I’ve got a PC the kids and I built years ago as a gaming machine that we don’t use anymore. Thinking of repurposing it for use with my home automation setup (replacing my current Raspberry Pi 4 with Home Assistant installed).
It’s certainly COMPLETELY overkill for that, so I’m curious what other ways I can make use of it as a home automation server of some sort. Or maybe there’s some reason it’s actually a bad idea to use it at all for this?
Specs…
- CPU: Intel i3-8100 3.6Ghz
- Memory: 8GB
- Storage: 2TB
- GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
- Motherboard: B360M Pro-VDH MS-7B24
Currently has Windows 11 installed on it.
Home Assistant -> Frigate for cameras -> Keep the GPU use it with frigate for that AI stuff like object detection, people detection etc.
Not sure if energy usage is a consideration, but consider that the wyse thin client I got from ebay for £70, runs at 15 watts, and this was a drop from a Dell optiplex min destop thingy that used to run everything below at 50+ watts.
So I went from £120 a year to £35 a year and with the £85 I saved, I got a Nabu Casa subscription (£65 a year), and had enough left over to get myself a starbucks:-)
Running at 15 watts: