

[@TheDiabeticWay]

Thanks for your great video and very helpful of you too! Just wondering I have a Pi 5 on its way and any chance you could do a setup process for it I'm not sure fully how to do it. I have a good clue on how to but not 100% and if I am going to attempt I need to know it's going to work as I think it will void the warranty and I have no real need for a Pi 5 as I have a Home Assistant Yellow 🙂Br great if you can do i setup thanks

[@digiblurDIY]

Nothing more than opening etcher and writing the image to the micro sd card. www.home-assistant.io/installation/raspberrypi#install-home-assistant-operating-system

[@patteahan8704]

Is your test esphome yaml posted somewhere? Curious how I compare

[@digiblurDIY]

I just used what they had for a default ESP32 in Esphome. Didn't change it one bit.

[@geterdnboy]

do they even have a HAOS image for pi5 ???

[@digiblurDIY]

Yep, that's why I covered it as the HAOS image was released.

[@CapitanHarlockisback]

@@digiblurDIY They only released a preview Image on Feb 5th...

[@digiblurDIY]

@CapitanHarlockisback Dec 21 2023 release github.com/home-assistant/operating-system/releases

[@Jackavatar]

What if I use computer 4 ? Is it worth upgrade to 5?

[@digiblurDIY]

CM4? It would be twice the speed but depends on the cost and what you could an x86 at.

[@koenvanduffel2084]

I went from a bunch of rPi's to 3 Odroid H3's a good year ago (5105 processors). They run in a Proxmox cluster with some 15 virtual machines on them, Home Assistant is just one of them. I never looked back 😃. The newer N95, N100 or N305 are even much better but not worth the upgrade.

[@digiblurDIY]

I agree. Not a massive increase between the 5105 and N100/95.

[@yGmtFTt9]

Rpi4 ist still the best pick for HA. Put a USB3 M.2 on and it runs fast enough.

[@digiblurDIY]

Little pricey still by the time you get all these pieces. N100/N95 is the way to go these days.

[@sirseriously]

Used HP thin clients with embedded Ryzen are about $30. That's what I've used, works great.

[@yousaf.saleem]

can you do the same esphome copile test on x86 system?

[@digiblurDIY]

I did...check the comments/description. I did it on the N95 for boot and ESP32 compile.

[@yousaf.saleem]

@@digiblurDIY Got it. I think this should be the one of the standard test comparing different x86 system with Raspberry Pi for running HAOS. second should be the voice processing locally.

[@gregm.6945]

Pis are too overpriced now to be of any value to me. I'm looking at replacing my Pi 3B with a used HP EliteDesk, or a Lenovo m700. Yes, they're older, but also cheaper and a lot more powerful than a Pi. Pis have had their day I reckon, I won't miss mine, though I have found *one* good user for them - to bridge my home wifi/lan with a mobile hotspot since I've disconnected all cable internet to the outside world.,

[@digiblurDIY]

Yes the small computers or sff style like you mentioned are definitely beating the use cases of the Pi now.

[@UcantBeSerious03]

tks

[@JoshFisher567]

Your browser looks like it's in the full screen. Hit F11 to get 8n/out of full screen in the browser. What's more fun is accidentally hitting the insert key and not knowing it

[@digiblurDIY]

My browser is set to normal size as full screen wouldn't fit on the video capture given it is an ultrawide screen

[@JoshFisher567]

@@digiblurDIY By full screen I mean the address bar, back and refresh buttons not showing. Not sure the name of the exact mode but any browser while active will hide all of that by pressing F11 . It's by design in windows and has been for decades. If you open Edge and hit F11 you will see what I mean as I'm sure Edge isn't your go to browser. Firefox is the same also Edit: the window doesn't have to be maximized either for this mode. It simply hides everything but what you see in the browser windows, that's what it looked like to me but I could be wrong.

[@ziomalZparafii]

And here I am, thinking if RPi4 prices already dropped after RPi5 showed up to replace my RPI1 that runs my whole home automation system (on Node-RED, Influx, Mosquitto, Graphana etc - no HA to be clear). Most of it uses GPIO so regular PC is not a simple replacement and power consumption of RPi1 is hard to beat ;-)

[@digiblurDIY]

You sir must have the patience of a saint.

[@NicksStuff]

Well, you could install HA on anything and use MQTT to send commands to your RPi 1 (I use a B+ Myself) for the GPIO stuff

[@ziomalZparafii]

@@NicksStuff I have NAS, need to check how much free CPU time and RAM is there to run HA on it.

[@marcusone1]

That's a rhetorical question right!? 😂

[@digiblurDIY]

Depends on what you have now... Pi3 and do you need to save the 3-4 watts versus a N95 mini pc?

[@MattKurkowski]

If they were still 30-35 bucks i would buy one. People want 80.

[@digiblurDIY]

Yup. Way too expensive!

[@TLOZ1986]

80 is good, in Europe 130

[@reznikovpaul6217]

Home Assistant best run Raspberry Pi 5.

[@digiblurDIY]

Why is it better over the N95/N100?

[@ChrisStacey]

Pcie is a big deal for pi's. And SBC.

[@ernestgalvan9037]

“Remember the RPi being a $25 thing” When could you get a RPi board, case and power supply for $25? Are you comparing it to a RPi Zero? Or RPi Pico? Or a bare RPi 3? Rather ingenious, if you ask me. Comparing watermelons to grapes…….

[@digiblurDIY]

Yup! They've priced it right out of scope now.

[@jensschroder8214]

the Raspi 5 cannot do power delivery. Only 5.1V 5A = 25.5W The bug regulator to use 9 or 12V is still missing.

[@digiblurDIY]

I seem to recall something in a previous article about that but did check the the power supply on my phone and it does seem to step up and step down voltages.

[@kimberlyjacobsen4148]

im sad you did not use a NvME drive :P

[@digiblurDIY]

Too pricey already... Go N95 when you do NVME

[@3dtexan890]

Weren't these supposed to be available to the NORMAL people back in Sept2023??? Not here yet!

[@digiblurDIY]

I ordered it like a normal person in late Sept from PiShop and they shipped the first week of November. I seem to recall others getting them around the same time if not earlier.

[@funbucket09]

You had to order it if you wanted it. I have mine too.

[@NicksStuff]

The N95 is barely faster but noisier, bigger, more power hungry. The Pi 5 doesn't look like a bad deal

[@digiblurDIY]

All depends on what you need but I wouldn't say 2-3x is barely faster.

[@NicksStuff]

@@digiblurDIY Yeah but you're running home assistant, not editing videos 24/7

[@digiblurDIY]

I wouldn't edit videos on a N95. They probably show that but ouch. That is the beauty of HA, run the system size and machine you need. That one guy was running a Pi 1.

[@guyaldrich5878]

Your confirming what my thoughts were,why bother with a brokie computer like raspberry pi ?

[@digiblurDIY]

Indeed. Many other tasks and projects for Raspberry Pi's but not too much on the HA side anymore. x86 stuff got too cheap and too power efficient.

[@timeWaster76]

The amount of power this thing pulls LOL it that a joke ?

[@digiblurDIY]

Yes and no. It all needs power.

[@sinchrotron]

The reason RPis are that much overpriced is... They need to pay to all this army of youtubers trying to convince the audience that this "product" is somehow usefull :)

[@digiblurDIY]

I am in the wrong army and I had to buy my own Pi too!

[@sinchrotron]

@@digiblurDIY Feelsbadman. I've bought an rpi 4 b 8gb half a year ago after watching "reviews" on yt and was blown away by it's poor performance

[@digiblurDIY]

Oh wow. That's bad. I did some a year ago or more saying to use some. X86 based computers over the Pi4

[@sinchrotron]

@@digiblurDIY like c'mon. Cheapest Chinese android phone can play 1080p60 KZbin :) this abomination cannot. I'm not even talking about docker and ffmpeg with it's 0.2x transcode speed. After that I've bought decommissioned ThinkCentre with (!!!) i9-9880ES and 32 Gb ram for the same money (!!!) And it is incomparable lol

[@michaelestrada2777]

First !

[@digiblurDIY]

But but but I wanted to be first!!

[@jaromanda]

I wouldn't even run Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi 6 - Raspberry Pi make underpowered toys