I have a friend who bought a new house and wanted to do some automation with the lights. While my HA is a total DIY setup, I thought maybe I’d suggest he get one of these boxes I was vaguely aware they sell. I went to the web site and first of all couldn’t find them from home-assistant.io (I see they’re on the front page at least now, but I swear it was harder to find when I looked the other day). Then I got lost trying to understand what the actual box was.. yellow, blue, some third party odroid thing? Didn’t matter, everything was out of stock anyway. Now there’s a green one. I’m not sure this is actually making it easier to get started. I’m somewhat of an expert and I gave up.
this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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Sometimes being an expert makes you leave the beaten path and get stuck in the weeds whereas a newbie would have blindly followed instructions. I get caught by that sometimes.
I suppose that's true. Rereading my comment, it's a bit over the top. If I pretend now I don't know anything and start at http://home-assistant.io, it's not that hard to scroll down, see the thing, and buy it. I don't know exactly how I got so off-track when I tried. Probably I knew "a little too much", as in the words "home assistant blue" in the back of my head, Googled for that and got distracted by "I need to understand why there are two boxes and one isn't for sale anymore, so exactly what is the difference is between them?".
Coming back to that naive journey, though, I could see how someone could end up buying Green with no wireless dongle or Yellow with no CM4 (especially since you can't get one).
I still think that for the limited size of this ecosystem, choosing a box shouldn't be confusing. I can now understand where it came from, though, once I realized that HA Yellow was designed around a Raspberry Pi board that became unobtainable, so they had to go with a different architecture.
I have mine on an Odroid N2, originally looked at the yellow but I didn't understand why I wouldn't just get an Odroid, so I did.
Is there any benefit for using this as opposed to a normal standalone host?
If you already using HA on your own hardware probably not. The Green is more aimed as a cheaper off the shelf solution for new users.
... That are not going to use zigbee :(
You can add the SkyConnect module to it for $30 and get Zigbee 3.0 + Matter/Threads.
No, it doesn't seem to come with a Zigbee radio or anything, so it's just a box with HA pre-installed.
Ooh, $99? Sweet!
Perfect timing. I currently gave a mini PC running home assistant but I'd rather have something more dedicated.
Just curious... How is your mini pc less dedicated?
What I mean is, I want something that can do that and only that. It's just the way I prefer things.
I’ve been struggling on whether to upgrade my pi3 (which can’t compile firmware for ESPHome without disabling addons) to a Pi4 or just get a Nuc. Somehow this is cheaper than both! Will be picking one up in October when my local supplier has them!
I am in the same situation, but jave been compiling ESPHome on a laptop instead - a little inconvenient, but perfectly fine.
I was hoping this (or yellow, or blue) would tempt me to something "better", but, no, not yet...
(the Green does not have Wi-Fi “because the backbone of your smart home should use ethernet,” Schoutsen explains)
So yah, there's that, which makes using esphome devices a little difficult. I guess you could get a USB dongle for it, but it seems like a poor decision.
That's not how it works. The Green acts as a hub, and a wired connection to the network is less prone to interferences and other disruption that could put the brain of your smart home, offline. Wireless connectivity should be provided by the network's router (which, these days, almost all provide it), giving esphome devices a mean to connect to the network and reach the Green.
I had no idea this existed. I guess I will go for something like that next time one of my raspberry pi:s breaks. It’s a bit weird that it comes without zigbee/threads but at least they explain that you should buy Sky Connect if you need it.