When I first came across the ESPHome project a year or so ago. I thought it was interesting and something that I would use if I was building a smart device from scratch. I thought of all the things I could do, but I didn’t really like the idea of all the maintenance I could foresee.

NOTE: This post has been updated on May 26th to use Docker-CE instead of Snap.

I’ve upgraded or swapped my Home Assistant hardware more times than I want to count. I want to share the experiences I’ve learned along the way when choosing hardware to run Home Assistant locally. I always try choose hardware is lower power and will take up limited space in my 9U Server Cabinet