To install Calaos OS you need:
And optionally:
Calaos OS installs on a 64-bit PC (x86_64 architecture). Both old and recent machines work: the installer handles modern computers (UEFI) as well as older ones (BIOS), and you have nothing to choose.
In practice, a fanless mini PC is the best choice for a permanent installation: it is silent, uses little power, and has no moving part that wears out. An old laptop or a spare desktop is perfectly fine to discover Calaos.
To simply try Calaos OS, you need no dedicated hardware at all: Live mode boots the system from the USB stick without installing anything, and without touching the computer’s disk. See Installation.
Any stick of at least 4 GB will do, but its speed determines how long your installation will take.
On the first boot, Calaos OS unpacks and installs all its services from the stick. On a fast stick this takes a few minutes; on a slow or low-end one, it can take 30 to 60 minutes.
So get a branded USB 3.0 stick, and plug it preferably into a USB 3.0 port on the computer — often recognisable by its blue colour. You will save that time twice: when copying the image, then on the first boot.
Leave room to grow. Calaos OS takes little space at first, but three things grow over time:
The installer reserves roughly 2 to 2.5 GB at the start of the disk for booting and virtual memory, then uses all the rest. A small disk will work, but you will quickly run short. An SSD is preferable to a mechanical drive, for silence and speed.
Connect the server with a cable rather than over Wi-Fi. Your home automation must answer instantly and reliably, which a cable guarantees better.
Give your server a fixed IP address, so you always find it at the same place on your network. Otherwise its address may change across reboots and your applications will no longer find it. The procedure is on the Network page.
A touchscreen connected to the server displays Calaos Home, the local interface that shows your home and allows a few settings.
It is optional. Without a screen, you configure the server remotely from another computer, and you control your home from the mobile applications or the web app. This documentation always describes both ways.
For wall-mounted screens spread around the house, look at the Remote UI screens instead, which are designed for that purpose.
This page covers the computer hardware of your server. For everything about the electrical installation of the house — wiring, cabinet, PLC — see Requirements in the hardware chapter.
The installer partitions the disk as follows:
| Machine | Partitions created |
|---|---|
| Modern (UEFI) | a 512 MB boot partition, a 2 GB swap partition, then the rest of the disk for the system |
| Older (BIOS) | a 2 GB swap partition, then the rest of the disk for the system |
The system partition is formatted with Btrfs with compression, and is labelled calaos-os. The details are described in Under the hood.