What Spec PC for HS3 Pro

[Kiwi]

I have a new 4700 ft2 home being built and want to put in a NUC as my HS3 Pro server what spec processor and RAM would be advised - it will only be running HS other apps will run on there own PC's

[integlikewhoa]

I have a new 4700 ft2 home being built and want to put in a NUC as my HS3 Pro server what spec processor and RAM would be advised - it will only be running HS other apps will run on there own PC's

Homeseer doesn't require much. If you can run windows you can run homeseer. Any decent base processor with 4 or more GB of ram would do. Homeseer can run on a Pi so if your going with something like a nuc i3 or maybe something like this if you want to step it up.

https://www.amazon.com/ThinkCentre-M...1WMJRTE7XQQPFW

But you could sped less and are not really required to have 8Gb of RAM and an SSD. It small in size though see the specs.

[BattleDroid]

I am running mine on $150 mini pc without any issues.


CHUWI HiBox Smart Mini PC 4G 64G Quad Core Intel x5-Z8350 64bit Android 5.1 + Window 10 Dual OS 2.4G/5G Dual Band WiFi BT 4.0 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N30SSAJ..._3r8Kzb64N5XDM


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[Kerat]

HS3 is pretty light. 4GB ram 2 Core CPU or better. On board 9 pin serial might be nice. The more plugins you run the more ram and CPU you will need.


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[concordseer]

As Kerat said above. If its purely for HS3 and a small number of plugins with a couple of serial or USB connections a Raspberry Pi 3 packs a heavy punch. Plus you can have a number of PI's running different server applications while still communicating with each other for a fraction of the running costs of a full blown PC running 24/7. Plus the silence is deafening sitting in the same room as a Pi lol

[integlikewhoa]

As Kerat said above. If its purely for HS3 and a small number of plugins with a couple of serial or USB connections a Raspberry Pi 3 packs a heavy punch. Plus you can have a number of PI's running different server applications while still communicating with each other for a fraction of the running costs of a full blown PC running 24/7. Plus the silence is deafening sitting in the same room as a Pi lol

A Pi only runs linux so you have less options on plugins.

Mini pc's come in small form factors and some without fans or very quiet fans.

I still think it comes down to operating system. I have a pi3 I tried to run homeseer on and failed. Getting it to auto boot HS3 was a problem. safe shutdowns were another. I just couldn't get hs3 to run stable on linux myself.

Not sure what the OP is used too.

[sidepipe]

Depending on what else you're doing the other approach would be to use one machine to run everything and use VMs. I'm using a Ryzen 1700X machine with 32Gb of RAM with Ubuntu and KVM hosting a bunch of VMs, one of which is running HomeSeer. It would be hugely overpowered for HS3 on its own, but the box is also running my CCTV, file server, Kodi, and some test VMs.

The Linux/Windows debate is an interesting one and comes down to what you're used to. On the one hand it's true that there are less plug-ins available on Linux, but on the other the OS itself is far more flexible and suited to doing general HA tasks... but if you know nothing about it you might struggle.

[concordseer]

A Pi only runs linux so you have less options on plugins.

Mini pc's come in small form factors and some without fans or very quiet fans.

I still think it comes down to operating system. I have a pi3 I tried to run homeseer on and failed. Getting it to auto boot HS3 was a problem. safe shutdowns were another. I just couldn't get hs3 to run stable on linux myself.

Not sure what the OP is used too.

Started HS on Windows a while back and switched to Raspbian Pi and haven't looked back. A few teething troubles starting out with Pi on Raspbian but it's solid as a rock now with the aid of a number of members on this forum.

With the development of Mono 4x all my previous little nagging troubles seem to be resolved. In fact running Beta .350 now since its release and haven't encountered any problems of note.

I think that the letting go of the old and welcoming of the new can be difficult for some. As far as I'm concerned Windows ended the day XP was deprecated. Tried Vista (nightmare) and my experience at the early stages of 7 wasn't much better.

I've Raspberry Pi cameras doing the CCTV stuff, Openelec doing the Media stuff and all talking to each other very nicely. I doubt I'll be ever revisiting Windows unless it absolutely necessary. Plus the fact that I love the community feeling I get from using Linux.

[integlikewhoa]

Started HS on Windows a while back and switched to Raspbian Pi and haven't looked back. A few teething troubles starting out with Pi on Raspbian but it's solid as a rock now with the aid of a number of members on this forum.

With the development of Mono 4x all my previous little nagging troubles seem to be resolved. In fact running Beta .350 now since its release and haven't encountered any problems of note.

I think that the letting go of the old and welcoming of the new can be difficult for some. As far as I'm concerned Windows ended the day XP was deprecated. Tried Vista (nightmare) and my experience at the early stages of 7 wasn't much better.

I've Raspberry Pi cameras doing the CCTV stuff, Openelec doing the Media stuff and all talking to each other very nicely. I doubt I'll be ever revisiting Windows unless it absolutely necessary. Plus the fact that I love the community feeling I get from using Linux.

I have someone that wants to test homeseer and I have the pi and a Smartstick I'm not using.

I dusted off the pi3 and have it in front of me. I thought I would take the easy approach and just install the pi version for him to test.

Well I remember just how much I love Linux in 5 min of using it again.

So I went to the homeseer downloads page and clicked on instructions for pi2-pi3 install. Which are here.
https://homeseer.com/guides/HomeSeer-HS3Pi2-Guide.pdf

When I get to step 6 which is powering it up while plugged into a TV and it stops and gets stuck at this point. See pic.

I just feel like double clicking an install msi or .exe in windows is just way easier.

If you have any suggestions I'm open for ideas. I'll probley start another thread and tinker with it a bit today but my main goal would probley be to install a full version of HS3 instead of the Pi version but thought this would be easier.

I also have a USB stick that I remember trying to backup to every night. But I also remember that usb backup on Linux wasn't as easy as windows selecting a drive either.

[concordseer]

Personally I'd use an SD card of no less then 8gb capacity with a vanilla install of Raspbian Jessie. Creating an image of the latest version I'd SSH into the Pi from there and finish the installation remotely.You can drop a blank file called SSH. onto your card after creating your imaged SD card as SSH is automatically disabled in Raspbian Jessie while the card is in your card reader before you pop it into your Pi.

No real need for keyboards or monitors attached to your Pi.

If you use the full Jessie Distro you can just disable or remove the components you don't need rather than using the Lite version and having to add on later owing to dependency issues.

To be honest it's a breeze once you get comfortable with it.

Yes by all means start a new thread. Plenty of willing members on here to help out too.

[rmasonjr]

HS3Pi2 is for a Pi2. Since you have a Pi3, use the Pi3 image instead:
http://www.homeseer.com/updates3/hs3pi3boot.zip

[integlikewhoa]

HS3Pi2 is for a Pi2. Since you have a Pi3, use the Pi3 image instead:
https://www.homeseer.com/updates3/hs3pi3boot.zip

Yes i did figure that one out. But homeseer website should be updated i think. The downloads page seems to group them with only one link.

[waynehead99]

First, there is no difference between HS3 Standard and HS3 Pro for the core software. They are both the same.

What you get with Pro is the designer software and the HS made plugins free (I have purchased 1 HS plugin in the last 3 years that was made by HS). 3rd party plugins are not included in this.

I was initially running my system on a dual core Intel Duo low powered machine with 4 gigs of ram running windows 10. No issues with this setup and it worked well (I went to another machine just because I am downsizing my server footprint).

I agree if you don't know linux well, don't use it to run HS. The Pi does a good job, but you have to know linux to optimize it (or have good google skills) and you do limit yourself on plugins (but to be fair, most developers try to make their plugins compatible with both, but windows still wins here).

Windows 10 will take some work to disable auto updates and reboots (again google), but its a solid OS no matter what you may hear or read and Windows 7 is going EOL shortly. My system would sometimes go for months without issues or reboots, and only reason it had a reboot is because I was updating patches.

[Pete]

@Kiwi

Many folks today are running their Homeseer on an Intel NUC and do fine with it.

As Wayne mentions above running Homeseer on Linux is easy if you are familiar with the basics of the linux command line. If you are not familiar it can be learning tool if you choose to proceed.

Running Homeseer 3 today doesn't really utilize the GUI much (runs headless) such that all management of the application is done via the web browser and ideally on any computer on your network. The eye candy today is just that and will not provide any benefit to running Homeseer. That said HS runs in Windows, Linux and MAC.

Note too that traditionally whether using Windows or Linux it is the GUI which eats up CPU resources and memory. The use of Linux without a GUI puts the work load primarily on Homeseer which as mentioned above is really lite.

Personally here have tested Homeseer 3 in Linux on Intel / AMD / ARM based CPU devices to work fine.

1 - ARM flavors are Raspberry Pi's and Pine 64
2 - Intel - from the old to the newest iSeries, Atom, et al
3 - AMD - dual core Atom like and faster
4 - memory - 512Mb to 16Gb
5 - OS media - microSD, eMMC (soldered on memory), .m2 SATA, mSata, SATA drives (16 to 32Gb of OS space)
6 - power consumption varies with CPU and memory. Note as Homeseer does stuff 24/7 I would recommend not putting the computer to sleep. That is me.
7 - multiprocessor mega memory boxes made to run multiple instances of OS's (multiple virtual machines). You can package HS here on one virtual machine running any OS and combine multiple functions with multiple OS's (virtual machines). Many Homeseer users have gone this route too.
8 - The Homeseer console is available today for any PC, tablet or smartphone and integration to text to speech, voice recognition via Microsoft SAPI, Google, Amazon....cloud or cloudless...it's up to you on the options. Really only one console is needed.

My current preference is 64 bit Linux Ubuntu. Note too that Homeseer 3 is a 32bit program in Windows and Linux.

Here primarily use a lite computer to run HS ZeeOS and an Intel iSeries computer to run HS3 Pro (multifunctioning base on Ubuntu 64bit).

The lite HS3 PC is getting faster and smaller here now getting ready to test an ARM based dual / quad core with 4Gb of memory, eMMC on it the size of a credit card (smaller than the RPi) with USB 3.0 and a Gb NIC and runs Ubuntu 64 bit.

BTW here base security and lite automation integration to Homeseer is via the Leviton Omni Pro 2. The combo controller talks X10, UPB, Zigbee and ZWave.

Use Homeseer for TTS integration and watching the hard wired variables. Homeseer also talk X10, UPB and Z-Wave.

I am still using Omni keypad, Omnitouch serial touch screens and Omnitouch networked touchscreens. This is mixed in with Homeseer touchscreens (15).

Mostly between using the OmniPro panel and Homeseer automation takes care of itself with little interaction or watching from me.

I used to watch via mobile phones in the early 2000's but do not really do much of that anymore.

[ufd108]

I'm running on an I5 NUC with 8 GB and it's overkill for just HS3. I now run Blue Iris on the same NUC and it's getting bogged down by the HD cameras, so I will probably get an I7 NUC for BI and keep HS3 on the I5.

I have 63 nodes and a bunch of events (haven't counted lately, but it has to be 30 or so) and several plug-ins, and typically utilized about 10% -15% CPU and around 10% - 20% memory, as I recall, before installing BI on the NUC.