24th of May, 2019
Here are HTOP and Webmin utilization pics with Intel BeelinkBT3 Pro running:
1 - Homeseer 3 with Omni, ZWave, X10 and mcsMQTT plugins plus speaker dot exe
2 - Docker, STunnel4, Webmin, Home-Assistant with OmniLinkPlugin, MQTT, Alexa plugin (for TTS and Alexa commands)
Pushing a bit on the eMMC space here. CPU utilization is fine.
Using the Intel BeelinkBT3 Pro provides you with a tiny low energy use Homeseer 3 and Home-Assistant micro server.
Note: to do this you should be proficient in Linux (Ubuntu) command line and Windows use, Oracle Virtual Box, Windows 7, Docker, HA and plugin docker installation.
Adds to Windows 7 embedded Virtual box are: (managed and access via RDP).
1 - dot net 4.0
2 - SAPI and Neospeech voice fonts
3 - R2 autostart
4 - Homeseer Speaker
5 - Leviton PCA (optional)
6 - Upstart (optional)
7 - Homeseer 3 Touch Designer (optional)
Here Windows 7e is running on a 10Gb virtual box partition and assigned 2Gb of RAM.
Next testing adding PCA to Windows 7 embedded.
Note if upgrading Intel 4Gb DDR3-64Gb emmc mini TVBox to one which includes an SSD slot then you can turn this box in to a micro NAS in addition to the automation pieces of it. MicroNAS will allow you to move run VBs from NAS drive. Only thing I do not like is having the USB ports on the sides which could be fixed by using a USB hub and a right angle connector.
The BeeLink BT3 Pro purchased here was $65 with free shipping. Best prices I have seen is via Gearbest (~$100) and Amazon ($150)
Prices for the above mentioned box are between $100-$150 USD depending on where you find them.
Using an Intel CPU on a TV Box allows for use of Oracle Virtual Box. Using an ARM CPU on a TV Box does not work with Virtual box.
Both of the above boxes are levels above the RPi, Pine64, Rock64, RockPi4 devices and make for optimal low powered automation servers.
The Intel TV Boxes that I am referencing are similiar using:
1 - Intel Atom x5 - Z8350 CPU (quad core Atom)
2 - 4 gb of DDR3
3 - 64gb emmc
4 - USB 3.0 and USB 2.0
5 - VGA and HDMI ports
6 - Gb NIC
7 - Blue tooth
8 - WLAN
9 - come with licensed Windows 10 Home
10 - optional SSD slot
GPU's in these boxes are OK with 1080 but not OK for 4K HD video streaming. (worthless to me to run KODI).
On another note the cheaper newer Arm based TVBoxs make for excellent KODI 4K boxes.