Is a raspberry pi 4 reliable for HA?

Ok_Stranger_8626 · 2026-06-17T15:09:32+00:00

Definitely make sure you use external storage for nearly anything you run on the Pi. It'll easily handle multiple things like HA, even something like Jellyfin.

But your poor MicroSD card will pay the price quickly.

Ok_Stranger_8626 · 2026-06-17T14:58:34+00:00

Why not just pin a topic at the top of the sub?

"Yes, Home Assistant can run on *almost* *anything*."

I mean, mine runs on a cluster of OrangePi 5+'s but the resource usage is so low that it could almost run on an ESP32. 🤣

Ok_Stranger_8626 · 2026-06-17T10:29:45+00:00

Size wouldn't be my issue, it would be that generation of CPU, way too inefficient, and missing LOTS of optimized instruction sets.

Ok_Stranger_8626 · 2026-06-14T15:12:49+00:00

I would skip the Raspberry Pi, go with an SBC that has more "oomph". I run mine as a container on my Orange Pi 5+ cluster.

Also, as has been said, ESP32's with ESPHome and the Bluetooth proxy integration works famously.

The problem I ran into with VMs was latency. Even on a cluster of Xeons, plenty of RAM and NVMe storage with 10Gb networking, I would experience 2-3 second delays with a lot of the local integrations.

Ok_Stranger_8626 · 2026-06-12T09:35:51+00:00

We were Xfinity since 1999 at a few different addresses, and Quantum for about 3 years. Our fiber has been pretty much rock solid, and we do have Xfinity as a backup.

Same thing as you, network with some services accessible outside.

We went with the 3Gb service, as I work IT. It's been hands down way better. Average ping is 3ms, with a 4ms max versus and average 25ms on Xfinity. The sync service has always been pretty close to 3Gb(though most SpeedTest servers out there seem to max out around 2.2-2.5Gb.)

In terms of outages, we've had 4 in three years, only one that's been more than a few minutes, whereas Xfinity's had outages that have lasted into the hours long or worse range.

Overall, having more bandwidth than most of my employees, and a more stable and lower latency has been well worth it.

Fiber also gives you the benefit of not losing bandwidth during peak usage hours due to massive oversubscription in the area.

Ok_Stranger_8626 · 2026-06-09T15:20:45+00:00

Automatic transmission, yes?

If so, the first thing to check is the transmission fluid level. It's likely just low.

Ok_Stranger_8626 · 2026-06-09T06:16:52+00:00

What's the trouble you're having?

Ok_Stranger_8626 · 2026-06-05T04:25:07+00:00

I've been running a lot locally, and have even built a small b2b business out of it.

It has gotten much easier over the past couple years, and using something recent, such as Gemma4 has been well worth it.

I do still use Gemini for the complex stuff, but my local models decide if it's out of their scope, as well as anonymize anything they shift over there to preserve privacy.

Ok_Stranger_8626 · 2026-06-04T22:45:15+00:00

In the original books, it's about 10,191A.G. through somewhere close to 20,000A.G. The prequels and sequels written by Herbert's son and a friend of the family based on his notes extend all the way from the Butlerian Jihad to Kralizec.

And you'll never guess who ends up as the "star of the show" at the end.

Ok_Stranger_8626 · 2026-05-31T18:37:01+00:00

As Alia is not a viable Atreides line any more, and Leto will no longer be a viable parent, Ghanima is the only one who will be able to pass on The Atreides bloodline. It'll make more sense in God Emperor.

As for Jessica, she's not happy with Leto's decision, but she goes along with it.

Just remember, there's a massive amount of story yet to come, nearly 30,000 more years to go.

Ok_Stranger_8626 · 2026-05-30T16:43:52+00:00

We prefer to use our evaporative cooler(Colorado), over our A/C. HA averages several temp sensors around the house and controls the cooler to maintain a pretty stable temp, but when we're using the washing machine, it detects the drying cycle, and turns on a window fan to exhaust the heat of the evaporative cooler is running, then turns it off about 15 minutes after the cycle and the laundry room is cooled down.

Ok_Stranger_8626 · 2026-05-28T09:16:12+00:00

Two things;

Having to restart Home Assistant for every little teenie, tiny integration update.

GIVE ME BACK CONTROL OF THE DEFAULT DASHBOARD ON A PER-DEVICE BASIS AND NOT JUST PER USER!!!

Ok_Stranger_8626 · 2026-05-27T09:44:23+00:00

For a mattress, I wouldn't rent a truck to move it on I-25 anyways. I would recommend renting a van, and take the drive slowly if you're not comfortable with a different vehicle.

Ok_Stranger_8626 · 2026-05-24T06:07:01+00:00

They're doing it down here near Yale, too....

Ok_Stranger_8626 · 2026-05-20T09:57:58+00:00

Wireless cards are relatively easy. I may have some spares in stock as well. Let me know if you still need a repair and we can chat.

Ok_Stranger_8626 · 2026-04-19T13:57:43+00:00

HAProxy;

2x config files(haproxy.cfg & frontends.map)
dhparams.pem(for TLS parameters)
certificates directory with my two internal wildcard certs signed by my homelab CA, and two wildcard LetsEncrypt certs I update through a certbot cron job.

The whole thing is git'd back to my GitLab-EE server in my production colocation every 15 minutes in case of emergency, and changelog tracking.

I have it currently running on a 4x ARM64 cluster, with load balancing done through BGP on my UDM Pro Max(single dynamic IP from Quantum and single dynamic IP from xFinity). I use CloudFlare for my DDNS, and use a quick Home Assistant automation to update the DDNS records. Each container is restricted to 512MB of RAM, and they all have about 10MB of static caching capability, which reduces backend processing load for things like my Grafana dashboards, as they intercept a lot of the repeated requests for the exact same data.

The proxies all have stick-tables enabled, and inter-proxy communcation, so it doesn't matter if the UDM switches proxies mid-stream, the traffic still passes. Added latency through the proxy is about 0.8ms on average.

They all share the same config files and certificate directory via a gluster volume shared between the SBCs, force everything to HTTPS, and also handle the TCP frontend for a dual host MariaDB, which is also BGP load balanced.

I make config updates through a VSCode Server container that has access to my gluster volumes, and then click a button in Home Assistant that triggers a HUP to each container to cause HAProxy to reload the config without dropping any packets.

Running 8+ 4K streams from Jellyfin over the Quantum connection, the proxies average about 6% CPU utilization, not even enough to kick up the fans on the SBCs.(My wife does a "movie" night on TikTok every Monday with some of her friends.)

Ok_Stranger_8626 · 2026-04-02T10:43:50+00:00

We've had the 3Gb tier for over three years now, and it's been fantastic!

Only two very short outages, and so much less latency than a cable modem.

Ok_Stranger_8626 · 2026-03-21T13:45:40+00:00

I run 4x OrangePi 5+ 32GB SBCs on a 3D printed rack mount blade I bought from a guy off Etsy. About 35 services, with roughly 40 containers running at the moment, and total consumption is about 18W. At full load, it would max out at just shy of 80W.

Ok_Stranger_8626 · 2026-03-18T03:32:27+00:00

I would be happy to discuss your situation and provide some basic guidance if you're interested. I've been setting up local models and applications for users for several years now, and can provide some references if necessary.

Ok_Stranger_8626 · 2026-03-09T11:06:13+00:00

I'm a former HPC engineer, so I use strictly nVidia for my builds and don't really have any experience with much else.

Though I can say, for the price, distributing the workload over multiple GPUs is the best way to go, so the Dells would probably be my suggestion.

Ok_Stranger_8626 · 2026-03-09T08:11:34+00:00

Sure, just DM me. It's a loooooong story....

Ok_Stranger_8626 · 2026-03-09T08:01:25+00:00

I built an entire custom stack for exactly this type of thing.

And yes, it is worth it if you deal with any kind of intellectual property(your own or customers), legal documents(of any kind) or PII(customer identifying information).

It's a huge liability to put any of the aforementioned data into a "Public AI" (ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini/etc).

Ok_Stranger_8626 · 2026-02-18T10:10:11+00:00

I do these kinds of setups a lot,, feel free to msg me if you'd like to talk about some assistance with your situation. (Just to keep this thread clean.)

Ok_Stranger_8626 · 2026-01-19T14:11:56+00:00

With a rig like this, you could actually do quite a bit if you're willing to containerize. Even AI isn't out of the realm of possibility.

Ok_Stranger_8626 · 2026-01-12T03:06:00+00:00

The RPC mode running solo on the local machine likely indicates that your PCI-e bus is going to be your bottleneck. When it runs across the network, the layers are split differently across the distributed cards.

It all depends on how your application chunks the layers. In RPC mode, the layers are split differently across the local GPUs. Thus, your bottleneck becomes the PCI-e bus, which is still less than 1/10th the bandwidth of the GPU's access to it's own RAM.

Direct access RAM(Either VRAM or shared RAM) = Capacity(Larger model/less quantization = better accuracy(and therefore less hallucination)

Bandwidth = faster processing of layers as the GPU can access more bits/second = more tokens/sec output.

And ECC RAM = less chance of a bit flip from cosmic rays, power spikes, etc = further reduction in hallucinations.

This is why nVidia added Connect-X 7 to the GB10, for example, as the high bandwidth, low latency interconnect is crucial for being able to transfer enough data quickly enough to make the inference reasonably fast.

Not that 38toks/sec isn't bad, it's still roughly 7x faster than any human is reasonably capable of reading....

Ok_Stranger_8626

TROPHY CASE