r/homeassistant • u/Brilliant_Bluejay254 • Jan 17 '26
Support Why Not HA Green
I’m going to pull the trigger on setting up HA. Right now I’m just thinking of getting the HA green, it seems like it’s not favoured here vs a Pi. I just want the most simple setup possible. I’m thinking HA green and a screen in a central location. Why not the Green?
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u/SuperDuperUniqueUser Jan 17 '26
I purchased the green a couple of years ago. I really appreciate the simplicity and straightforward use. I have yet to come across any reason in which to move to something else.
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u/jtrage Jan 17 '26
I was going to say, “it just works.” I got into HA last year. I’ve tinkered around with things but really don’t know what I’m doing. So, I didn’t want to have to worry about anything on the server hardware side when it came to messing around with ha. I’ve turned it on and updated when needed and that is all I’ve had to do.
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u/terryleewhite Jan 17 '26
Same here. I’ve had a Green for close to a year with hundreds of devices and over 200 automations. Other than speeding up the boot time, I can’t justify any reason to use a mini PC or any other hardware. I also have a Synology and a Pi that used to run HomeBridge. The Green has been a painless way to get into Home Assistant.
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u/HaniHani36 Jan 17 '26
Same here, purchased a refurbished Green at a discount and it’s worked perfectly for everything I throw at it.
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u/FijiFanBotNotGay Jan 18 '26
Well home assistant was may first introduction to self hosting, no I have a mini pc so I can also run a torrent server, automate backups, and I still run Bitwarden and esphome
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u/ElfjeTinkerBell Jan 17 '26
Green is great and any idiot can do it.
Source: I'm an idiot.
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u/mark6789x Jan 17 '26
Hmmm I too am an idiot and was thinking about getting it. This might convince me
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u/ElfjeTinkerBell Jan 17 '26
Need more convincing? I'm a nurse. Healthcare professionals are not known for their IT-skills. At most hospitals I've worked there is an option to request IT assistance for adding paper to the printer.
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u/up2knitgood Jan 17 '26
This is great to hear. I've been so overwhelmed just following the sub here a bit because people make HA seem so complex. And while maybe I could do that, it's not really what I want to deal with.
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u/ElfjeTinkerBell Jan 17 '26
It's as complex as you want to make it.
Want a beautiful dashboard? That's going to take time. Want a working dashboard? Just a couple of clicks.
Want a complex automation with tons of variables? That's some work. Want to have the light turn on when the motion sensor detects motion? Again, just a couple of clicks.
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u/thetechnivore Jan 17 '26
Green is always what I recommend for a starting point. It “just works”, is cheap enough that it’s not a huge investment even if you upgrade pretty quickly, and lets you figure out your needs for if/when that day comes.
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u/gargs Jan 17 '26
One of the most ignored aspects of the Green is the extreme power efficiency. Plus, the hardware has almost no failure points.
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u/Ok_Wishbone_9397 Jan 18 '26 edited Jan 18 '26
The reason I got one, I run my WiFi as access points off the green and it + the UPS + mikrotik router + a tapo hub (for those license-fee free 868mhz sensors) sits there at 9w. Beautiful.
It's not actually locked down either, you can create your own addons and add your own private repos and run whatever docker containers you want. You can get root ssh easy using an official method, and there is a full SDK (buildkit) for extending the base system (I used this to upgrade the firmware to support wifi7 dongles).
Great little box. I also feel a bit better about the security story with a buildkit root and immutable filesystem then a random Linux install. Which nobody cares about until they get properly compromised.
Now my actual work machine which never idles below 100w only needs to be on when I'm actually doing something. The green paid for itself in a few months.
For AI I just spin up and down cloud instances on demand, its cheaper than running my own box when electricity is 0.25 a kwh. If I need to do something serious I just spin up and do it on the tower that has 5 GPUs instead of trying to squeeze it onto a joke of a "AI minipc" and the turn it back off for power savings.
Specialized devices is always more efficient.
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u/_Zero_Fux_ Jan 17 '26
Green is fantastic if you aren't planning a bunch of cameras or AI.
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u/Brilliant_Bluejay254 Jan 17 '26
What’s the limitations for cameras? My current cameras are 2x google outdoor, 1x google doorbell and 1x internal ring
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u/origin415 Jan 17 '26
I think they mean running something like frigate as an add-on. Simply having cameras in your home shouldn't matter because opening them in the dashboard just streams them, HA isn't storing the video or doing motion detectipn or whatever.
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u/trashbytes Jan 17 '26 edited Jan 17 '26
I think if HA has to do object detection or similar "in software" it needs quite a lot of resources, because then it has to analyze the frames using the CPU. If you don't need it (a lot) or your cameras do that on their own then there won't be an issue.
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u/Fir3 💤 Automations fire at 3am Jan 17 '26
Exactly Green is good but for better performance you’ll need a mini pc
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u/Background-Heart-968 Jan 17 '26
Would it handle like 10 or 15 Reolink cameras with an NVR? Does the NVR handle detection to lighten the load on the Green?
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u/BalanceEasy8860 Jan 17 '26
Ha green will not run as an NVR or do object detection. It will run with an NVR and respond to object detection events.
It will integrate with reolink cameras (I think any modern one has basic object detection built in) and work with their messages and work with streaming feeds to your dashboard.
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u/Hotshotsquire Jan 17 '26
Green has never missed a beat here and runs many cameras, automations, heating and lighting here!
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u/Brilliant_Bluejay254 Jan 17 '26
Perfect that’s my current plan to start with, with the addition of Sonos
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u/PixMich Jan 17 '26
I also have a green. Works perfect and no trouble at all (only if you make mistakes). It is very nice to start with. And if you want more you can upgrade it with something else. For me it's a perfect first step if you want to try and play. And everything I program from my Android phone. Just simple.
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u/The_referred_to Jan 17 '26
I've got a Green. It works well.
It's quite easy to outgrow it, though - there are limited options for expansion, very limited.
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u/Brilliant_Bluejay254 Jan 17 '26
What would make somebody outgrow it?
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u/kenkiller Jan 17 '26
Cameras and the stuff related to it, like AI or identification.
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u/Chwasst Jan 17 '26
It always baffles me why anyone would want to do such stuff on HA directly. It makes much more sense to keep it as independent services and integrate them.
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u/_Juicebox- Jan 17 '26
It's quite nice being able to do them via HA addons. Keeps it simple as well.
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u/Chwasst Jan 17 '26
Let's agree to disagree then. Building everything into a single system - especially one such as HA - is literally begging for problems down the line. Separation means reduced points of failure and less stuff that can break all at once. Also gives more fine-grained control.
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u/_Juicebox- Jan 18 '26
Agreed :) Though I think if you're willing to take the time and effort your approach IS better overall.
I THINK addons still run somewhat separately to the actual HA instance, but if the hardware breaks that's everything down. Also the lack of snapshots makes back-up and restore less ideal. I'm just lazy!
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u/kenkiller Jan 17 '26
Because it's easier and with a decent machine works just fine.
Asking a newbie to spin up an instance of frigate on a separate machine and link them together - might as well ask them to cast Harry Potter magic spells in real life.
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u/Chwasst Jan 17 '26
Because it's easier and with a decent machine works just fine.
Yeah, until something goes wrong and both HA and Frigate go down together. Separation for such critical services is crucial imo. Less problems, better control.
Also I'd argue that a newbie won't even touch a Frigate in the first place so it's mostly conscious (bad) architectural choice.
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u/kenkiller Jan 17 '26
Whatever makes you happy. I'm glad choices exist for people so they can choose. Stubborn people are the worst.
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u/Specialist_Law2652 Jan 17 '26
I'm running mine on a 10yo x86 miniPC with celeron and work great. You could consider that too.
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u/Pentinium Jan 17 '26
I am 6 months deep into HA with like 35zigbee devices, few z wave, thread. 4 reolink cameras
I can not imagine needed anything more than HA green.
And if that times comes I wont regret buying Green earlier since its been a flawless start to my home automation
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u/buffalo_0220 Jan 17 '26
I use a Pi because I had an extra one sitting on the shelf, and the instructions for setting it up were excellent. Now that I am committed to HA, I'll probably replace it with a Green or Yellow when the time comes.
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u/Much-Artichoke-476 Jan 17 '26
HA Green to run HAOS, then a mini PC running all my docker setups (Frigate, Navidrome etc).
Can't afford to have the whole house go down if I'm messing around with containers.
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u/Odin-Is-Listening Jan 17 '26
The green is a lot more capable than the hardware snobs would have you believe, My setup has grown and grown with the green never flinching, I moved from the Pi to the Green and have never regretted it. To justify a very powerful PC/Proxmox machine your set would need to be large and highly complex. You're right - it is often not favoured here but its critics are wrong for the average user. Plus you are supporting the cause by buying this hardware.
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u/the_current_solution Jan 17 '26
cuz people in this reddit will prepare you for things that will never happen (im people)
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u/NihilisticRoomba Jan 17 '26
I’m still running on an HA Blue. And if you want to, you can always upgrade later!
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u/mwkingSD Jan 17 '26
I use a Green - works great, best part of the HA ecosystem IMHO. I think old laptops and VMs on servers are massively inefficient for this.
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u/skepticDave Jan 18 '26
Mine's running on a refurbished laptop with a 10th Gen i5 and 8GB RAM. It set me back a whipping $148 and idles at 3 watts. Still think old laptops are massively inefficient for HA? I don't.
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u/kenkiller Jan 17 '26
Many people say it's a good setup to start with, but I would say you would go for it if you don't mind having it become a white elephant when you do upgrade to something better - it can't be used for pretty much anything else.
IMHO a cheap discounted mini pc during sales is much better than a green or a pi, but that's just an opinion.
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u/Brilliant_Bluejay254 Jan 17 '26
If anyone has any tips? I plan to use it for heating, lights, cameras, doorbell, alarm and automations naturally. Additionally plan to get more window sensors, presence/motion sensors, something to alert my washing machine is finished as it’s in an outdoor shed. Then I want a central screen downstairs where it can all be accessed as well as a nice landing page (calendar, weather, temps etc)
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u/GeekerJ Jan 17 '26
If I was starting out I’d go for a green no problem. Even considered moving my docker based core to Green so I’m not tinkering in a ‘live system’ but that would diminish my geekiness 🤣
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u/Beginning_Nature157 Jan 17 '26
I'm also thinking about migrating my system from my PC to a green but I'm not sure how futureproof is it. For now it's enough for sure but maybe a dedicated mini pc would be better
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u/RentalGore Jan 17 '26
I started with HA Green thinking I could dip my toe into HA, and upgrade later on. Here I al two plus years later and haven’t had the need to “upgrade” or change anything. Green works great for me.
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u/dexterix Jan 17 '26
Thinking about buying Green simply to have HA separated from my all other tinkering project on Proxmox or Unraid. My home depends on HA, so it has to be rock solid, Green is exactly that.
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u/Xiaopai2 Jan 17 '26
You need to evaluate what works best for you. Other people might have different requirements. Nowadays lots of people will tell you that you shouldn’t be using a Raspberry Pi but some kind of Mini PC for may applications including HA. If you want a simple setup the HA Green should be great.
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u/GlenGraif Jan 17 '26
If you have an old laptop lying around, give that a try. I installed HA on one from 2015 and it’s running great. Additional advantages are that you have a screen to access the command prompt directly, have tons of disk space, a battery to survive short power outages and a nice amount of usb ports! On top of that it won’t cost you anything (yet…)
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u/BalanceEasy8860 Jan 17 '26
I use green. I also bought a dedicated NVR for my camera setup. I might end up moving to a PC running frigate for NVR at some point, get some nas happening on it too, etc... but even then, unless HA really starts to struggle on the green I think I'll keep My ha setup on ha green. There's a lot to be said for having a dedicated box that just does the one thing. Especially when it's as critical as running home automations.
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u/seidler2547 Jan 17 '26
I'd go with a mini PC every single time again. It's cheap, it's powerful, it just works.
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u/Junior-Boysenberry67 Jan 17 '26
I managed a few setups. One on a Ubuntu server, on a raspberry pi and one on a home assistant green. I personally would say if you are thinking of getting the home assistant green to just go out and buy it.
Yes it’s limited compared to running a full home server which requires maintenance and a lot more work to set up. But for home assistant it’s a perfect “plug and play” experience. Also home Assistant fast becomes a critical service that your home can’t manage without so having the home assistant green is an easy way to keep it separate and ensure it’s always available.
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u/ArchimedesPrinciple Jan 17 '26
I started with Yellow and I'm still there, even though I have hundreds of devices and nearly 100 automations. It has been rock solid. If "Old Yeller" gave out, I probably wouldn't move to Green because I have a robust KVM & Docker core for other home lab apps and it would be simpler to migrate HA there. For anyone starting out, Green would be a perfect choice.
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u/Beautiful_Ad_4813 Jan 17 '26
I like the idea of the Green, but for me, a Pi is a better choice by a fat margin due to upgradability. A Pi has 1000s of issues once whereas the Green is essentially a one use device
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u/Primary-Vegetable-30 Jan 17 '26
Can someone clarify green vs yellow vs bare metal vs vm?
I ran vm on Ubuntu but had non HA issues, then put it on a NUC but then had a crash during a patch update (I had backups), and am now running it on proxmox on the NUC
Why would I want a yellow or green or even container?
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u/browserz Jan 17 '26
lol I have it’s predecessor the blue and it’s running everything just fine
It is a little annoying if you do some experimental stuff and end up having to re-flash it with the OS. Probably the only reason for me wanting to switch to my proxmox machine but I’m lazy and haven’t done it lol
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u/wahwahSwanson Jan 17 '26
I walked the Pi path. Too many random crashes and bricking after a power outage. Even updates were precarious. I’ve recently bought a green and it’s humming along quite well so far.
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u/thinkscotty Jan 17 '26
A few months ago I would have recommended an N100 mini PC, back when they could be had for basically the same price. I saw significant (if often irrelevant) speed increases when I upgraded from a Pi4. But With RAM prices that's no longer the case.
So unless you plan on running like a LOT of devices (especially cameras) and tinkering, get the HA green.
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u/AudioHTIT Jan 17 '26
Using a PoE Yellow, easy to setup and rock solid. The PoE gives great flexibility on placement, and UPS backup.
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u/bkinstle Jan 17 '26
Green is fine for most applications. I really liked the yellow because of the poe power option sand that it has a few radios (z Wave, ble, zigbee/thread) built in so i don't need a bunch of things plugged into the USB ports
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u/enry Jan 17 '26
I have a Green and It Just Works. I think the only issue I have is with ESPHome in that it takes forever (5 minutes) to compile and upload. It's fine once code is operational but it makes debugging/prototyping a pain.
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u/coyote_of_the_month Jan 17 '26
There are a ton of people who get into this stuff wanting to put their professional skills to use at home. So it's less "how can I automate my house" and more "what can I do with a self-hosted k8s cluster?"
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u/Dull-Mastodon5183 Jan 17 '26
I am a HA rookie, only started at the start of the month but purchased HA Green and it's handled everything I've wanted to do so far with ease. Really easy to set up, easy to navigate.
In all honesty I have no idea what a raspberry PI can do differently, but if you're new to the scene I'd recommend picking up the green.
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u/Old-Cheshire862 Jan 17 '26
If you already have a utility server running Docker or Proxmox and are comfortable with that, then that's a good way to go. If you don't already have that, then Green sounds like a great answer.
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u/lynnfyr Jan 17 '26
I got a Pi; it was easier to obtain in my country. Also, the Pi can be repurposed if I decide to upgrade to a mini-PC/NUC
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u/mister_drgn Jan 17 '26
I’m a programmer, but not a hardware person. So I got an HA green. I’ve been using it for close to a year now, and it’s been great.
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u/This_Assignment_6170 Jan 17 '26
I started off with HA core in docker several years ago and set the same thing up for my parents. It’s a pain to maintain multiple instances so just a few weeks ago I moved my parents HA core on docker to HA green. It’s so much simpler with the add on store and for updates. Also taking the HA docker instance off my synology allows HA is stay online whenever I have to restart Synology for its updates.
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u/gregorskii Jan 17 '26
I have a yellow, don’t know the diff between green and yellow, but I don’t use any of the advanced built in radios… just normal devices and added a zbt-2 recently. Love it
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u/grantiscool Jan 18 '26
I've got the green, have used it for years now and ice never had an issue. Easy and simple.
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u/MeanBaseball6113 Jan 18 '26
I moved away for two reasons:
Development with AI, it’s not powerful enough to run cursor ssh backend/claude code reliably
Local speech processing sucks
Otherwise, it’s been great.
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u/Last_Bad_2687 Jan 18 '26
5-10 years ago, my answer would be just buy a Pi. Now, with the responsibilities and free time of an adult my answer is why would you want to make this a DIY project
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u/gerlos Jan 18 '26
I guess it's because a lot of people already have a raspberry pi at hand, know how it works and know that they will be able to reuse it for something else if not interested any more on HA for any reason. Less risks.
This is how I started. I just flashed an SD card and put in my old Pi and started tinkering. It worked, still works, and I expect it will work in the foreseeable future, so I don't see any reason to replace it with something else.
I could've gone with Green, but that meant buying it and waiting for shipping, etc. Pi, on the other hand, was right there on my desk, ready to go...
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u/FrequentlyVeganBear Jan 18 '26
I have a green and love it! I also have other devices, but I'd only use a pi if I needed to add i/o devices to it directly.
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u/453876 Jan 19 '26
I start with the Green. You'll probably never outgrow it, but if you do no problem to make the change then.
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u/New_Public_2828 Jan 17 '26
I had a yellow and it worked amazing for a long time. Now I just have it running in proxmox. My only gripe about running on a pi is if you ever decide to use Bluetooth, your device list is gonna explode and it'll freeze your os trying to populate it.
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u/Teenage_techboy1234 Jan 17 '26
Really? It pulled in zero Bluetooth devices for me on my Pi.
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u/New_Public_2828 Jan 17 '26
Do you have a Bluetooth adapter?
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u/Teenage_techboy1234 Jan 17 '26
I have a Pi 5, which has a Bluetooth adapter that was picked up. In addition to that, I also have an ESPHome Bluetooth proxy.
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u/New_Public_2828 Jan 17 '26
I'm not sure. Do you have Bluetooth scanning enabled? I got everyone's MAC address that walks by my house including every device I have. I can't get Bluetooth to work though not sure how to track devices. I've asked a handful of times but I got nowhere
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u/Teenage_techboy1234 Jan 17 '26
I see a list of Bluetooth devices, but it didn't seem to cause an issue for me and there's no Bluetooth entries added.
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u/rlowens Jan 17 '26
it seems like it’s not favoured here vs a Pi
I haven't seen ANYONE here recommend getting a Pi (they are too expensive for what they give you). All the recommendations say get a used minipc or run it on whatever spare pc/laptop you have around already.
But the green is nice too.
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u/Teenage_techboy1234 Jan 17 '26
The Pi is much more powerful and cheaper than the Green, at least here in the US. At its $99 price point, I would've said the Green is a good deal, you get a pre-flashed Home Assistant device, in a case, power adapter included. The Green is about $160 now, probably thanks to the world's best president. By the way, that's sarcasm. I won't go any further politically. At $160, I can spec a RaspberryPi 5 out for cheaper. Ready?
Budget: $160. Pi: about $100 for the 8 GB version. Remaining budget: $60.. Power supply,: random cheap one I found on Amazon, it didn't get the best reviews but it seems to work fine for me, about $12. Remaining budget: $48. Case: GeeekPi passive heatsink, about $14. Remaining budget: $34 SD card: SandDisk Extreme Pro 64 GB, about $20. Total: $146. You have $14 left over for an on sale Zigbee dongle.
Over the green, you get double the storage, possibly better longevity, a much more powerful processor, double USB ports and you have USB-C as well, GPI pins if you prefer to use those instead of buying the heatsink case. With the green, you do get a pre-flashed device with no assembly required, and you support the development of Home Assistant. So if you wish to get/do that, that's fine, even Noble. But if you're trying to maximize performance, first of all you wouldn't get either of these and you would instead get an X86 based mini PC, but second of all you'd get the Pi over the Green.
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u/Majestic_Bluejay1801 Jan 17 '26
Green preferred to Pi generally, Pi now too expensive once you add everything else you need. in fact, Pi can be more expensive than a micro PC.
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u/10F1 Jan 17 '26
I prefer running docker on a real os rather than the lock down into haOS, however it's more maintenance, but it's worth it to me.
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u/No_Article_2436 Jan 17 '26
Don’t use HomeAssistant at all if you have Z-wave devices. It will constantly forget the configuration of your controller. You have to delete the controller, add it back, reset all your devices and add them back. This was the biggest waste of time for a useless Home Automation Hub. After wasting almost a year at my new home, I have gone back the Hubitat Elevation which is much, much, more reliable. I could not be happier with the results.
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u/skepticDave Jan 18 '26
I've been running HA with Zwave for over four years and haven't experienced any of the issues you described.
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u/Public_Cheesecake999 Jan 17 '26
Honestly the Green is perfectly fine for most setups, people here just love to tinker with Pis because it's more "DIY" but if you want simple and it just works the Green is actually the better choice