I’ve got a home battery system for which I need finer control over it’s firmware settings than the manufacturer provides and found a python daemon with MQTT support and Home Assistant integration. So I now have a Raspberry Pi connected to the inverter and have seen the display screens Home Assistant has and realize it’s 100% locally controlled so no worry about Internet connectivity.
But I have some 10" x86 tablets running Linux which I thought would make a nice always-on solar system display I could mount on the wall inside the house. Now I’m wondering, do I put HA on the tablet or do I put HA on the rPi and the tablet is just a remote display? Anyone see any pros or cons either way?
The one advantage of the tablets is that they have everything needed to work without addional hardware. On the Pi, you may have to add wireless connectivity and of course a screen if necessary.
The rPi has built-in WiFi(and Bluetooth for that matter) and I generally ssh into any remote rPi around so no need for a screen there. If I installed a DC-DC down converter connected to the 48V output of the house batteries there would be no need for a UPS but I don’t expect for my house AC to drop since it’s on the inverter+batteries already.
Maybe I should spin up a docker container and mess with HA some to see how it works in general.
