The developers of the popular Home Assistant open-source automation framework have introduced the Home Assistant Green gateway based on a Rockchip RK3566 processor providing a lower-cost alternative to the Raspberry Pi CM4-based Home Assistant Yellow gateway.
The Home Assistant Green was created to cater to the needs of people who did not need all of the advanced features enabled in the Home Assistant Yellow gateway and also because of the supply and pricing issues with the Raspberry Pi CM4. Just like its predecessor, the new gateway ships with Home Assistant OS and comes with everything that beginners may need to get started with Home Assistant in just one box.
Home Assistant Green specifications:
- SoC – Rockchip RK3566
- CPU – Quad-core Arm Cortex-A55 processor @ 1.8 GHz
- GPU – Arm Mali-G52 2EE GPU
- NPU – 0.8 TOPS AI accelerator,
- VPU – 4Kp60 H.265/H.264/VP9 video decoding, 1080p100f H.265/H.264 video encoding
- System Memory – 4GB RAM
- Storage – 32GB eMMC flash for OS, microSD card slot for recovery purposes only
- Networking
- Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 port
- Zigbee 3.0 and Matter with Home Assistant SkyConnect
- USB – 2x USB 2.0 Type-A host ports
- Video Output – HDMI for diagnostics purposes only
- Misc
- Power off button
- Power (White), Activity (Green) and System Status Yellow) LEDs
- Optional CR2032 battery
- Power Supply – 12V/1A via DC power jack
- Power Consumption – Idle: ~1.7W; under load: ~3W
- Dimensions – 112 x 112 x 32/33.6mm (plastic enclosure with large aluminum heatsink for heat dissipation)
- Weight – 340 grams
- Temperature Range – 0 to 40°C
The new gateway ships with everything you may need to get started with a 12V/1A power adapter, a 1.5-meter Ethernet cable, a Quick Start Guide, and a Warrant and Safety information leaflet. There’s no wireless connectivity in the box, but the USB ports can be used with the Home Assistant SkyConnect for ZigBee 3.0 and Matter connectivity as well as a WiFi, Bluetooth, or Z-Wave dongle if needed.
The Home Assistant Green gateway supports OTA firmware updates so the latest version of Home Assistant will always run on the box, and the mobile/web app will guide users through the setup process and detect Smart Home devices automatically. The developers say it’s the easiest way to use Home Assistant as it’s basically a plug-and-play platform.
The Home Assistant Green gateway can be purchased on Seeed Studio for $99 plus shipping. Further details may be found on the product page and in the announcement.
Thanks to Mark and Hedda for the tip.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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I have to admit I’m not quite sure I understand the positioning of the Home Assistant devices. This is quite expensive for an RK3566 board, there are quite a few things that seem quite useless to me (like HDMI or a GPU), and you still have to add the dongle for Zigbee/Matter.
While I expect this to be more expensive than an ESP32 based device, some kind of headless board with just Ethernet or Wifi would probably be more appropriate here (and a lot cheaper and smaller), wouldn’t it?
The hardware is definitivly less expensive to manufakture so not sold at cost, guess that they added cost for R&D + post-sale support to it. Still think that they could and should have included their onboard Zigbee and Thread radio for that price as that would have attracted more buyers for sure.
Oh, and the HDMI port is only for debugging and just meant to be used by developers of Home Assistant Operating System.
Esp32? That’s a microcontroller.
This is a a full OS?
This device really serves no obvious or well defined purpose (in my opinion).
It’s a really weird offering form the HA guys here.
I think the main competitor for Home Assistant is Homey. Very easy, very expandable and also reasonable expensive.
Leaving out HDMI and GPU yield no savings, requiring a custom board it probably only increases the price (customizing the board only works with large production amounts and the number of customers of these series is limited).
The ESP32 brings me to unknown teritory. I use HA nowadays since adding sensors is easy and the user-interface is reasonably easy to customize. I guess an ESP32 would be cheaper but also less easy to expand and customize.
Wholesale price for this hardware is $32-37 with 4/32.
Since it is open source maybe someone will port it to this hardware.
https://detail.1688.com/offer/650732232962.html
BTW, this would be much more interesting if someone could locate a cheap, existing box with the PCI M.2 slot. Then you could add an SSD for video storage, Like this Orange PI one: https://www.cnx-software.com/2023/08/05/orange-pi-3b-a-rockchip-rk3566-sbc-with-an-m-2-nvme-sata-ssd-socket-up-to-8gb-ram/
Armbian has been ported to the STB I linked.
https://forum.armbian.com/topic/24091-efforts-to-develop-firmware-for-h96-max-v56-rk3566-4g32g/
So it should be easy to clone this.
It’s on Aliexpress for $32.42 4/32
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/3256805604846408.html
Is it a TV Box?
Maybe I am too much in my garden shed thinking, but I am surprised by the “Temperature Range – 0 to 40°C”.
“Zigbee 3.0 and Matter with Home Assistant SkyConnect”, but the USB stick does not support Thread yet, still waiting for a firmware update according to website.
It does already support Thread but it is still listed as experimental so you have to opt-in to use, it is not installed du default
I run HA (amongst other things) on top of ESXi on an old Dell Wyse 5070 thin terminal. They’re small, you can pick them up dirt cheap and it idles at just a couple of watts. I don’t get the appeal of an embedded platform for this particular situation.
I think it’s for people that just want something that works without having to install or configure anything.
I could see this being a success if they offered the RK3588S chip instead as I’ve been running HA Supervised on my OPi 5 16GB RAM for nearly 8 months having replaced an RPi 4B and the performance difference is massive.
A boring 12v rk3566 device supporting A/B updates OTA that’s confidence inspiring enough to deploy at distant relatives location…. sounds good.
BOM low enough that this really great open source project can get some margin on the hardware they support without mandatory fees….even better.