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My Overkill Home Network - Complete Details 2023
  • You. I like you.

    Honestly amazing setup. It's more robust than some industrial applications I've seen.

    Thanks for such a great write-up. I'll definitely be referring back to it as I upgrade my homelab.

    Cheers!

  • [Sway] another nord rice
  • Ooh, I love how your prompt looks in your terminal. How did you make it look like that? (I didn't see anything in the alacritty yaml)

    Edit: never mind, just saw that you already shared your Starship config. Thanks for sharing!

  • What is something really stupid you purchased that turned out far better than expected?
  • Agreed! Just beware that the Amazon Basics ones used to be awesome (black or grey ones) but the new ones (green) are garbage. I have some of the older ones that are 8 years old and still going strong, where as the new ones wouldn't hold a charge after about a year of use.

    I recently bought some Panasonic eneloop ones and although they are more expensive they seem to be much higher quality.

  • Advice on a Printer
  • People have made the same recommendations here already but I'll throw my opinion in: the two I always recommend are the Ender (V2 or S1) and the Prusa (Mk4 or the Mini)

    If you're unsure about how much you'll use it or if you're on a budget get the Ender.

    But if you're confident this is something you'll use a lot and you can afford it get the Prusa.

    The Prusa has just too many nice features to ignore, their support is amazing, and their upgrade path makes it something you can (likely) keep upgrading as new features come out.

    For example I have a Mk3 and I have the upgrade kit to make it a Mk3s+. And now that the Mk4 is out there's upgrade kits to make it a 3.5, 3.9, or a 4. They're really great about trying to keep your printer as feature rich as possible without having to buy a whole new one.

  • What do you do to unwind?
  • That's awesome. But the part that your dad was an RF engineer but never took the time to teach you makes me sad. My dad is an elec tech and some of my fondest memories are of him teaching me electronics.

    I guess the take away is if you have kids make sure to take the opportunity to teach them things you're passionate about! (As long as they show interest of course)

  • What are some of the best purchases of your life?
  • Nice! I upgraded from an A8 (knock off) as well. Quality bump going to a Mk3 was astounding.

    Well said about it being able to do things you just couldn't otherwise. I think that's a better argument for why 3D printing is so great.

  • VMs or containers?
  • Appreciate your take on this and specifically mentioning that you have a VM for Home Assistant. That was a lightbulb moment for me as I like how easy it is to manage updates as an OS install rather than in a Docker container. If I ever get around to rebuilding my server architecture I'm definitely going to do this!

  • What are some of the best purchases of your life?
  • Can't believe I haven't seen "3D Printer" on here yet!

    A serial hobbyist, with a lot of my interests waning in weeks to months after getting into them. But 3D Printing? I've been loving it for 10 years and there's no signs of that slowing down.

    Sure there's goofy stuff you can make with it, but 95% of what I print are functional items. So often I need something for around the house and I can just print for cheaper and faster than ordering one online. Examples:

    • vaccum hose adapter
    • desk grommet
    • custom clamp for a bike light
    • small L-brackets for cupboard shelves

    There's thousands of things out there you can just download and print, or you can get into designing your own. It's very rewarding to design a physical object and then upload it for others to use too!

    Here's some examples of some things I've designed or remixed from other designs: https://www.printables.com/@Foreverwinter_223629

    The two printers I recommend are the Prusa Mk4 (~$1,000USD) or the Creality Ender-3 V2 ($225USD). The Ender print quality is very good, it just doesn't come with several of the very nice features the Prusa has - if you can afford it get the Prusa! You won't regret it.

  • What are some of the best purchases of your life?
  • I love my rowing machine. I've tried treadmills and stationary bikes and they've felt like an intolerable grind. But hop on my rowing machine and I don't want to stop. Don't know what it is but it just works for me.

  • Outdoor Temperature Sensor
  • Each device has its own protocol/payload, but there is a utility called rtl_433 that can decode about 200 of them.

    If you're keen on tinkering a bit I would highly recommend going this route as it's a lot of fun and opens the doors to do all kinds of stuff.

    Start by getting an SDR. I don't recommend the super tiny ones since they can get really hot (since it'll be running 24/7). I have this one and recommend it as it comes with an antenna etc. Nooelec RTL-SDR v5 Bundle

    While you're waiting for that to arrive set up an MQTT broker if you haven't got one running already (the Mosquitto add-on in HA) and install the rtl_433 add-on as well.

    From there read the rtl_433 docs to set up a config file to scan for what you want. Out of interest I set mine to rotate through a bunch of common frequencies and let it go for 24h to see what it could pick up. It was quite interesting! Another good way to do this is any wireless device will have an FCC number on it. You can look that up on their website and it'll tell you what frequency it's using and you can have your SDR scan that. If you don't specify any protocols the rtl_433 utility will try everything it knows how to decrypt. This can be CPU intensive especially on a Pi so once you know what protocol it is you can specify it in the config file to reduce CPU load.

    Hopefully that's enough to set you down the right path. Happy scanning!

  • Outdoor Temperature Sensor
  • Yup! In addition to temperature/humidity sensors, I'm also pulling in my gas meter and my home security sensors(I was using a big-name security company, but when my contract was up I kept the sensors installed and tapped into them with my SDR)

  • Using Sync for Reddit as a marketing tool come July 1st is more urgent than building the MVP

    First of all, thank you @ljdawson@lemmy.world for pursuing Sync for Lemmy. It’s honestly given me so much hope for Fediverse adoption to actually happen. I do have one thought to share with you to help with success:

    Come July 1st pretty much all Sync users are going to open the app due to muscle memory or due to a lack of awareness of what’s happening.

    If they see “this app doesn’t work any more” or similar, they are simply going to delete the app and will likely go to the official Reddit app. The opportunity to engage them will be gone.

    However, you can use it as a huge marketing opportunity if on that day it says something to the effect of:

    • Sync for Reddit doesn’t work any more due to the API changes…
    • However Sync for Lemmy is in development
    • Here’s how you try Lemmy (and/or kbin) in the mean time…
    • Keep Sync for Reddit on your phone to receive a notification when Sync for Lemmy is launched

    Even if they don’t try Lemmy right away, if they get a notification from the old app saying the new one is ready they will possibly try it at that time (but you need to convince them to keep the old app on their phone)

    But the clock is ticking - after July 1st the chance of engaging someone in this way is very low as they’ll likely uninstall the old app. IMO getting this teed up is of a higher priority than developing the minimal-viable-product for the new app.

    You likely already have this in the works, but wanted to throw it out there incase you hadn't planned on it already. Thanks again for doing this - I am so hopeful and excited for a viable alternative to Reddit and Sync could be such a huge piece in making it possible!

    Originally posted to /r/syncforlemmy but figured I should put my money where my mouth is and post here as well. After all, this is the future!

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    Foreverwinter @lemmy.world
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