Fanless board

Plugins & Plugin Development openHAB MiOS Binding
#1

I want to look at using OpenHab… with my Vera 3 (for all you “Don’t talk about OpenHab on a Vera board” haters), what is the best fanless board to use? It will probably be located in my office and I originally wanted the Odroid-XU4 with EMMC but I’m afraid it’ll be too loud.

I understand a RPi 2 is a popular choice but I don’t mind spending some extra $$ if it future proofs it or allows OpenHab to run better.

#2

On openLuup, I’m running the following fanless PC with 8GB memory and a 40GB SSD loaded with OpenWRT’s Chaos Calmer… Cost is about $190.00 from Amazon. It’s actually allowing me to control (ok Bridge) the radio devices on 2 Vera units and barely reaches over 1% CPU and 8MB memory use… Plenty of room to breathe…

Jetway Intel Bay Trail-M Celeron N2930 Quad Core Fanless NUC, JBC310U91W-2930-B

[quote=“RHINESEL, post:1, topic:190890”]I want to look at using OpenHab… with my Vera 3 (for all you “Don’t talk about OpenHab on a Vera board” haters), what is the best fanless board to use? It will probably be located in my office and I originally wanted the Odroid-XU4 with EMMC but I’m afraid it’ll be too loud.

I understand a RPi 2 is a popular choice but I don’t mind spending some extra $$ if it future proofs it or allows OpenHab to run better.[/quote]

I use [2] Jetway’s dual NIC units for my redundant firewall’s and so far they’ve all been solid.

#3

Like all answers, it’s going to depend upon what you plan to do. There are a LOT of discussions like this on the openHAB Community site, along with specialist pages showing tested configurations.

That said, here’s what I run, what I’ll likely run next, and why:

Current config
Machine:

[ul][li]ODroid C1+ (1GB RAM, Quad Core 1.5GHz ARM, GigE)[/li]
[li]32GB eMMC Module[/li]
[li]Plus a “on-hand spare”, without the eMMC - I always have 2x of my critical HW :)[/li][/ul]

Services:

[ul][li]Vera 3/UI5 (Z-Wave, Paradox Alarm, Sonos)[/li]
[li]openHAB 1.8.x (MiOS Bridge, Prowl Notifications, Rules, MQTT Data acquisition/publication, 1000+ Items),[/li]
[li]Mosquitto (MQTT)[/li]
[li]emonCMS (Energy data & History with ~90 channels @90s intervals)[/li]
[li]DEBUG Logging perm enabled[/li][/ul]

Price: All in $110 (Case, Power Supply, eMMC Module, Taxes, Excluding the “on-hand spare” I keep)
Usage: 1% CPU typical, 20% at Peak (infrequent)
Why: No Fan, Low Power (<6W typical), Low Heat (it’s in a SW Enclosure, no fans), Compact, FAST IO
Why Not: How long will eMMC last?

openHAB 2.x/Eclipse SmartHome trial config
Machine:

[ul][li]RPi2 (1GB RAM, Quad Core 0.9GHz ARM, 100MbE)[/li]
[li]32GB SDXC Module[/li][/ul]

Price: All in $64 (Case, Power Supply, SDXC Card, Taxes)
Why: No Fan, Low Power, Low Heat, Compact. It’s largely disposable. I already had it. It runs quite fast
Why Not: SDXC Cards are SLLLLLLOOOOOW, and wear out quickly/easily.
Notes: I’m adding a 250G mSATA piggy back to this shortly, just for fun :wink:

Original config
I ran this when starting off with openHAB, to get a feel for how well it worked, and if it was “for me” or not.

Machine:

[ul][li]VM Under my Mac Mini (1GB RAM, VM slice of a Quad Core i7, GigE)[/li]
[li]VM Slice of my SSD[/li][/ul]

Price: $FREE - I already had the machine, it’s already on 24x7 and uses ~24-30W on it’s idle period.
Why: Why spend $$ to trial something when you have a machine on hand
Why Not: My HA shouldn’t go down because I need to patch my MAC

Next config
Probably a NUC, but a tiny slice of it since I need it for other VM Testing (KVM, ESXi and Docker), along with consolidation of a Windows machine and a few other server pieces from around the house.

Why: They’re cheap, and power-scale IF you have a lot of things to consolidate.
Why Not: Typical user’s don’t need this much power, even the entry-level Celeron & Pentium models are OTT.

Notes: These machines are cheap, but they’re typically sold as bare bones config, requiring $$ for Memory & Storage (etc). The models I’d use (Gen 5/6 Core i5/i7, 16-32G RAM) are more geared to my other uses of it (VM & Hypervisor Testing etc) the baby ones would be fine for typical uses.

#4

Thanks, the hardware section of the OpenHab forum has some discussion but relatively few conclusions. Lots of “I run a RPi 2…” but not much of “In the future I’d probably…”.

I really don’t have any experience with Linux (but can learn). For ease, would a device such as a Kangaroo PC (Atom processor, 2 GB RAM, 32 GB EMMC, Windows 10, Wifi, Bluetooth, $99) be good?

This will only be running OpenHab. No media server or anything. Maybe a program like Blue Iris if OpenHab can’t handle cameras well (I only have 2).

#5

Generally, you’re going to go with either something you’re familiar with, or something that has a large community to get help/doc from.

Personally, I’d go with a Linux based platform, which is most common for openHAB. The install (“apt-get”) instructions/process are very simple now (for openHAB 1.x) and the system largely sets itself up for the core install, account creation (etc).

Then, for DOS backgrounded folks (tongue firmly in cheek 8) ):

EDIT == vim
CD == cd
DIR == ls
\ == /
/ == --help
C: == /
D: == /
...
Z: == /

btw, another “why” for either the RPi, or the ODroid, are they have field-replaceable Flash Memory modules (SDXC or SDXC/eMMC resp). You can replace this stuff IF it fries, without having to change out the board itself. My Router does this also, and it’s a real lifesaver. I’ve cooked 2x Vera units because of Flash in the past (before USB Flash was an option) - and you end up trashing the whole device (or relegating it to the “Will it Blend” pile :wink: )

#6

I run an XU4 and I think it’s noisy as heck. Lucky it’s stuffed somewhere isolated where the noise isn’t bothersome for now. For openhab and a few other linux-based services, I think a fanless odroid would be fine.

If you have any possibility of running blueiris (openhab doesn’t integrate cameras well) keep in mind you’ll need an x86 platform since BI only runs on windows. This rules out all the ARM based boxes like RPi2 or Odroid.

#7

I have had problems with SD card corruption so I added an external USB spindle drive to my RPI2. It boots from the SD card but everything else is on the USB drive. No more worries about wearing out the SD card. It’s quiet and seems very responsive, at least to me.

#8

Since this is my first foray into OpenHab and linux I decided to go with the RPi2. It may not be the best, but it does have incredible support in case I need it (which I’m sure I will).

Besides, once I’m comfortable, if I feel I need to upgrade I can re purpose the Pi for a variety of uses.

#9

Great, I think that’ll do you well to get going…

I have one of these that arrived last night (KickStarter), will be interesting to see how well it performs on my spare RPi 2:
http://www.pi2design.com/solid-state-drive-rpi-2-shield.html

#10

Whoa! I just bought an odroid XU4 w/ emmC 32gb, to set up with openHap for a Vera 3 UI5.

Can you guys give me details on what I need to install on this thing to get it up and running? Or point me to a link that can get me there?

#11

[quote=“bucko, post:10, topic:190890”]Whoa! I just bought an odroid XU4 w/ emmC 32gb, to set up with openHap for a Vera 3 UI5.

Can you guys give me details on what I need to install on this thing to get it up and running? Or point me to a link that can get me there?[/quote]

I believe this is the place. About 3/4 way down it talks about the Odroid C1 and links to the apt-get method which seems to be the preferred method. The Wiki is not well organized and it took some digging around to find it.

[url=https://github.com/openhab/openhab/wiki/Hardware-FAQ]https://github.com/openhab/openhab/wiki/Hardware-FAQ[/url]

#12

Thanks a lot Rhinesel. This should definitely get me started.

#13

Just an update on this: Odroid has released the C2 which looks like a good option. I don’t have one, but it looks great on paper: http://ameridroid.com/products/odroid-c2

#14

Nice! Tons of RAM (2GB), and a very fast quad-core (2Ghz) CPU. Probably overkill for most openHAB users, but at $42 there’s a ton packed in there - I like that they haven’t forced a fan on it 8)

Looks like they’ve also dropped prices on eMMC modules, much better than running traditional/microSD Flash for these micro’s.