Smart home
Answer five questions (how many devices and cameras, Frigate, a voice assistant) and see which server to run Home Assistant on: Home Assistant Green, Raspberry Pi 5, an N100 mini PC or something bigger.
The official box: plug in and go, HA OS preinstalled, quiet and low power. Plenty for automations, Zigbee and a hundred devices.
For tinkerers who want GPIO and HATs. Boot from an SSD (an NVMe HAT), not a microSD card: cards wear out.
The sweet spot: Frigate with OpenVINO for several cameras, local voice (Whisper, Piper), Proxmox with a few VMs, all at ~10 W.
For many cameras with recording, heavier voice models and several VMs. Add a Coral for Frigate if you go beyond 8–10 cameras.
Costs nothing and has a built-in battery (laptop). Install HA OS on it; just check the power draw: an old desktop can use 40–60 W around the clock.
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