Hi everyone,
I wanted to share my recent experience optimizing Home Assistant’s memory usage on my Raspberry Pi setup. It’s been a journey, but I’m happy to share what worked for me in case others are facing similar issues.
The Issue:
I’ve been running Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi 4B with 1GB RAM for a while now, and recently, I noticed significant performance issues, especially during Docker pulls. Using htop, I saw that Home Assistant was consuming around 65-70% of my system’s RAM, which was causing noticeable slowdowns.
What I Tried:
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Increasing Swap Space: I considered increasing the swap space from the default 100MiB to something larger. While this didn’t completely solve the issue, it did help alleviate some of the thrashing during peak usage.
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Disabling the BLE Tracker: After some research, I realized that the BLE tracker I had enabled was a significant memory hog. Disabling it made a noticeable difference in my system’s performance.
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Purging Known Devices: I also renamed my
known_devices.yamlfile, which was around 3.5MiB. This action halved the memory usage reported byhtop, which was a pleasant surprise. -
Optimizing Templates: I reviewed my template sensors and automations, looking for ways to reduce their complexity. While this didn’t have a huge impact, it did help in maintaining cleaner configurations.
The Outcome:
After implementing these changes, I noticed a significant improvement in system responsiveness. The memory usage dropped to a more manageable level, and the performance issues during Docker operations were greatly reduced.
Conclusion:
Optimizing Home Assistant’s memory usage is an ongoing process, but it’s definitely worth the effort. I encourage others facing similar issues to explore these solutions and share their experiences. Happy optimizing!
Best regards,
[Your Name]