Hi @AndreasSpiess, I have now succesfully loaded your Proxmox image and can open everything except for Portainer which won't accept the admin/raspberry123 user/password combination. Are there any tips that you can offer please? I have noted the swap of the y & z but without any joy.

all obvious permutations, of the en_US keymap [a,b,...,x,y,z,...,0,1,2,3,...], of 'y123' in raspberry123 (e.g., perm y->z gives y123->z123, and yields PW=raspberrz123, User=admin ) also seem to fail; however, on my en_US keyboard, PW=raspberrz User=pi, allows me to login to VM (cf. ROOT User/PW: pi/raspberry)

@@patricknash9575 I couldn't log into the Portainer console but eventually backed up /home/pi/IOTstack/volumes/portainer-ce/data/portainer.db and then deleted the file and then retried logging into Portainer and at that point I was asked for a new admin password so now able to access Portainer completely.

@@Howie55Aus Thank you. I deleted this db, but still get "Log in to your account" when I access Portainer. I must have screwed something else up; I will probably just start over from scratch, and immediately delete the db after restoring AndreasSpiess' VM.

@@patricknash9575 although it looks like a log in at this point I had to input the password twice. I just created the password as raspberry123 which then worked. Fingers crossed it works for you eventually.

Glad you think so! Thanks

Thank you for your kind words!

So your installation is much bigger than mine. My documentation is only small. Thanks to the internet, I did not have to buy new disks for a long time...

Nice video as always! I run the same setup on a Lenovo machine. I run my docker containers in a Linux Container, so they will have bare metal performance.

​@NoProblem76 so you're running a Linux vm in proxmox and docker containers on that vm? Pretty cool. I'm building a 1u firewall for my rack and I'm thinking proxmox with pfsense and then migrating my various hardware installs to that. Currently it's all running on an i7 thin client. Want to wipe that and proxmox it to experiment with the high availability function of proxmox.

@@schrodingersmechanic7622 not a Linux VM, it's a Linux Container, its more efficient than a VM, you will have close to bare metal performance as if you're directly running docker in proxmox, yet the container still provide you with a layer of separation

I know. Still it is quickly approaching the 10 watts or less of a modern Intel mini PC. Personally, I always wonder why people care about a watt or two difference and use their car for a short trip to the next shop ;-) But I am just an engineer...

The RPi 5 uses the same idle power as a RPi 4. Of course it uses more power during usage than a RPi 4 because it's a lot faster. But if you don't need anything faster than a RPi 3 or 4, they are still available to buy. If you need something faster than a RPi 5 then I agree that a low power PC will probably be the better choice.

I also think that the difference between a Raspberry Pi and a small X86 board becomes smaller (price, power consumption, and speed). We will see how good the Pis can compete with the Intel ecosystem. This is another market...

It is worse than Intel right now. Look up N100. Total different league. It might look expensive, but everything is included, decent RAM and SSD. Those machines have lower idle and lower peak power use, but are 4-5 times as fast, and 10 times as fast when it comes to the GPU.

You are welcome!

impressive and inspiring!

So you definitively can show your installation to your friends ;-)

I had a pretty similar journey. First I had a Synology 4 bay nas, which i loved, and became the main media hub of my home with Plex. Then I started fiddling with home automation, for this I re-purposed an old Zotac machine with E-350 I bought a long time ago to my parents. For a time it was great, but I wanted more. I built a decent computer for it (AMD 5700g, 16 gigs of ram, Define 7 case with 12+ drive bay, 4x4TB hdd, unraid), for virtualization, data backup, home automation and media center. But when the electric bills started to rise (the server used 60/70W idle), I changed tactics. I kept the NAS for plex only (4x4 TB is sufficient for now, especially since I have streaming services too), I purchased a fanless zotac CI331 with N5100 for home assistant and always on stuff (this uses only 10-15W), and the large server went to S3 sleep for the 95% of the time, so in just 3-5 second, it can be ready, but usually it sleeps. And this is used only for data backup, virtualization, if I need.

@@magnificat_orig I went full server rack in the shed. I bought a Rosewill 4u long on rails. I am running a AMD Ryzen™ 9 7900 12-Core, 24-Thread Unlocked Desktop Processor with a full ATX MB. With the Synology 8 bay it pulls 110 watt. With California electric prices that's around a dollar a day. I think for all the "entertainment" value that's not too bad since I don't pay for any streaming services. I love the Rosewill on rails because I can pull it out and change the motherboard and CPU without a bunch of hassle. I may change to a mini motherboard and a less powerful CPU and see if there is much difference in power use. I love having Home Assistant and getting real time power draw of both the NAS and the server.

I have a second channel for those topics…

RPI5 power consumption is barely more than RPI4. Also I use a rechargeable lithium battery and a converter so that I can store cheap electricity in the battery overnight and use that power to run my RPI4 for up to five days without having to use expensive day rate electricity. That takes the sting out of any power consumption concerns.

Thank you for the confirmation!

Glad you liked the video. I made it also as a reference to come back when you do the installation

Glad you enjoyed it!

You can use ssd instead of sd cards

@@Flamechr did you read.. "at the Pi2 due to the unreliability of the sdcards" he moved away from Pi's because at the time they only used SD cards, there is zero sense moving backwards now because you can hook up an SSD to a Pi4.

Similar here: A Pi3 for Octoprint and a Pi4 for a SDR receiver on the roof...

Never change a winning team!

There are many fanless x86 systems based on Intel N5105, N6005 or the newer N100. you get a tdp of 10W (6W for N100), M.2 NVMe, serial console, multiple 2.5 NICs, etc, in a tiny package at around 200 to 250 dollars and you get a future proof, flexible and multi purpose home server that will cover you for years... The argument for using an RPI as a home server becomes difficult to justify... but that is just my opinion :)

And I hope, you did not regret it ;-)

Have fun!

Yea, "broken" sometimes is relative ;-) I think you were happy and got a good deal!

Did the same.HP EliteDesk G2 Tower with an i7-6700 - my first desktop ever. Added some more ram and now it's at 64 gigs. All in under 250 euros.

Thank you for sharing your configurations! It is always interesting also for other viewers...

A good idea if you want to have GPIOs on your Homelab. As said in the video, my GPIOs are not needed where my server stands. This is why I use microcontrollers for sensors (and GPOIs) connected via Wi-Fi or Ethernet.

FT232H USB seems nice but in my country it costs around 1/3 of RPi itself which is quite high. However, it's again 1/3 of my local price when checking China famous shop so that's a good price point. Thanks for your comment, saving that board for later :)

Thank you for sharing your thoughts!

If I really can get awya with "static" I would either uae an old laptop or an office desktop. Habing to pay 8-10 bucks in electircity per year doesn't bother me that much.

I am not (yet) static ;-) If you have a look at the list of my VMs, you see that I recently added AREDN VMs (for HAM radio). And experimented a lot with VLANs recently. I agree that the laptop is a good combination of a mini PC, terminal, and UPS.

@@AndreasSpiess My home automation system (ioBroker) is also not static. It grows. But the Pi applications such as NUT server, Victron OS, Homematic are kind of static. Running and serving, but not really growing.

Hopefully, you will get it soon!

Also a good setup!

I agree with the quality issues. Currently, I have 2 Pi4 boards with defective PMIC chips. Not easy to change because of the double sided and crowded PCB.

Good idea with the credentials in the comments

Thank you for sharing your experience!

Me too. But in the recent years, a new hobby evolved that includes one level higher with servers and networks. A perfect combination with the lower level GPIO stuff...

Also a good solution (as IOTstack shows)...

You are welcome!

Thank you very much!

Glad it helped!

You are welcome!

nobody said you should run multiple VMs, you could always run a setup like on RPI. The initial idea with rpi zero was good, a very small device capable of running linux, but it seems they slowly lose their direction by making devices that tend to compete with full-fledged desktops, while offering lower specs and versatility, higher prices and a business model where you cannot use the devices for anything useful if you don't buy them in big bulks.

I agree that the Pi is a versatile board (I use it in several projects). This video is focused on using it as a Home Automation Server (one of the clear focus areas of the faster Pi5)

The Pi 5 is the worst machine for retro-gaming. Only the Pi 2 was worth it when it came out, for a short time of maybe 3 years. The Pi 5 is seriously bad value for money, slow compared to the peers and way too hot with its old fab process. Intel is owning this retro gaming area in 2023 with their N100 line. If the N100 is too expensive, go for yesteryears thin clients for example by Fujitsu. Those 4 core i3 models are on 14nm with proper GPU, power supply built in, 2x as fast as a Pi5, same power use on average and only 60€. With 8GB and 256GB SSD! I seriously can't think of any reason to get a new Pi right now. Go ahead, and make good use of the ones you have lying around, but the new ones are very bad value/specs in the 2023 arena. Maybe for some the compute module/zero is useful for say robotics, but good luck finding those.

@@2kBofFun if the pi4 is good enough for me I’m sure the pi5 will be better when supported. I use batocera with 8bitdo arcade sticks.

@@Adrian_Galilea We did not even talk software. RetroPie is a rabit hole.....

I am no Influx specialist. I use a bucket per "domain" (Huawei, Weather, etc). The rest does not seem too problematic as you can adjust your queries to how you recorded the data. Maybe there are performance considerations. But for IOT, I only have very small data volumes (comparted to other applications).

Don't be fooled by someone with a vested interest trying to put you off of someone else's product. Look at what the RPI5 is capable of already in it's Beta format. Mindblowing. You can barely get that kind of performance out of anything else at the same price. It's nearest SBC rivals are up to twice the price and very few platforms get the same level of support. And just like my old favourite the Commodore Amiga the RPI can run software from Mac and Windows so (depending on which software you favour) you don't even need to miss out on PC based programs. Even on my RPI4 I can run Steam games and software, so you don't miss out on that either.

I agree about solar. We have a bit a bigger setup for the whole house...

Glad you liked it!

I agree, laptops are a good choice, too. Particularly, if the battery can be used as a "UPS"

Problem with old laptops is inability to upgrade ram, especially old macbooks. I guess the memory address bus is not wide enough.

I saw it too. Interesting. But 8GB is extremely limiting. Even the 16GB I have are not too much…

That is close to an ideal setup! It seems the N100 is a very good choice for this purpose!

Which board did you get, I'm a bit hesitant in getting a board from Ali express, as they are "work mostly but not always" ? I know they do not exist, but it would be nice to get one with either vPro Enterprise or IPMI.

@@casperghst42 The N100 definitely does not have SMX. It does have VMX. It's not an enterprise CPU. I use non KVM LXD containers so I don't even use VMX. This is a replacement for a rack of raspberryPis only. I got the 8G TEKXDD (that's since been repurposed as an ocotoprint/klipper server) and then a 16G T9 Mini. The TEKDD does not have power on to S1, so it won't automatically start on a power up after a power failure. The T9 will. It's also 1/3 the size as well as having an nvme disk slot.

@@originalmianos I know that the N100 isn't an enterprise CPU, but as some of the i5's have vPro Enterprise (got an older NUC i5 with iKVM), then it would have been nice if they would have made a line of the N100, N200 and N305 with vPro Enterprise just to make people like me happy (I can always dream). Thanks.

​@@casperghst42I'd get a minisforum for a proper home vSphere server. They have i9 and high end Rizen CPUs in a similar form factor. They cost a lot more though.

Thank you! The weather is excellent for the moment :-)

Thank you for your support! For the moment, cameras have no priority for me. But it should be possible to integrate them into HA (I saw a few examples on UKposts)

This is why I separated all 24/7 tasks from my "video" machine. It consumes around 400 watts including all periphery and is switched off when not used, too.

I still struggle with a cluster setup because I did not have hardware issues for years. But I had lots of issues when complexity got "over my head". So, in my case, a cluster most probable would create more outages ;-)

LPT/parallel ports (and even headers) are not terribly common these days. There are USB-GPIO adapters from Adafruit and others, if you really need direct attached GPIO to a PC. But imho Andreas's architecture is to have sensors run by microcontrollers with tasmota or whatever firmware, then send the data over a network to the home lab where there is the "brain" of the operation in a virtual machine.

As said in the video, I have no need for sensors connected to my Homelab. Using the LPT port as GPIOs should be possible. But I did not see one in a long time...

@@marcogenovesi8570 I still see serial headers commonly but LPT is effectively gone.

@@chaos.corner Yeah, that's because RS-232 serial ports are still very much alive for industry and automation, and motherboard developers need a serial console for debugging anyway so they might as well have that. LPT is just dead, nothing using it has been produced in 20 years, it's only legacy hardware.

@@marcogenovesi8570 That was what I figured. Came in handy when I was installing Windows without usb3.0 drivers on a motherboard with no PS2 port. Had a serial mouse hanging around and that let me bring up a virtual keyboard which allowed me to get to the driver installation.

:-)

Unfortunately, I aslo do not know how this is done :-(

HomeAssistant is pretty awful even before docker eats all the resources on a pi3

I run HA in a Pi 2B and it's fine for controlling lights and switches and things like that. The UI is pretty snappy and my devices work without lag. Sure, it takes a while for EspHome to compile device firmwares but I can do that on my computer if I really need it to be fast, which I don't. So I'm assuming a Pi 3 would be even better as a HA server.

@@matt.604 I think it depends on what you're running on it. My zwave network was noticably slow with the Pi (i.e. taking multiple seconds to respond to a motion sensor). But I'm the first to admit that my home automation network is far too complex for a Pi to handle so I'm not the best example perhaps. I just did a quick count and I've got 26 integrations, 80 automations, 67 lights, 97 switches, 306 binary sensors, 5928 sensors... I might need to prune a bit

I've been running HA on a PI3 for years, not noticed any speed issues with my setup. I agree that using an old laptop makes sense for something more complex.

Why are people on here comparing performance with old Raspberry Pis? Each generation is significantly faster than the next. The RPI 4 is way more capable than the RPI3 and the RPI5 is way faster again. The power consumption hardly rises in normal use and the cost stays about the same too. I've owned RPI 2, 3, and 4 and the improvements are very notable. It is my main computer and does everything I want and need to do unless I have to run very OS specific software on a Windows machine. Most of the tasks that the RPIs were made famous for work very well on every model I've owned. You can upgrade if you absolutely need the extra power and/or memory or if you simply want to stick with RPI when you decide to branch out into new areas of computing. There is almost nothing beyond the capabilities of an RPI. I even run KdenLive, GIMP and Blender on my RPI 4. And programs like that will only be even more capable on RPI5.

I thought, that "Homelab" is a new part of our hobby. So I wanted to make an introduction to may viewers...

Thank you for your continued support of the channel!

Of course! It's entertaining and quite often a recap of things that I (almost) forgot. Even the older videos are still inspiring and great for reviewing! Keep it coming.... ;-)@@AndreasSpiess

Yeah, and don't use Lastpass, but own hosted truecrypt server ;)

Also the use of throwaway passwords like admin or 123456 is also a bad habit (and I'm also guilty of having used them in the past). The intention is always the same, to change them before a system goes live. But the reality is, they get forgotten. Just use good passwords from start and of course a different one for each system. It's no problem with a password manager (even a piece of paper in your pocket is better then a file on a computer or something well known as 123456).

@@harvaldi Truecrypt was discontinued in 2014

@@marcogenovesi8570 Sorry, I meant Keepass or it's clones.

I made a risk analysis and felt, that the home automation data are not security relevant for me. So I do not protect them the same way as the login to my bank account ;-) But maybe I am wrong...

I agree that Proxmox has a lot of capabilities. I only scratch at the surface for my purpose. Recently, I had to add two additional network adapters with different nets and VLANS. Fortunately, I had help. And now I know a bit more... A lot is try and error.

@@AndreasSpiess Me too. It's a rabbit hole but Home Assistant has been rock solid and Jellyfin is working well although It's not getting the metadata. I ping the Debian server and it connects but I am not getting it to Jellyfin. I haven't even started in creating VLANS to separate the IOT, mostly the Alexa internet based stuff, from the other parts of the LAN. It looks like we have both got suck more into the networking stuff! 😁

You should be able to download and install my IOTstack VM on your Proxmox server to play around with it...

Not worth the effort to talk you out. Just go with it ;-)

I am not happy with influxDB, I only started it because it was used by many others and I got instructional videos... But their documentation is overly complex. So we will see what happens with the version 3 and if I have to change...

@@AndreasSpiess agreed. Since I switched to the Grafana/postgres/timescale combo, thanks to @volkovlabs at www.youtube.com/@volkovlabs/community things got much easier for me. It's a great channel - content and presentation wise - around Grafana (and IOT). InfluxData have changed horses (query language and major architecture) for the third time. Now its simple SQL, standard tables - much simpler for my project.

I use the WLAN version for my SUN/LUNA2000 setup... I never used Serial, just USB.

I am not sure where these Zimaboards fit. Similar pricing than small PCs, but not enough space for the disk and slower CPUS. I prefer a "one box" solution...

Thank you for sharing your setup!

Yes, my router does the Zerotier connection. I showed it in a video on my second channel).

Every VM gets one or more independent network adapters with a unique MAC address and therefore, also an IP.

Yes, I upgraded. It was a non-event. So nothing for a video ;-)

Maybe it has to do with the HW requirements of Windows 11...

@@AndreasSpiess Possible, or rigid standard of big corporations for hardware renewal cycle. Mine came with win10 installed and updated automatically to win11 - only piece of hardware in my home that is capable. And i run linux server on it ..

Well, power consumption is not the same. Considering the consumption of a PC, that even when in IDLE it consumes a minimum of 15W, but probably 20 or more, to a Pi that consumes less than 5W, it's significant. Considering the energy prices nowadays using a PC to do basic stuff (such as a NAS) that can be done with a Pi to me is a waste of money.

@@alerighi The new firewall mini-PCs consume 6-10 watts. I just bought one (Intel N100) for £110 shipped (about $135). If you still really, really want to go the SBC route, the Orange Pi 5 only costs about $20 more than the Raspberry Pi 5 but has 8 cores, an M.2 slot for NVME SSDs, and uses a more efficient 8 nm process, as opposed to the RPi 5's 16 nm process. The OPi 5 uses under 1 watt at idle -- which would be most of the time if used for Home Assistant, for example. At UK's current exorbitant electricity prices of 30p per kWh, the cost of running an Orange Pi 5 would be £2.63 a year (about $3.30). The cost of running a mini-PC would be about 6 times more, or $13.15 per year more expensive (that's at UK electricity prices; in other places, like the US or Iceland, the difference would be much less). If 13 dollars (or less) a year is important to you, go ahead and use an underpowered computer for which the software choices are extremely limited. I think I'll stick with the mini-PC. (By the way, I also own an Orange Pi 5, but now I don't know what the heck to do with it.)

@root683 if you live in a place with high energy prices then power usage is a valid consideration. For me, running a 5W pi for a year is less than $4. A 40W mini pc would cost about $30 for a year. My desktop I-7 mini pc with SSD and 32GB RAM could easily do the work of a dozen Pi's with room to spare. Fully utilized, I'd be willing to bet the mini is still more efficient. In my use case, I'm accustomed to seeing 2000kwh to 4000kwh monthly bills thanks to the hot climate so I wouldn't be able to see any appreciable difference on my monthly bill

@@alerighi I have a intel N5095 mini pc, 16G ram + nvme ssd I use as an everyday linux mint desktop. The whole machine idles at 5W, uses 20W at full speed. I have another, a celeron J4105 used as a kodi media player that idles at 4W...

No problem! This video is only about home automation servers.

For me, Linux with all its possibilities was also a deciding factor. If I wanted a good user interface or a database, I went with a Pi. For the rest, ESP32 wirelessly connected to the Pi.

Nice setup! I still hesitate to go for a cluster, because I had no hardware issues for years. But I had lots of what I call „ complexity issues“ ( mainly caused by me). So I fear the cluster would be a step back in my situation… But maybe I will try it for fun.

Welcome to the exclusive homelab club :)

HA is great for being able to do certain maintenance tasks without downtime. It is the effort to get it to work properly that is usually causing more downtime than it will prevent in the future. For failures, I'm just taking care that I have replacement hardware on site and that I have good backups.

Lets hope it will survive your overclocking!

Portainer is already included in IOTstack (and I understand its value). But what is in for me in casaos?

@@AndreasSpiess Actually I wanted to say that you could make a dedicated video related to portainer or casaos. The second one is actually user friendly portainer application. I am Sorry but English is not my native language

I separated the 24/7 stuff from my (powerful) development (and video) machine. Because my "real" machine consumes quite some electricity and goes dark whenever not used.

Used PCs work best. No technical constraints. Just find corner in the home to put small rack and that's it.

I agree, laptops have the advantage of a built-in "UPS"

@@D9ID9I Used PCs usually require more power to run, a laptop is a good compromise, and it comes with a screen which can be good thing for beginners. Sure, if you need to raid disks for storage of something more compute intensive then grab a used PC, no question that that will be the best option. Andreas content is usually geared towards IoT, not video transcoding or compute heavy stuff, hence why I would recommend a used laptop instead of a desktop.

@@user-hk3ej4hk7m desktop and laptop pc's have same performance/watt ratio. laptops just limited in power but not more power efficient. and you can extend desktop pc with something like cheap 10Gbit card or gpu for some AI work. you can't do that to laptop. you don't need screen on a server most of the time because there is a remote access. only if you reinstall os once in a century or troubleshoot booting.

@@D9ID9I Not true, performance/watt depends a lot on the workload, it's not a constant factor for the same % of system utilization. A laptop is way more efficient for what would be considered a "light" workload compared to a desktop system. Even PSUs themselves have an efficiency curve that favors a high to mid level workload (% of rated output power). If you're going to be running esphome, homeassistant, node red and other lightweight vms or containers (again, based on the content of the channel), then your main concern is RAM, any other oversized components are going to increase power consumption for no reason. 10Gbps rarely makes sense for what would be considered an IoT hub, you weren't going to use a RPi for anything more than that realistically. However if you want to do video transcoding and use the system as a file server then 100%, go for a desktop. You can always get another system down the road and have some segmentation for stuff that's critical and stuff that's a nice to have. I'd personally rather have my light switches and automations work when I have to do maintenance on my media server.

You are welcome!

@AndreasSpiess i always tended towards a not too old pc with unraid, proxmoxx, vms, as main server for home thin clients.

Perfect setup if you ask me...

You're welcome!

I have no experience with Hyper-V :-(

If I remember ca. 10-15 W (for 8 VMs).

that PC is around 6w idle and 15w max. It can run 4-5 times more stuff than a raspberry though so it can be more efficient than a bunch of raspberries depending on what you want to do.

If orange or raspberry pi 5 is sufficient you will still use 1/3 of the power of the PC

​@@marcogenovesi8570I read a lot of useful comments from you. Thank you. I have bought a new(er) mini PC and it runs cool at about 4 Watt average over a day with only HA. (Which is relatively low compared to most other things we use during the day) I found my floor fan uses almost 3W just in standby for example, and 12~15 when on

I have a couple of 3bs and 4s in use. I am not sure where the 5 fits. Maybe for a mobile SDR receiver...

I agree: Laptops are a good solution because of the built-in "UPC"...

Cool. Very close to a Pi5...

@@AndreasSpiess I got them in tons (~100-150/year) here at my company. Benefits when leading the IT-Department 😁

@@MatzeMaulwurf Very good. I hope the rest of your job is also as much fun (I implemented SAP for a living and know quite a few CIOs ;-) ) The 32MB memory is very interesting. Most of the ones I saw say they can only be upgraded to 16G

@@AndreasSpiess the accept 2x16 out of specs. Standard at our Institute is 1x8. 32 works flawlessly. The SSD needs to be a mSATA, they are only available in consumer quality but also work since over 2 years in my proxmox-HA-cluster made out of two ThinClients without any issue. But there is not that much traffic on them. Backup are written on magnetic disk NAS.

What kind of Lenovo mini do you run? Mine says it only supports 16GB...

​@@AndreasSpiess Lenovo ThinkCenter M910Q Tiny. Actually, it is running 64GB. 2x32GB DDR4 SO DIMM. I saw someone say on a forum that it would work, so I gave it a try. I don't think the 710 will go over 16G. These older minis are great. We have bought several more at the company to set up ad-hoc VPN gateways to outside clients using Tailscale.

Geerling is an entertainer, not an engineer. I stopped subscribing to him a couple of years ago because I am interested in practical solutions to real world computing problems, not trying to add 100 hard drives to a Pi. But it's his channel, he can do what he likes and if shilling for views needs to create an income for him then so be it - I just don't have to be involved in that. I don't necessarily agree that the Pi is a "disappointment" but, as an engineer and a maker, it is simply one more platform that I can think of using when building solutions. The fact is, there are also Banana / Orange / Nano Pi's out there too, plus with the Microsoft zombies rushing to upgrade to Windows 11 and dumping their old hardware on eBay, there's a huge number of cheap SFF PCs with 3rd or 4th generation Core i5 or i7 CPUs in them that can be bought for the same price as a Pi. (Yes, Jeff Geerling, you might want to check out something called a "PC" that already has a built in and powered PCI-E slot for that GPU of yours!) The Raspberry Pi is an anomaly. It has a fantastic support community around it and has become almost a "consumer grade" device - anything you want to do with it, someone will have made a step-by-step video for it. But that's not the case for other SBCs where the real engineers live because we have to "tinker" with such boards and go much deeper into their architecture to get them to do what we need to - but that's part of the fun we get from doing it. The opposite of "engineer" is "fanboy". Engineers choose the best hardware and software components for a solution from a wide range of options, but a "fanboy" is stuck to one brand of item, either because of some silly emotional attachment or because of lack of knowledge and experience. The Raspberry Pi community has a huge number of fanboys, so when a new Pi comes out they have to rave about it because that is all they know how to use. For proper engineers like us, it's just another option to consider when we put together components to build something.

Excactly this. I've got every Pi in the house and feel no need to purchase a RPi5. I would rather have an updated Pi3 or Pi4. New lower power consumption, USB-C, Wifi 2.4 and 5.0GHz and BT5.x. It's trying to compete a market which has been there for a couple of years now and which is years ahead of it in performance. I've seen plenty of small Intel pc's with a nvme drive in them, full hdmi etc etc that fit in the palm of your hand that cost less than a 8GB Pi5 with a housing ..... that still has no drive or extension boards.

I too agree with you. I wanted more than 3 serial ports and I was waiting if RPI5 would change it's design but that didn't happen. Instead we are given some 💩

Geerling is not an engineer? That's not true. He's been an active open source contributor to the Drupal CMS software community. He's authored a book about using Ansible.

It all depends on the what the market demands. If most of their demand comes from users who use Raspberry Pi as mini PCs, NAS or Media Center PCs. Then they'll start catering towards improving that aspect of their product. When the first Raspberry Pi came out, I bought and used it with LibreElec. While it was slow but it was cheap and fulfilled my purpose.

Hopefully it's as simple as a table(s) export, copying the files and then importing them into the new DB.. good luck!

If you talk about V1 to V1: Phill is working on his writeup. If it es V1 to V2: I did it (but did not write it down because it was a one-time exercise). Influx has some documentation. It is a huge difference, BTW.

Good choice!

Thanks!

I only recommend it for a homelab (no GPIOs needed here because sensors are not where the server stands). For the rest, the Raspberries are good.

How do you control your Micro PCs GPIO? Which Micro PC? I would like to abandon the RPi but have yet to find a viable solution. Thanks!

I use microcontrollers (mostly ESP32 with WiFi) for all sensors and GPIO-related things in home automation. If you need GPIOs on the board, the Pi is the better choice (I use them for quite a few applications in this field. This video is about home automation servers

Thank you for sharing your experience!

I do not know if such a low power replacement exists (other than other SBCs like the "BananaPi etc)

@@AndreasSpiessOK thank you! For me that is the deciding factor. Low power consumption = low cost. So the Raspberry Pi 4 - or an equivalent as you mention - is still the king in that area I guess. I am surprised there is not more competition in the area of hyper low power servers since rising electricity costs and environmental impact are such important themes nowadays. At least it is clear that the Pi 5 is a bit of a mistake since they created a hungrier and hotter device instead of the other way around.

I just listened again and heard the comment about no sensor connections to the Homelab. Got it.

It is always good to watch my videos till the end ;-)

Good catch!

Thank you for sharing your experience. Moving the router is a very brave step ;-)

there is a lot of corporate mini PC surplus in the market, like A LOT

For me, automation only makes sense if I do things many times. Very rare in my chaotic lab. So a documentation with copy-paste commands is a good compromise ;-)

That is a sign of quality, I think. That it still runs!

I assume so. At least they appear here and there for "reasonable" prices...

In your home server (see title of the video)? For all other projects, I agree with you and still propose to use Raspberry Pis.

I separate the power sensitive stuff from the more power hungry. The power sensitive (mainly sensors) rund on ESP32 or similar, and the rest I showed in this video. Both connected with Wi-Fi or ethernet. So far, I never had a problem fitting sensors on small MCUs. Their resource needs usually are very small, and they often use milliwatts.

This is a different use case.

@@vioreldv ok. Thank you

I mentioned it (maybe you stopped the video too early ;-) I said, that my Home Automation server is not where my sensors are. So no need for GPIOs in this setup.

Just got the message that I should get my 3 Zero2W ordered in summer 2022... I think they are a good compromise for many projects.

They seem to focus on the commercial market. Maybe a need there?

Very good if you get those. Here they usually are sold with less memory and disk. And often, also with smaller processors.

Should work. I am no Mac user, but Phill wrote me that he uses a Mac to prepare all the writeups for IOTstack and Proxmox.

Everybody has to find the right setup. Here, for example, the desktop is the strongest machine because I do all the video editing on it.