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Repurposing old HomeTroller Series III/IV

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    Repurposing old HomeTroller Series III/IV

    I have HS3 on another computer and I now want to repurpose my old HomeTroller, which has the embedded XP OS that had been running HS2. Is it possible to upgrade the OS, when the computer has an embedded OS?

    Thanks,
    Elliott
    "Living with technology means living in a [constant] state of flux." S. Higgenbotham, 2023
    "Reboot and rejoice!" F. Pishotta, 1989

    #2
    In the case of an HT3 (not sure of the 4), if you still have the original 4G CF card installed or even have upgraded it to 8G, there won't be enough space to run another Windows system. A small Linux installation might work.
    In my case, I've installed 240G SSD drives in both my HT2 and HT3 in place of the CF. Plenty of room.
    Real courage is not securing your Wi-Fi network.

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      #3
      Originally posted by Wadenut View Post
      In the case of an HT3 (not sure of the 4), if you still have the original 4G CF card installed or even have upgraded it to 8G, there won't be enough space to run another Windows system. A small Linux installation might work.
      In my case, I've installed 240G SSD drives in both my HT2 and HT3 in place of the CF. Plenty of room.
      Good point. Thanks. I will look into replacing the SSD with a larger one.

      Elliott
      "Living with technology means living in a [constant] state of flux." S. Higgenbotham, 2023
      "Reboot and rejoice!" F. Pishotta, 1989

      Comment


        #4
        Is it possible to upgrade the OS, when the computer has an embedded OS?

        Yes but it will be really slow. Updating the SSD to something larger you can increase the RW cache a bit with the embedded XPe which I would keep on the device.

        Here tried that after switching over to a 32Gb SSD for one Homeseer user on the forum. The limiting factors were still CPU / Memory. So I switched over to a base lite Linux OS which helped a bit being faster than the original embedded XP but not really as functional as I wanted it to be. Next testing was using Windows7 embedded which was just a bit slower than the embedded XP.

        After all of the tinkering the user just sold the device with the included HS2 license as originally installed to another user wanting to use it in HS2 mode.

        All said I would recommend keeping the original XPe OS, using a larger SSD drive and seeing if you can update the RAM (well if it is less than 4Gb).
        - Pete

        Auto mator
        Homeseer 3 Pro - 3.0.0.548 (Linux) - Ubuntu 18.04/W7e 64 bit Intel Haswell CPU 16Gb
        Homeseer Zee2 (Lite) - 3.0.0.548 (Linux) - Ubuntu 18.04/W7e - CherryTrail x5-Z8350 BeeLink 4Gb BT3 Pro
        HS4 Lite - Ubuntu 22.04 / Lenovo Tiny M900 / 32Gb Ram

        HS4 Pro - V4.1.18.1 - Ubuntu 22.04 / Lenova Tiny M900 / 32Gb Ram
        HSTouch on Intel tabletop tablets (Jogglers) - Asus AIO - Windows 11

        X10, UPB, Zigbee, ZWave and Wifi MQTT automation-Tasmota-Espurna. OmniPro 2, Russound zoned audio, Alexa, Cheaper RFID, W800 and Home Assistant

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          #5
          Pete:

          Appreciate your suggestions. Thank you.

          Elliott
          "Living with technology means living in a [constant] state of flux." S. Higgenbotham, 2023
          "Reboot and rejoice!" F. Pishotta, 1989

          Comment


            #6
            Here pushing the limits of the original RPi2 / Zee2 went to testing on a Pine64 2Gb machine and an Xi / Xi5a micro computer and turned the RPi2/Jessie box to a Z-Wave slave machine. Also testing the new Pixel / RPi OS running on an old Intel based IBM laptop (T-40) and it does well for a single processor. It is faster than Linux Lite.

            Check out the build here, put it on a bootable USB stick to test. I did that with the laptop then moved it to the old IDE Hard drive on it.

            Pixel for PC or MAC

            You’ll find all the applications you’re used to, with the exception of Minecraft and Wolfram Mathematica (we don’t have a licence to put those on any machine that’s not a Raspberry Pi). Because we’re using the venerable i386 architecture variant it should run even on vintage machines like my ThinkPad X40, provided they have at least 512MB of RAM.



            Testing it also switched from using Chrome to using Opera. Opera seems to do more faster these days. (even more that Firefox).
            - Pete

            Auto mator
            Homeseer 3 Pro - 3.0.0.548 (Linux) - Ubuntu 18.04/W7e 64 bit Intel Haswell CPU 16Gb
            Homeseer Zee2 (Lite) - 3.0.0.548 (Linux) - Ubuntu 18.04/W7e - CherryTrail x5-Z8350 BeeLink 4Gb BT3 Pro
            HS4 Lite - Ubuntu 22.04 / Lenovo Tiny M900 / 32Gb Ram

            HS4 Pro - V4.1.18.1 - Ubuntu 22.04 / Lenova Tiny M900 / 32Gb Ram
            HSTouch on Intel tabletop tablets (Jogglers) - Asus AIO - Windows 11

            X10, UPB, Zigbee, ZWave and Wifi MQTT automation-Tasmota-Espurna. OmniPro 2, Russound zoned audio, Alexa, Cheaper RFID, W800 and Home Assistant

            Comment

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