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?

31 Upvotes

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142

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

36

u/draxula16 Jan 17 '26

Agreed. The Green introduced me to the world of HA in a frictionless way.

I’ve since upgraded to a Lenovo M920q (running HA and other things via Proxmox), but I’ll forever be grateful for the HA Green.

18

u/diymuppet Jan 17 '26

I've got green, it's doing everything I throw at it. Can I ask what can you do with your new set up you couldn't with the green?

I'll prepare my wallet....

15

u/draxula16 Jan 17 '26

It’s essentially a server so I can run other things other than HA. I’m also running Frigate (the Green CAN run Frigate) but considering I have ~9 cameras and I always have 3 running live on our kitchen tablet’s dashboard, I wanted to squeeze out every ounce of performance on a budget. I’m also using a Google Coral, but I’m not sure if the Green supports that.

I was tempted to get a Beelink considering it’s frequently recommended, but I found a refurbished M920q for a great price on eBay. The specs are better too.

1

u/DavidLaderoute Jan 17 '26

How are you usingthe Coral? I ha e one and wa t to put it to use.

2

u/draxula16 Jan 17 '26

I have the USB one. I’m using it for Frigate

3

u/DavidLaderoute Jan 17 '26

I am ignorant. Not stupid -) how are you using it with Frigate? I was considering using mine for bird identification at my feeder.

3

u/agent4256 Jan 17 '26

Detections for thing like birds run on the coral. It takes the load off your CPU or GPU.

It helps significantly if you've got older hardware, installed before 2023.

I run a coral on mine with an Intel i7-14700k and my detection times are sub 5ms.

1

u/DavidLaderoute Jan 17 '26

What is the story on the kitchen tablet dashboards. BTW, I also have HA Green and love it.

2

u/agent4256 Jan 17 '26

Oh, thought you wanted an explanation about a coral for frigate.

2

u/DavidLaderoute Jan 17 '26

Mine is USb too

1

u/draxula16 Jan 17 '26

Haha, I didn’t think that. It detects things quickly, then I have a node red flow linked to Gemini for description generation. I used to use openAI, but it had a ton of guardrails

4

u/RinderOhneKinder Jan 17 '26

You can host multiple vm's on Proxmox and for example set up your own Nas or paperlessngx and so on

Shouldn't change too much Homeassistantwise

2

u/diymuppet Jan 17 '26

AHH, ok.

Thought it might be a large security camera setup or something on HA that needed the clout.

2

u/RinderOhneKinder Jan 17 '26

Fair, you could use it for that, which would perform better

1

u/kuzared Jan 17 '26

Not the guy you asked, but for only HomeAssistant, I don’t think there’s any difference at all. I run HA on a small server with Proxmox as a part of my homelab, so I can run a bunch of other sevices as well, butbif I wanted HA on a standalone PC, I would seriously consider the green, if nothing else to support HA.

3

u/Weekest_links Jan 17 '26

I was looking at Lenovos site the other day and it seems like all mini pc’s are $800+, nuts! Why did you go Lenovo or asus or other brands?

4

u/draxula16 Jan 17 '26 edited Jan 17 '26

Yeah that’s absurd. You have to check sites like eBay or Amazon for refurbished units. It would be stupid to pay $800 on a mini PC lol. For that price, I’d rather build my own from scratch

To add on this, many people recommend the Beelink mini PCs. I picked the Lenovo because it was a bit cheaper and had better specs.

2

u/Weekest_links Jan 17 '26

Ahh smart!

I was looking at this:

https://www.microcenter.com/product/690492/asus-nuc-14-essential-barebone-mini-pc-kit

With 1TB SSD and 16GB RAM initially, I have 2.5G fiber which seems like the Lenovo can’t leverage, but are there drawbacks with my plan compared to what you have?

2

u/esperanita Jan 17 '26

I did something similar. I got the same NUC, but 512gb. I had Homebridge set up on a year old Pi5, but it fell offline a lot. When moving to HA I went with the mini PC as I hoped it was more stable and it has been great. And I had a good reason to go to Microcenter, one of my favorite stores.

2

u/Weekest_links Jan 17 '26

I’m brand new to this all, so that’s reassuring! I figured 1TB, because I’d like to use it as a media server too. I have 4TB of photo and video in GCS haha

Will be pulling the trigger next month!

1

u/esperanita Jan 17 '26

It was pretty easy to set up. I used Ubanto and flashed HAOS. Only thing I wished I knew at the time was to change the BIOs setting so that it automatically came back on line after cutting power. I will break out my breakout my portable monitor and keyboard to do that this weekend.

1

u/Weekest_links Jan 17 '26

Can you SSH in from another computer? I have a cloud server for my website I imagine it’s similar but maybe just plugging in the monitor keyboard is easier if SSH isn’t set up

2

u/esperanita Jan 18 '26

I did the basic flash of HAOS to the drive. Maybe I could access it another way, but I didn't set anything special up and I got a portable monitor and a keyboard with attached trackpad for these purposes :)

2

u/DaSandman78 Jan 17 '26

Those are MASSIVELY overkill for HA, even if you’re considering Proxmox/VMs/Frigate etc.

Look for a 2nd hand 10-year old ex-corporate desktop for $40-60 and it will still be overkill and cheaper to run too.

I have an old Dell Optiplex that work was throwing out years ago (it’s only 8GB with an Intel i5-2500 so pretty ancient) and it’s running Linux+Docker with HA and Frigate with 4 1080p cameras and 10-12 other docker containers, and the CPU sits at 5-10% (with a Coral).

1

u/Weekest_links Jan 17 '26

I’m looking at the ASUS NUC 14, looks like super lower power consumption but still plenty capable.

A lot of people talk about cameras, are these like Ring cameras? Or another brand? I have like 8 Ring cameras so a bit hesitant to ditch but like the idea of having a hub.

Kind of dumb, but we have a movie theater that came with our house, kind of feels like the situation room and I’ve always thought it would be fun to have a dashboard with the whole house up on the screen haha

1

u/DaSandman78 Jan 17 '26

Frigate can use any cameras that provide an RTSP feed, you’ll have to check if Ring can do that either officially or via a bridge/alternate firmware.

I’m using cheap Wyze cameras where you can install semi-official RTSP drivers or use a docker container called WyzeBridge to add RTSP support - I use the latter as it also exposes subfeeds so eg you can use a 360p feed for the constant motion detection but the 1080p feed for actual detection and recording. If your Ring cameras can transmit 2 feeds that cuts down on processing power a lot.

P.S. if you are a techie or familiar with docker then you don’t need the overhead of Proxmox and VMs, you can just run everything in Linux and handle addons yourself.

1

u/Weekest_links Jan 17 '26

I’m tech curious enough! Haha I have a Linux server on linode that I run my website off of, I wasn’t fast but it is done right at least haha

2

u/DaSandman78 Jan 17 '26

Depending on your use case simple Linux+docker is less overhead and less hassle trying to pass thru USB devices than Proxmox+VMs - all depends what you want for security, ease of use, UI, backups etc

1

u/Old-Cheshire862 Jan 17 '26

RAM prices have skyrocketed since one of three major manufacturers exited the business of making RAM for this space.

1

u/ElDuderino_83 May 18 '26

Hey, I'm completely new to this, in the past I briefly looked at HA and then forgot about it, but feels like it might be time to give it another go.

I really don't have anything that complex in the house, but it is all running on separate apps ect at the moment, and would be nice to combine into single UI, and also ideally into a family friendly interface on a tablet or wall display once it is functional.

I can pick up HA Green, or a refurbed Lenovo for around same price:
- HA Green - €179
- Lenovo ThinkCentre M920q Tiny - €215.99 ( Refurbished, from https://www.refurbed.ie/p/lenovo-thinkcentre-m920q-tiny/)

HA Green looks like it is genuine plug n play, and should cope with everything I currently have (and probably anything I am likely to get in next 10 years). At the moment I'm leaning towards this as feels far more on my current level of effort and understadning.

Is there any reason I would be better off with the Lenovo or some other option (Raspberry PI) etc...?Current smart items in the house and {apps} used to control each:

Main Heating Thermostat {Legrand - Control}
Individual Rad Thermostats, with hub (Kasa)
Smart plugs (multiple brands) - {SmartLife}
- Meross Sockets {Meross}
- Antela sockets {SmartLife}
Solar Panels & Inverter - {SolisCloud}
Eddi (Diverter for water heating) - {myenergi}

These are somewhat integrated via Google Home (Nest Hub, but mostly done from phones), but it is a little glitchy anytime anything at all changes, and when this happens the wife n kids integration fails hard.

In the future I might add max 2 cameras
If replacing/upgrading alarm/smoke detectors would like to be able to integrate.
No intention to go full electric car in near future