I'm having issues with my SmartThings Hub not connecting with a device because it needs a thread router. I've been able to connect other devices that supposedly require a thread router too, but this has me considering upgrading my hub. I'm trying to decide between Hubitat or Home Assistant. Hubitat doesn't have a thread router so I'd be upgrading a hub but still having the same issue. Home Assistant supposedly is really complex. Thoughts??

Home Assistant is the answer. Lots of devices can be used with it and they are also coming out or have released their own radio devices to communicate with. Also, you won't have to worry about them just ending support like with all the others.

I don't suggest the HA Green. If you can find a cheap mini PC run the full Home Assistant OS. More versatility and can handle more devices.

I've been running it for about 1.5 years and it has major updates often with ever increasing capabilities and better user friendliness.

danieljustin06 said:

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If you can find a cheap mini PC run the full Home Assistant OS. More versatility and can handle more devices.

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I bought an old Intel NUC7 for like $50 on eBay and installed HAOS bare metal and everything has been running great (although i'm not too deep in the weeds of HA yet). A lot of people suggest running Proxmox with HAOS in a VM so you can take advantage of Proxmox's backup features in case anything goes sideways. I'll probably make the switch before i get too far down the road

I use hubitat and don't have any issues. Not the prettiest or most intuitive interface but it works well for my needs.

I'm running it as a VM for that reason. HAOS can use a lot of memory, but it's easy to adjust resources on the fly.

Really? Most people i've seen on Reddit talking about it say they run 4gb of ram, and that it's probably overkill for HAOS. I think my NUC currently has 4gb, but can go up to 16 if needed

I guess it depends. I have 12 gb allocated to mine and it's currently sitting at 6 gb used. I've seen it use all 12 before. I've also seen it peg out the 4 cores I allocated to it as well. It's also on a system that has some resources to spare so I don't mind going a little overkill.

The increased ram use is probably from having direct camera feeds going into it.

What's the reason for not suggesting HA green?

HAOS memory usage seems to be somewhat proportional to the amount allocated. Mine was sitting at 2.46/4 GB, until I decided to allocate it a little more, when it increased to 4.59/5.86GB.

The green is very limited in what it can control. There are multiple devices that cannot connect to it. Considering the price for a full raspberry pi 5, a used mini/micro/etc PC off of eBay for $50-80 is cheaper and more capable.

HA's website kinda makes it seem like running the OS is difficult but it's really not. There are a ton of guides on how to install the OS.

What mini PC do you have? I'm looking at the Beelink 12 or the Pulcro Turnkey Two.

The latest version of HA has simplified automatic backups so you don't need proxmox for that anymore as of a few months ago. The whole thing has come a long way since I started using it in 2019 or so. It'll run on a pi 4 just fine, but when you start adding things like Z2M and Frigate or ESPHome, you'll wish you had the overhead for those. I would say get an old SFF or USFF PC with an i5 of at least a 6th gen. Add 16-32gb of ram and get rolling for well less than the price of a pi. That 6th gen or higher is just in case you want to process video on it at some point because that's when quicksync or whatever they called it became part of the intel chips.

Then go to chatgpt and ask it to create some dashboards for you based on the things you want to be able to see. Choose your favorites and ask for help implementing. The AI tools have gotten pretty good, even to the point of being able to do interactive floorplans for you.