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Make sure you check the $50 coupon to get the mini PC for $229.00.
I am looking to set up a home mini PC for home assistant and frigate, and with that in mind this is what I like about this particular mini PC deal:
- Dual 2.5G Intel ethernet ports. At this price, I was quite happy to see these in the specs. For my use, I will have one port connected to the legacy NVR PoE switch, the other to my home LAN, I will be able to upgrade my switches to faster 2.5G in the future, wifi will not be required for this machine.
- This unit has a USB-C port with display out.
- Windows 11 pro appears to be included, however I have not tried it out yet as I immediately put a different SSD in to run home assistant OS. (Testing with a spare 128GB NVMe drive I had laying about - seems to be working in the slot).
- This M.2 Dual Edge TPU Coral accelerator fits in the wifi M.2 slot, which is underneath the M.2 2242 SATA SSD.
- Australian power plug and HDMI cable included.
Notes:
This mini PC is small and quiet.
Wifi card in the mini PC is a removable M.2 with a sticker CDW-C9821CE-00 - google search tells me this is BT5/WiFi5 so it may be useful for others to consider upgrading to a better WiFi 6 or better card if you need that.
I have confirmed this can operate a portable monitor with a single USB-C cable but do not know if it will operate in single cable mode from a powered monitor.
The SSD is 2242 size, the brand included is ASint AS606 256GB, which Google tells me is a SATA drive.
There do not appear to be many options in the BIOS, but I think you can adjust the DDR5 speed from 4400 to 4800
The dual edge TPU coral card is detected when installed in the WiFi slot (in Home Assistant one apex device shows in the hardware list) however it may potentially cause thermal problems being directly underneath the SSD.
Package also includes a usage instruction booklet, an aoostar thankyou card, an aoostar contact details card, a mounting bracket, 3 screws, and a silver AOOSTAR brand sticker (there is no branding on the case of the PC unlike the Amazon pictures).
Here is a recent review: Robtech's AOOSTAR N1 PRO review
I started exploring Home Assistant and Frigate to run on [this previous dual LAN mini pc deal] however that PC did not recognise the M.2 Dual Edge Coral accelerator which I will need with Frigate.
It is early days but I have put a coral M.2 in the wifi slot of one of these mini PC and it appears to recognise (one) TPU in the slot, and that was what I was hoping for.
Description from the Amazon page:
N150,which is faster than the Intel N100/N95 - AOOSTAR N1 PRO N150 Mini PC is powered by 2024 Latest In-tel Processor Twin Lake N150(4Cores/4 Threads, 6M In-tel Smart Cache, 0.8GHz, MAX TO 3.6GHz) , delivers more than 39% higher performance than N100. Performance at least +40%, GPU at least +23% compared with the previous CPU - N95/N5105/N5095. it outperforms its predecessors, even rivaling some mainstream mobile processors from the past，Ideal as a mini home server and PLEX server
Rich Interfaces and full-featured Type-C Port:AOOSTAR N150 mini PC is equipped with Type-C (PD+DP+DATE), DP, 2HDMI, 3USB3.2 GEN2, 2RJ45 2500M LAN, 1Audio Interface, 1*DC port, which can easily meet office, home needs easily. DP+HDMI+Type-c Supports triple 4K displays, Wake on LAN and Auto Power On, ideal for use as a Plex server
The AOOSTAR mini PC supports dual-band WIFI 6 and Bluetooth 5.2. In addition, this mini PC comes with 2* 2500Mbps Lan port, which effectively reduces network congestion and data delay, and allows you to use more networks such as software routers (OpenWRT / DD-WRT, etc.), firewalls, NAT, network isolation, etc. bringing you a super smooth browsing experience.
【12G LPDDR5 RAM + M.2 2242 256GB SSD】This mini desktop computer has built-in 12GB (Single-channel) LPDDR5 RAM and 256GB M.2 2242 SSD, which has faster reading speed and better performance compared with DDR4 3200MHz. For storage freedom, N150 mini computer supports SATA/NVME SSD, you can expand as needed (not included) to expand it to 2TB.
Package Includes:1x N1 PRO N150 Mini PC, 1x HDMI Cable, 1x 35W Power Adapter; Any questions, please email us or contact us with AOOSTAR offical si//te，We are always ready to listen to you.
Update: The detector ended up getting fairly hot once I connected 6 cameras. I put in a makeshift heatsink with thermal pads in a sandwich between the coral and the SSD, seems to have broght the temperature back down acceptably.
Frigate running well, detector CPU 68 degrees, inference time 8-9ms, GPU load seems under control. I will leave it running for a few days.
Beelink MINI-S12 Pro – Intel N100 (up to 3.40GHz), 16GB RAM, 500GB SSD for $259. Which one is better?