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Current Hardware: Vera Plus, HA in Synology Docker
Firmware: v.7.0.31
Available SW / HW: Multiple RPi's, Z-Way UZB w/lic, Z-Way Razberry board
ZWave Devices: 30-ish early gen GE/Jasco light switchesIssue: I've gotten myself into a spot that I'm not quite sure how to safely get out of, and I'm hoping someone on this forum can help me. I would ultimately like to get to a point where I'm using Home Assistant in Docker on my Synology as my UI for turning on/off lights, but I've read the "Pyramid" post and am open to other options. I can currently ssh to my Vera Plus, but cannot access the web UI (get a 403).
How I Got Here:
Back in Feb'19, I followed @rafale77's instructions to take my Vera off the grid. At the time, it looks like I was running version 7.0.26. This worked great.
I installed HA in Docker w/socat on my Synology NAS, and things were running perfectly for a long time, but I was forced to upgrade HA in tandem with an upgrade to the iOS app. So, I chose to use a Docker build that already had socat built in.
Then, I saw that there was a new version of firmware for Vera, and decided to upgrade to Firmware v.7.0.31 around Apr'20. This was a mistake in a big way, and I sought help on the new version of the Vera forums, which eventually led me here. I also re-ran @rafale77's mod files on the newer firmware version, and I think I shot myself in the foot there. I knew it was gamble, and take full responsibility. I've learned a lot and have benefitted greatly from his work.
I tried to run the Nuke Vera script, as that sounded exactly what I needed my Vera to do - take commands from HA and nothing else. This seems to be working, but I'm unable to control my network with HA.
Additional things I've done / tried / worry about:
Validated that HA is sending and receiving responses via socat from the Vera in the HA openzwave logs. I see logs that seem to indicate that a message is sent, and a message comes back from the Vera, but lights don't turn on/off. I've clicked the Heal Network, Test, Network, and Soft Reset buttons in the HA UI too.
I purchased a razberry. Then, I ordered a UZB, after seeing this post about migrating, assuming that it was best to try to follow that guide verbatim and not have to exclude / include a bunch of devices. I'm leaning towards completely divorcing myself from Vera.
I'm not 100% sure I have a valid backup of my zwave config. There are no dongle.dump files in /etc/cmh whch may make sense, as I was using after an external drive w/extroot. I do have some in ./mnt/sda2/etc/cmh/. It looks like I've got extra, actually, as it looks like I probably made backup copies some where along the way.
I shutdown the Vera and removed the extroot drive, reversed all of the changes Nuke-Vera made to the init.d start up files, and rebooted. I did this because the migration guide mentions to set the path of the z-way UZB in the UI settings, and I couldn't find how do this over ssh. I also don't know how to backup the zwave config from the CLI and was going to do this via the UI. As mentioned previously, I'm getting a 403 "Access Denied" message. Looking at logs and the config for lighthttpd, I think it is trying to follow some symbolic links that no longer exist, but I'm hoping I can get out of the mess I've made without troubleshooting and solving the HTTPD issues. I think I just need to know how to follow the steps to clone the Vera to the UZB via the CLI?
I found a command online method that allows me to view the zwave keys with hexdump. The keys on the device are different than the keys in on the drive that i was using for extroot, and that concerns me a bit.
If you've made this far, thanks for your time! Does anyone know the best way for me to get myself out of the mess I've got myself into?
All the best,
Michael -
Dear Experts!
In January 2020, I decided to get involved in automation as a complete beginner.
I purchased a Vera Plus device controller.I built the network gradually, at the cost of overcoming no small problems .....
Since I am a beginner I have had a lot of problems.For example: I had 6 multisensors that sometimes got stuck with motion detection (lights stayed on) and also created ghost devices.
I knocked everything out of the system, the system stabilized a lot after that. (many red lines disappeared from luaupnp ....)Over time and with the help of the experts (Eg: AKbooer was a great help to me in netatmo which I thank again) I managed to solve most of the errors.
I only use a reactor to control the logic and execution.
The logical composition of my reactor is not very complicated in my opinion.My DSC alarm (with plugin) controls the house modes, cameras, each room has a separate reactor sensor (18 sensors in total) which control the automatic lighting and shutters.
I tried to improve the conditions and scenes in the reactor to perfection. (don't have executions, delays and reservations at the same time, I record the states with the "time from reactor" group state, just like the motion and opening detections from another sensor.
The situation is that the system does not always work reliably.
I experience Lua recharges at completely unpredictable intervals, about 1-3 per day
times.
Because of this, unfortunately my scenes slip, (or don't happen)
For simple things (tablet charging in) there is usually no problem.However, if I am not at home for several hours and return home, the alarms will turn off, and the luup recharge(90%).
If you approach the afternoon when more times are set in the time reactor then recharging will still occur but not always.For the past 10 months, I feel tired of the constant error search and still not good. I'm starting to doubt Vera's abilities.
Therefore, I would have the following questions:
Are the conditions set in the reactor loaded on the vera without action?
Can the Vera be stable and well-functioning without an unexpected lua reload?
If so, what do I need to add? (I'm a simple user, not a programmer, I don't know lua and linux programming languages and I don't want to learn because of vera)
I don’t want to deal with this too much anymore, so I still spent more on it than I deserve.Is there another controller that works safely and well on the z-wave platform?
In what direction should I move away from the vera, which will not disappoint me?
Have you heard of a controller called comfortclick? (I was now offered this instead of vera)
Thank you in advance for your help.
Krisztian
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So ... I am trying to do the following:
Current setup:
Vera Plus (1.7.4955) Zwave only -> HASSIO VM (full control via Vera Integration)Future Target:
HASSIO VM (leveraging zwave.me UZB1 dongle via USB)I have done the following so far:
Updated UZB1 dongle (via RPi SmartHome) to latest 5.39 FirmwareI followed the following steps to try and migrate my existing Z-Wave NW (currently on Vera) onto the UZB1 dongle following the steps listed here:
Problem:
Steps 1-3: went fine (although the dumps are labeled as dongle.6.1.dump.x)
Step 4: went fine and the UZB1 was recognized as it should be (per dmesg)
Step 5: updating the port to /dev/ttyACM0 went fine, although I didn't see any indication of luup reload (or a save button for that matter when updating the port mapping)
Step 6: I did the touch for dongle.restore, but wasn't sure where to trigger a luup reload (I assumed it was Z-Wave Settings > Advanced > Reload Engine). I believe I got an error message when trying to do that step
Step 7: verify dongle.restore.go I don't recall being in the directions when I was going the test, but I rebooted
Post Reboot: None of my previous z-wave devices were listed. I also checked dmesg via ssh and noticed the following items:
[ 4.328000] Unsupported Device! [ 4.328000] Vendor=658 ProdID=200 [ 4.328000] Manufacturer= Product=I saw that item a couple times which almost seems like Vera is blocking the UZB1 or at least complaining about it.
I ended up switching the Z-Wave back to the embedded controller, and restoring configuration from backup.
Any suggestions what I did wrong??
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Script to disable all the mios/vera proprietary program and broadcast its zwave and zigbee radio serial ports in your network so it can be picked up by another controller... For example z-way.
rafale77/Nuke-Vera rafale77/Nuke-VeraScript to neuter the vera and broadcast its zwave and zigbee serial ports - rafale77/Nuke-Vera
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I have a VeraPlus and would like to purchase a second z-wave controler. Is it possible to build a second z-wave network next to an existing z-wave network? Slowly I want to move devices form Vera to the new z-wave network. Is it more advisable to install the second z-wave controller as a slave controler?
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My VeraPlus is in Christmas Light mode after attempting the latest update. So as I attempt to get things back with Vera Support I need to start looking into an alternate solution. I've installed OpenLuup in an Ubuntu VM I have running on an old PC. Right now I can still ssh into the VeraPlus.
Will I be able to migrate the Z-Wave NW to a UZB dongle in this state? Or can I use @rafale77 's Nuke Vera Script to just use the VeraPlus as my zwave antenna? With either of these options have I lost the ability to migrate my configuration without Vera support restoring my VeraPlus first?Thanks
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Never posted this on the vera forum but...
Did you know about this?The vera has a very powerful zwaveserial API program in the firmware. Take a look at what it can do:
Screen Shot 2020-04-24 at 10.29.50.png
It is what the UI calls to interface with the zwave dongle.
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So, after more than 10 years and 4 Vera's, my vera forum account is suspended.
I think the monkey of the company, called melih is not man enough te have any critic. In the topic about the "great to come app" I responded to the topic (not off topic!) that a subscription can also be seen (financially) as buying a box, run it for 2 years and come to market with a better one (in better wordings).
That means that if you as a company hast a box of 50USD cost, sell it at 250USD would give him a monthly subscription of 200/24=8.33 USD... Users that would last 5 years would pay a monthly of 3.33USD.But... the monkey on the rock has bolded his fists and said: ban him! He just can't take any criticism.
To be honest! I am not even sad! It was a very rough journey with Vera. The journey stopped when Ezlo and the monkey took over the name.
After that it quickly went downhill...
Goodluck all! (except the monkey).
Edit:
Aug 16, 2020 MiOS Application - early Beta enrollment MiOS Application - early Beta enrollment
The topic:
are you serious? would I become a cost? that is, customers who periodically replace the control unit and are happy with the service praise the Vera system and therefore also free advertising but, the new “company” decides to charge less to bind the customer with a subscription … But the genius...
The post:
The point you are missing is:If the hardware would “cost” around 50USD, and you sold it for 250USD, an average life span of 5 years would mean 200/(5×12)=3.33USD per month. Thats how Vera used to do it.
Then release a faster/better “beast” every 2 years gives you 200/(2×12)=8.33USD per month. That’s how vera used to do it.
And that’s how I did it for around 8 years and 4 veras with them untill you bought the company.
This is just a matter of how you look at it and explain it.
I dont frikking care how you do the maths, I only liked a working product and a close user community (like it was).
Now all I see on this forum is a lot of “we are going to” and “we are working on”, “keep them coming guys”. But the reason for ever considering to buy a new vera every 2 years is gone…
No clear migration path, no clear compatibility path and no clear integration path…
That’s why I started to look for alternatives…
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I have 50ish devices in connected to Home Assistant via. VeraPlus hub. I recently picked up an Aeotec Gen5 USB stick which I have successfully integrated into Home Assistant using OpenZWave.
Can I add the Aeotec Stick as a Secondary Controller to Vera, turn off vera (making Aeotec primary) and then run natively that way on HA?
I know the entity ID's in HA will change, but a lot easier to fix vs. unpair/repair all the devices from Vera.
Will this work?
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To answer @sdtoddl who emailed me asking how to manually force neighbor node setting on the vera, I don’t think it is possible with the UI.
The solution is actually to trigger a neighbor node update on the given device and all the devices located between that said device and the controller.
The vera deals with this by running multiple repeated (nightly) network heals which is not very efficient and causes it to frequently have unexpected network breakdowns and surprises good (some devices with problems get fixed) and bad (some devices which used to work stop working). It also takes down the entire network when it does it. One can however manually trigger neighbor node updates on the vera through the device’s advanced menu.To go to the next level, this data, the network node list is actually not recorded in the host controller firmware but in the non volatile memory of the zwave chip both on the controller and on the devices. It is therefore independent of the platform you use and can’t be set by the host. One can only ask the zwave chip on the device to run a survey and then inform the controller’s zwave chip of what it has found.
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How to overcome the vera's storage limitations:
rafale77/vera-extroot rafale77/vera-extroot
Execrably poor partitioning and usage of the onboard flash causing hardware reliability failure through data corruption and storage availability for plugin limitations: Add your own external USB SATA drive and extroot.Scripts to extroot the vera edge-plus-secure. Contribute to rafale77/vera-extroot development by creating an account on GitHub.
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Amazing. One of my (un)trusty old VeraLite machines running UI5 has just achieved an uptime of one month... the maximum that that firmware can ever achieve!
The graph below shows the uptime for the last two years, and although sometimes being up for a few weeks, it's never achieved a whole month!
I put this down to reduced ZWave traffic and zero plugins, although the configuration hasn't changed for a long while.
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I am used to errors, but never seen this before on altui on vera. keep getting this now all the time, any clue?
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Using Home Assistant as the heart of my domotica (this was vera for 10 years up untill just a few months ago!) I currently have vera integrated as zwave hub only. Having almost all logic moved to hass leaving vera solely as zwave hub.
As I am searching for a solution for a more stable zwave network and all options are open (but messing with zwave network ids etc is still too hard for me) I am also looking to another option.Multiple veras in hass. This way I can have isolated vera edges with smaller zwave networks and still do all logic in hass.
One thing... currently only 1 vera is allowed in hass.
It is a feature request already and I would like to ask to help me vote this request up:
Jul 26, 2018 Multiple Vera Hubs Multiple Vera Hubs
I have multiple locations with Vera hubs at each for Z-Wave/Zigbee controls. However, you cannot add two or more Vera hubs to your configuration.yaml. Please add this as an option.
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Since I have disabled nightly heal long time ago and since I have replaced some devices since and I am watching the webinar of z-way I wonder if it is wise and or advisable to do a manual heal of my zwave routibg in vera... what's the best way of doing so?
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As the tiltle describes :-). Is this possible in android via a browser? Mine doesn't allow me.
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The vera can run both its zwave and zigbee network off of external USB radios instead of the onboard ones. This could have advantages in terms of portability, facilitating migrations or recoveries in case the vera craps out. It could also enable testing of newer radio firmwares.
Zwave is pretty straightforward as its serial API is standardized and the protocol is the same regardless of what brand of USB stick you use. I have run my vera off of USB sticks of various brands for years going from Aeotec, Zooz, Homeseer and even the most generic silabs/Sigma Design. You just insert the stick in the usb port, find out which serial port it created (under the /dev/ folder) and use that port (ie. /dev/ttyACM0, /dev/ttyUSB0 etc) in the zwave advance menu.
Zigbee is a little trickier as the protocol and chipset was not quite as standardized as zwave. The vera only works with ember Znet protocol and you will need to find a usb stick with an EM35x chip in it which already has an ember zigbee firmware loaded. One example of such a stick is the Go Control HUSBZB1 (dual zwave-zigbee stick). The port is not readily accessible on the vera UI but can be accessed either through editing of the /etc/cmh/user-data.json or through ALTUI by going into the hidden zigbee radio device through the "table devices " menu and changing modifying the port variable there.You can also upgrade the onboard zwave and zigbee radio firmwares from the command line SSH...
Second Z-wave netwerk or slave controler
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I have a VeraPlus and would like to purchase a second z-wave controler. Is it possible to build a second z-wave network next to an existing z-wave network? Slowly I want to move devices form Vera to the new z-wave network. Is it more advisable to install the second z-wave controller as a slave controler?
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I run multiple Zwave networks (up to four of them, in fact) without any problem.
You definitely don't want a slave controller as that will become part of the original network. Integration between them can be done at a higher level (using openLuup, for example.)
Bear in mind that Zwave is a mesh network topology, which benefits from a fairly dense set of nodes. By having two separate networks, they won't share the same mesh, but they do all live in the same RF bandwidth. I've never found this to be an issue.
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Thanks for quick response! I think I wil also run a multiple zwave netwerk for testing devices.
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@akbooer said in Second Z-wave netwerk or slave controler:
Integration between them can be done at a higher level
Hi @akbooer
What are the options, and what are the pros/cons of each ?
I’ve personally just used the http request option..
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As I posted elsewhere, my analysis using a zwave zniffer shows that:
- You can run multiple zwave networks but it is not recommended because zwave functions only on 2 or 3 channels depending on your region and each zwave controller makes use of all of them. This means, 2 zwave controllers/network devices will interfere with one another causing latencies as they will therefore have to retry when the RF messages are come scrambled.
- The vera chattier than any other controller due to its insane and broken self management scheme so larger networks, your chances of running into problems will be even more amplified.
On openLuup you really can go either way. A second zwave network really makes sense only if it is not located in such a way that two networks would interfere with one another. If your network is relatively small (less than ~30 devices) it probably doesn't matter which way you go but anything larger than that, I would recommend the secondary controller option which eventually can open the option to just transfer the primary role to the secondary controller without having to exclude/include any devices. That's how I along with @DesT and others for example did it. I have over 150 nodes and really didn't want to exclude/include the entire network.
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@rafale77, Thank you for your response. I have read your blog on GitHub (https://github.com/rafale77/Z-Way/blob/master/README.md) with full interest. Thank you for the time you put into it. I have taken the following steps:
- Buy a Pi 4
- Install OpenLuup / Reactor on Pi4
- Install VeraBridge plugin for OpenLuup
- Migrate all my reactor sensors from Vera to OpenLuup
- Delete al scenes and Plug Ins on Vera
- Use OpenLuup to make new reactors
Now I have come to the point of purchasing a UZB1 stick. I want to use it with the help of home assistant or domoticz.
My vera has a problem. Everything works perfectly, but when I log in via home.getvera sometimes I see the following message on different devices:
• Please wait! Polling node
• SUCCESS! Successfully polled node
• Can't Detect Device
• Error: node is not configuredI had contact Vera support about the problem. I must reset my Vera completely and build from scratch again!
I don't want to include this problem in my new zwave installation. That is why I want to start building from scratch with UZB1 stick. I have about 40 devices. It's a lot of work, but I hope to build a stable system. That's the reason I want to build a new zwave network.
Sorry for the poor English but I am using google translate.
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Hi Edwin,
I am not a native english speaker myself and your post was very clear.
The vera errors are mostly caused by the vera "maintenance" features.
It's important to understand that there are two layers of configurations which the vera mixes in their management system. One is the software level which is done by the luup engine or in more generic terms the host controller software, and another layer which is the zwave chip level. They each store different device data and the vera reads the data both from the zwave chip non volatile memory and the user configuration file (user_data.json). Your issues could be caused by either one of the configuration but.... When you transfer your network to another controller, other controllers, unlike the vera, can very easily get the device reconfigured without excluding and restarting the whole process. The vera support advice is what I call "shotgunning" at the problem without trying to understand what is wrong which is completely unacceptable to me. They are just hoping that starting from scratch will fix the problem. Kind of like the vera restarts and reloads. It is a recommendation out of ignorance and despair. I would completely ignore their advices. They are inaccurate and not a scalable solution.The only case of real required exclusion/reinclusion for z-wave is the security key exchange which is allowed by the devices only during the inclusion process. The rest is all data corruption which can easily be recovered through a reconfiguration either with a NIF/Discovery call at the zwave level or a reconfiguration of the host controller data. The root cause for most of these data corruption is rarely at the zwave level (It can only happen if there are some corrupted data coming from the zwave RF which usually are caused by data collision from overly chatty networks), it is often due to the host controller software. The vera is very prone to both these problems because of its "maintenance" design which is not scalable beyond a handful of devices.
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@rafale77, Thank you for your comment and sharing your knowledge
Do you have a suggestion to solve the problem with my VeraPlus?If I understand correctly, I can set my UZB dongle as slave of VeraPlus and later on I can move the VeraPlus devices without moving the problem to the UZB dongle.
I'm still not sure if I need to set up a separate Pi4 for use UZB dongle with home assists or Can I connect the UZB dongle to my existing Pi4 running OpenLuup, Node-Red and Grafana and install Home assistant.
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@Edwin1972 I would go the route to install openzwave (QT), natively in home assistant with a UZB or other zwave dongle (I have aeotec gen5). Then integrate vera in homeassistant and that way you will have "2" zwave networks. Any device failing in Vera include in openzwave and any new devices also. Logic can be done in homeassistant natively or node red (what I use). Rocksolid, superflexible and bringing back fun in home automation.
I only have to worry about "other stuff" not working (automations, wifi, etc.) and not about a vera, openluup, zway, etc....
The community.home-assistant.io forum is "alive"! For me it feels like the early Vera forum days, before I was banned for 1000 years there. I never looked back!
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I don't share @sender's level of enthusiasm for home-assistant/openzwave and it's good to have a diversity of inputs.
Home-assistant is becoming a bit of a mess and becoming more and more difficult to manage with all the container/supervisor structure. openzwave is also work in progress and is still very far from the stability and control you get from z-way.
I run home assistant but started my own fork because it has areas of inefficiencies and gaps in functionality while providing an outstanding integration base.You understood correctly, you can add the uzb dongle as a secondary controller to your vera network if you so desire to see how it works out for you and when you decide to migrate, you can just exclude it and do what I did as I described on my github page and on my blog page. Basically have the vera replace its internal zwave chip with the uzb and then take the uzb to whichever controller you want be it z-way or openzwave.
As sender said, you can use practically any other usb zwave stick, the aeotec would be the only ones I would not recommend because of its proprietary non upgradable firmware. The gen5 is stuck on a very old SDK which won't support any of the zwave+ new features and Aeotec just released a gen5+ with still an older SDK than what the uzb currently has.
The uzb presents the advantage to work on both z-way and openzwave amongst many other platform and being very up to date in terms of firmware. -
@rafale77 said in Second Z-wave netwerk or slave controler:
The uzb presents the advantage to work on both z-way and openzwave
...did you mean "openLuup"?
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No, I did mean z-way and openzwave as the zwave host controller.
openzwave would then be bridged into home assistant and z-way into openluup. These are two possible approaches...
Obviously if one has largely invested into the vera in terms of automation (scenes) openluup-z-way is the much simpler/easiest approach but if someone wants to start from scratch like @sender did... well I would still pick the same approach but some people may prefer going to the more integrated but less complete in z-way term home-assistant approach.There is something to the complexity of managing linux dependencies which has lead to the whole container approach. Some people really prefer this immediate ease of implementation. I really don't as I think in the long run, it is replacing an immediate inconvenience with another higher level of inefficiency and complexity which eventually will be even more complex and tedious to run. It is where home assistant is at today and why I forked my own version and won't run it "supervised" nor will install any containerized integration on it.
It is philosophically not so different from the downspin of the vera trying to do unnecessary maintenances thinking it would improve customer convenience without thinking about the scalability and the opportunity cost of the approach. -
@rafale77. Thanks again for your information. If I understand correctly, I am on the right track with UZB-stick only you advisor to purchase the z-way software. I think this can be done by purchasing a UZB stick, including license. I think there is also a bridge between Z-way and openluup and I can use openluup as logic (reactor from Rigpapa) for my automation.
The question remains whether I can run openluup, node-red, grafana and also Z-way with UZB on my RP4 or is it better to run a new Pi4 with UZB-stick and z-way next to the existing Pi4?
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I think you can run all of them on a single rPi4. They are not resource intensive at all. The only thing I would caution with the rPi is the sd-card which is notoriously unreliable. I would try to run everything from a larger SATA SSD. There are many tutorial showing how to do this online. You could also even run all this on a rPi3B which has less of a overheating problem.
If you don't already have one purchased, I would recommend to buy something like this:
Which would give you a lot more configurability, ease of installation, reliability, lower power consumption, lower heat, more processing headroom and will come out to be cheaper than the rPi4 at the end after you take the power supply, the storage and the case under consideration.