Request for comments: what's your IoT hardware?

[Vadim Tkachenko]

Hello lurkers,

For a long time now, DZ has been optimized for (and constrained by) running on Raspberry Pi (short rehash: headless will work fine on 2B, full configuration works on 3B, Pi 4 is an overkill but will still work). However, with insane price hikes for all the Raspberries it's no longer a financially viable platform, and there are others that make more sense (including  but not limited to used NUC boxes). In addition to that, DZ produces a lot of usable telemetry which requires something bigger than a Pi to host, so unless there are stringent heat production and space requirements, it doesn't really matter. On the other hand, there are things that fit Raspberries even given the increased price (case in point: Pimoroni Automation HAT and other Raspberry specific sensor and actuator solutions) so it shouldn't be discounted completely, and it's possible that there will be different builds for different hardware platforms.

So, what is *your* IoT ecosystem hardware choice today? Not just for DZ (I know that only a fraction of people reading this have it running), but for all things IoT?

As usual, thank you for your feedback in advance - it is a moving force of this project.

To get the ball rolling - here's the current development and production configuration I'm using:

- Raspberry Pi 3B x2 - one runs the up to date imperative branch, the other runs reactive

- Several Pi 2B and 3B running mosquitto, HA, zigbee2mqtt, zwave2mqtt gateways (good for liveness, I can play with individual Pi boxes and services without disrupting everything at the same time)

- One Pi 4 box for development of Pi specific hardware components

- A couple of Pi Zero sticks laying around that were planned to be used with Go modules, it never took off but still may at some point

- General purpose Linux box running InfluxDB, Grafana, and esphome2influxdb gateway

- About two dozen ESP8266 and ESP32 nodes working as sensors and actuators running ESPHome

- A few Z-Wave and Zigbee devices controlling heaters and economizers

- 1-Wired network (multi branch) running sensors (DS18x20) and actuators

- XBee mesh running mostly actuators on expensive HVAC devices (analog sensors are not reliable and have been almost phased out, but XBee actuators survive WiFi network glitches and don't flake out)

Special thanks to those who suggested using SNZB-02, it runs seamlessly for over a hundred days now and still shows its coin battery at 100%.

--vt

[Tomasz Korwel]

I’ve moved on from pi after several closely spaced in time SD card failures. Using Lenovo m93 tiny PCs now with 4-8GB RAM and 100-200GB SSDs (depending what’s cheap on eBay)

for edge devices I’ve got a ton of esp* devices plus some zigbee and zwave (various manufacturers)

For locks ZWave Yale touchscreen deadbolts.  

Zwave thermostats in all properties

Tomasz

On Mar 8, 2023, at 15:41, Vadim Tkachenko <v...@homeclimatecontrol.com> wrote:



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[marcus wells]

I'm running on a pi 3b (I think). I put up with intermittent sd card failures by having a spare lying around and rebuilding the system. Usually happens at an inconvenient moment. I send data to an oracle cloud instance (free tier) and use that to manage public network access via wireguard as I'm cgnat'ed. I have considered running proxmox on a more capable machine and using it for other tasks, but computers inevitably fail and it's nice to have things in modular bits that when something fails other things still work

My sensor network is 1-wire and I use various esp 32's for other tasks, although I find them a little flakey (need resetting now and then)

[Vadim Tkachenko]

Hello Marcus,

> I'm running on a pi 3b (I think). I put up with intermittent sd card failures by having a spare lying around and rebuilding the system.

Heh... I do need to get the docker packaging finalized to make that
process simpler.

The series of cards that worked the best for me historically is
Samsung EVO Select - sure, I had a couple die on me, but that's out of
a sample of 20+, and those that died, I think, Home Assistant ran into
the ground by incessant writes. These cards survived being used in a
dashcam with 70C (160F) surface temperature, it's quite possible that
the dashcam itself was even hotter.

> Usually happens at an inconvenient moment. I send data to an oracle cloud instance (free tier)

I keep all the configurations version controlled with a GitHub private
repo being the authoritative source. One of the improvements I'm
considering in the long run is - have DZ talk to source control
itself, to make the task more seamless. Given their recent
improvements in account management, that'll be sufficiently secure.

> and use that to manage public network access via wireguard as I'm cgnat'ed. I have considered running proxmox on a more capable machine and using it for other tasks, but computers inevitably fail and it's nice to have things in modular bits that when something fails other things still work

My reasoning exactly. I still have a few spare Pis of different types
I can just repurpose in a blink of an eye - but I'm yet to have a Pi
hardware failure, usually, it's the SD card that goes.

> My sensor network is 1-wire and I use various esp 32's for other tasks, although I find them a little flakey (need resetting now and then)

This is my worst problem with ESPHome so far:
https://github.com/esphome/issues/issues/3415 - still unresolved. I
don't know if it is the ESP firmware, ESPHome, or the wireless
hardware problem, but it makes running actuators for expensive
hardware over WiFi a dubious proposition.

I wonder if anyone else experienced this problem? Other than that,
it's pretty stable. The only other thing that puzzles me is how could
DIGITAL I2C sensors report outrageous samples of 200C and above at
times - I've seen that with analog XBee sensors and it's
understandable, but digital???

--vt