in today's video we're gonna have a look at five upgrades that you
can add to your pi running home assistant check it out he knows it
if it's techy he'll show it if it's something fancy or something janky it's my quartet
that was different what's going on guys i hope you're all doing well recently i've been asked
a lot about the various different setups and upgrades that i make use of with my pies running
home assistant so we're going to be having a quick look at five different upgrades that i personally
use if you've got a really cool upgrade that you personally make use of that's different to these
five then let me know in the comments below as always this video will be chaptered so if there's
a particular upgrade that you want to have a look at then be sure to make use of those timestamps in
the description below our first upgrade is going to have to be the ice tower heatsink essentially
what this thing is is just a big heatsink that sits on top of your pie and it's just going to
keep your pie super cool i personally love the aesthetics of the ice tower and i'm also a fan
of the rgb fan if you don't like the rgb fan it does also come with a plain fan so you can swap
this out and just have a plain clear fan the ice tower is compatible with both the raspberry pi 3
and the raspberry pi 4 and all you do with it is just literally sit on top of it put some thermal
paste down and then screw it in place when the ice tower is on and running i wouldn't say it's
noticeably loud but it does offer two different modes of speed so you've got the full speed
cooling mode and you've got the quiet cooling mode to actually swap between the two modes all
you need to do is just change the voltage supplied to the fan so you can either connect it to the 5
volt rail or the 3 volt rail with the main ice tower kit you obviously get the main ice tower
heatsink and you get the two different fans that i previously mentioned in addition to that you also
get some other heatsinks to cover your raspberry pi components and you also get this nice bottom
acrylic plate the acrylic plate it's got some little holes in to allow some heat to escape
and it's also got a cut out to allow you to insert your memory cards one thing i don't like about the
ice tower is if you happen to be running it like this so with no external enclosure so as i'd call
this a naked pie if you're running it as a naked pie then the fan does have a tendency to choke up
a bit so over time it just gets clogged up with a bit of dust and that can just make the fan jitter
a bit and actually can make the fan make a bit of noise so if you are hearing a bit of noise
or hearing that kind of jittery noise then you'll know that you need to clean it out but if you do
happen to run it like that then you can just clean it and you won't really get that issue
and that issue isn't specific to this thing it's with any kind of electronics that you have exposed
and probably more so when you've got a big old fan sitting on the top just sucking in dust all day if
you're interested in picking one of these up it's going to cost you just under 20 pounds in the uk
and just over 20 dollars in the u.s home assistant wise with the ice tower attached the pie usually
has a temperature of about 35 degrees and this stays very cool even when i'm doing things
like viewing camera streams streaming media and running lots of different automations and add-ons
you can see here we've got a graph of the processor's temperature throughout the day
so you can see it's pretty averaged all the way through we've got some lows here of about 31
degrees and some spikes there of about 40 and 41 these results are from the ice tower running in
its quiet cooling mode so this is where it's using less power and generating less noise
one feature that this fan doesn't have that some others do is active coolant so when it's plugged
in it's just constantly running at the same speed but it would be nice that when it's idling if it
could use a bit less power and maybe slow down the revolutions of the fan but all in all i am a
fan of this fan up next we've got a bit of a cure for our naked pie and that's a case this specific
case is a 3d printed case that's designed to house a raspberry pi 4 and the ice tower which is great
as it means we get to keep our lovely cooled pie but we also get a nice enclosure to house it all
now one of the nice thing about this specific case is you get an extra fan with it so you have
a fan on the front and also a fan on the side so by utilizing this specific case app is now even
cooler the trade-off to having this extra fan is extra power consumption and extra noise now for me
personally the noise doesn't bother me whatsoever and the power consumption is very minimal
if you own a 3d printer then you could just design and print your own case or you could
download somebody else's stencil and just print that out and if you don't own a 3d printer you
can just jump online and do a search for ice tower compatible pie cases which is exactly what
i did for this one this specific case was from etsy but you could buy one pretty much anywhere
online i think it cost about 40 pounds and if you do want this specific case i'll have a link to it
in the description below some other cool features that this case has is it has these mesh filters
so that's going to help keep all that dust out and it will stop me complaining like before
it's also got these cool clear acrylic sides which have got raspberry pi logos etched onto them
so you have it on the side and also on the top now some people that sell these offer different
logos so you could have your own logo printed or your own design etched onto the top and side
it's also got some nice ventilation on the back and a slot for your sd card
okay up next we've got arguably one of the most important features for running home assistant on a
pi and that's an ssd if you had to choose just one of the five upgrades that i'm showing you today
then i'd definitely recommend it be the ssd with the ssd you get an absolutely huge speed
boost in comparison to an sd card and it's also much much more reliable if you're currently sat
there running home assistant on an sd card and you have been thinking of making the jump to an ssd
then just do it to help with this i've made a whole bunch of different videos on how to set up
home assistant on an ssd and i also cover things like migrating from an sd card to an ssd so if
you're interested in that then go and check those videos out they should be linked above and also
in the description and just to tie our upgrades together you may have noticed that on this case
it's got this little tray on the bottom and the purpose of that tray is to actually hold the ssd
so with this the ssd just slides into the bottom you can then just connect the ssd to your pi
using a sata to usb 3 cable you can get really short cables or l-shaped cables so they don't
have this big overhang like i've got here which would help tidy up the design a little bit so
at this point now we've got a pie with dual fans a nice case and the speeds of an ssd and you can
also have those fancy rgb fans if that's something you're into the fourth upgrade is all about backup
power for your pi with the aims of keeping home assistant running even if you've had a power cut
and we're going to be doing that with one of these so this thing is the pie sugar 2 and you should
think of it as kind of like a small ups for your pie in the uk it costs just under 50 pounds and
i think in the us it's also just under 50 you're probably looking at the cost of that and thinking
to yourself i could get two or three external battery packs for the cost of just one of these
and yes you could typically external battery packs are much bigger and you can get smaller ones but
the benefits of this thing is it integrates directly into your pie so the pie sugar has
two parts you've got the actual battery and then you've got the control board
the control board fastens to the raspberry pi and it directly interfaces with the pi's gpi opens
with the pi sugar connected to your pi you can install a bit of software that allows you to
control and manage the battery this little bit of software allows you to create a schedule for
when your pi should wake up on the control board there's a little button and you can
assign actions to those buttons so you could have something like a double tap to shut down the pi
you can also set a safe shutdown level so if the pi is being powered by the pi sugar and the
battery reaches a set level then the pi is going to automatically do a safe shutdown and this is
going to prevent the pi from getting any damage or your sd card or ssd getting any kind of corruption
and you can obviously also view the battery level of the pie sugar so if you're doing this with home
assistant if you're running home assistant os then you won't be able to install this
as you can't add anything on like this but if you're running it supervised or you've got it
in docker or something like that then you can add this on as a fun little project i'm actually
working to get the information from this into home assistant os but that's going to be for another
video and in that video i'll also be doing a full review of this thing another thing to point out is
you don't actually have to use any software to make use of the pie sugar you can just plug it
into your pie and then should the power go it can automatically switch to the power of the battery
this is just one ups option and it also happens to fit nicely inside of that case with the ice tower
if you're making use of a ups with your pi and home assistant then let me know in the comments
below which one it is you're using alternatively if you're making use of a pie sugar and you have
integrated it into home assistant then let me know i'd be interested in having a look at your project
our fifth and final upgrade takes some of the features of the upgrades that we've already
looked at and combines them all down into one small package and of course it's the argon one m2
i've previously covered installing home assistant on the arkham 1 m2 so if you're interested in that
there'll be a link to it in the description below this is a great premium case and it's got some
really cool features it's got things like active cooling m2 storage color coded gpo pins and two
full hdmi ports and those are just some of the features this case will cost you about 50 pounds
in the uk and about 45 dollars in the us home assistant wise you can get an add-on for the argon
one that allows you to control the arc on one's fan speeds this allows you to adjust the speed of
the fan based on the price temperature and there we go that's been a quick look at five of the
upgrades that i like to make use of with my home assistant and pi setups if you have enjoyed this
video don't forget to drop me a like and if you're not already hit that subscribe button and ding
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