Apparently the Raspberry Pi is the least efficient platform, I have no idea whether Synology NAS is good enough? At least if you have the NAS you only need to buy the z-wawe stick. I have seen the ODROID option ODROID-N2+ — ameriDroid which is probably the most efficient platform other than a dedicated PC?, but I do not know if it’s worth the investment and effort?
I have HA on a RPi 3 and it has never had a problem.
I have an HA VM on Synology (920+) with a Z-wave/Zigbee combo stick (HUSBZB-1). Works flawlessly.
1 Like
I have a DS220+, do you think it will be powerful enough?
I see that your dongle is a 500 series and now there are the 700 series which have been quite problematic, but I do not know whether the problems have been soved ( Beware of Z-Wave 700 series controllers | IP Cam Talk)?
Many thanks!
I have not had any problems with my 700 series zwave dongle.
I’ve compared the specs of the Synology units. The biggest issue I see is the memory. I upgraded my unit from 4GB to 8GB with this: https://www.amazon.ca/gp/aw/d/B082MSJ5YY
The memory made a big difference for me. It looks like your unit can use this same module also, and I expect you might have issues running a vm with anything else using the default 2GB RAM.
I’m not using the M2 slot for boost so you not having that isn’t an issue for you.
I can’t speak to the different USB stick versions.
I actually have 6GB which is the maximum memory the DS220+ can hold, do you think it might be enough?
Greg, this is very good to know, I was worried about the 700 series zwave dongle… Many thanks
OK, many many thanks I’ll try to install the dongle and HA and let you and Greg know how it works 
1 Like
By the way, I’ve read that Home Assistant with Z-wave radio won’t start after NAS reboot, have you experienced this? I am following this guide: Installing Home-Assistant.io on a Synology Diskstation NAS – Phil Hawthorne
Many thanks
Nope - no problems like that.
Keep in mind I’m using a virtual machine with their full system, not a docker image which as I recall lacks the supervisor support.
I have been looking into the VM in Synology and I guess my device DS220+ might not be powerful enough… What’s the advantage of the VM on Synology vs using the Docker container?
Greg, could you confirm me that HA with the 700 series zwave dongle is compatible with the Somfy rechargeable battery motors which I guess are RTS ? Many thanks!
Somfy makes many different technologies. RTS and zwave are two different technologies. I have Bali autoview which use somfy zwave motors. These are compatible with the zwave dongle. I also have Bali shades that use Somfy RTS motors. These would need something different to bridge the gap. Bond is a bridge I have used successfully as well as a Somfy ZRTSI. This is an RTS to zwave bridge.
1 Like
Why do you not think it’s powerful enough? The cpu base frequency is on par with the ds920+ with a peak boost 200Mhz higher.
Ram is only an issue if you are running too much.
The difference is that the VM is the full HA os with supervisor support. The docker is running a basic HA on a foreign OS.
There might not be any difference for most, but I do remember having trouble using a container until I went to the VM (I just don’t remember what).
So would you recommend me to use a VM as you do?
Could you point me to some instructions to follow?
Many thanks!
I’d start with the Home Assistant installation docs and community. You will be able to see all the differences between containers and VMs (the difference as noted is the supervisor which maintains the health of the HA containers so you don’t have to yourself). Any recent article or video showing HA VM setup on DSM7 should help in that regard.
If you’re still having trouble, let me know and I’ll GTFY.
I think I’ll be able to install either the container or the VM with HA, my only concern is what would be more efficient? I have read many articles and watched several vdeos, but since my Synology has a maximum of 6GB of RAM and the most recommended is 4GB to run HA, I’m not sure whether leaving the NAS with only 2GB would be enough? I can also try 3 and 3…?
Another alternative I have seen is to buy an old i7 mini PC or thin client which seems quite efficient and interesting?
My HA VM is running with a single CPU core, 1 GB RAM and a 32GB virtual disk.
No performance problems at all.
1 Like