I’m looking to buy a cheap mini PC to run Home Assistant. I found lots on Amazon.es but I don’t want to give them my money. Looking for something like a cheap €200 n150 box. Any suggestions where I can buy this in Europe?
Edit: somehow forgot that HA sell their own devices, HomeAssistant Green for 100$ and HomeAssistant Yellow which also supports the project.
Original comment: Highly recommend a used “enterprise mini PC” from Dell , HP or Lenovo. Get it from your local IT refurbisher, eBay or your local ebay-equivelent.
These are sometimes called 1L PCs for their 1 Litre size. Model names are Dell Optiplex, HP Elite desk or Prodesk, Lenovo Think centre. Prices are €100 to €1500 depending on age and specs. €150 should be more than enough for HomeAssistant.Alternatively https://slimbook.com/en/ sells Linux PCs out of Spain, and https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/ out of Germany.
Another option is the british RaspberryPi, but that might be more hassle. You need to separately get a good power supply and cable, good SD-Card, case, maybe with fan. And its ARM not x86, but that doesn’t matter for HomeAssistant unless you’re doing something very exotic.
Question of curiosity: why not consider RaspberryPi for the task? It is definitely going to be cheaper and more power efficient when comparing to mini computer (even if you take new one), because has so much more computing ability per Watt. I’ve been running HomeAssistant + cups server + small file server on RaspberryPi 3b+ without any issues for few years, and it was pretty actively used.
Additional point, RaspberryPi is publically traded company on London Exchange, and was founded in Britain, which mostly matches the “Buy European” motto ;)
Yeah the RaspberryPi is perfect for those things. They also have Suggested hardware for that. I don’t know about your country, but here in Germany electricity is expensive.
