Monday, April 15, 2024
Unlocking Raspberry Pi Potential: Navigating Network Booting Challenges for Enhanced Performance and Reliability
Backing up these SD cards or USB drives can be cumbersome, yet essential in case of failure. Recognizing that Raspberry Pis since the 3 B model can boot from the network, I decided to utilize my Proxmox server to host the boot server.
Initially, I explored Piserver, the official solution from the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Setting it up involved creating a VM and booting from the Raspbian distribution iso. While it provided a straightforward interface for booting devices from the network and selecting distributions, it fell short of my needs.
Friday, April 5, 2024
Empowering Your Home's Power Protection: A Deep Dive into UPS Monitoring and Integration
For UPSs located near desktop PCs, monitoring battery status is straightforward. These UPSs can typically be connected via USB, allowing us to use monitoring software to check battery health.
However, monitoring UPSs situated in network racks is more complex. Some UPSs only offer serial or USB ports, requiring a computer to directly connect and retrieve battery status. Alternatively, certain UPSs feature a network port and cloud connectivity, enabling them to upload status data to the cloud for remote viewing.
We have an APC UPS with cloud connectivity, which facilitates notifications for significant status changes through their Smart Connect service. Despite its benefits, this solution has drawbacks for our specific needs. Firstly, there's no integration with Home Assistant, preventing us from automating devices based on UPS status, such as shutting down devices during power outages when battery levels drop below a certain threshold. Secondly, reliance on a cloud connection means that if our internet goes down, the automations wouldn't function.
Wednesday, March 27, 2024
Empowering Family Legacy: How I Transitioned to Self-Hosting with Gramps Web
For several years now, I've been maintaining a genealogy website containing information from both my and my wife's family history. One of my main objectives has been to ensure this wealth of information is readily accessible not just for our extended family, but also for our children whenever they want to look into their roots. Initially, I hosted this website through a paid hosting service, utilizing TNG. While this setup served its purpose adequately, my recent acquisition of a Proxmox server prompted me to explore the possibility of self-hosting. Given this shift, I decided to transition to open-source software, as it would grant me greater flexibility in making adjustments as needed.
In my search for suitable open-source genealogy software, I came across Gramps Web. Its user-friendly interface and compatibility with the Gramps genealogy desktop software caught my attention.
Tuesday, March 26, 2024
Mastering NAS Storage: Unveiling Hidden Challenges and Solutions
I couldn't help but notice that our storage space was getting full. Curious, I delved deeper into the matter. One of the primary functions of our NAS is serving as storage for our Plex DVR. However, despite our occasional recordings, the storage was filling up faster than I expected.
So, I decided to do some spring cleaning, starting with deleting some recordings. But here's the kicker - the space wasn't budging. I decided to peek into the file system, and there it was: a bunch of files in the #recycle folder within our shares.
Turns out, there wasn't a default schedule for emptying the recycle bin on our Synology NAS. This meant all those recordings, along with any other files, were being kept indefinitely.
Saturday, March 2, 2024
Unlocking Seamless Integration: Navigating Unexpected Hubitat Device Queries and VLAN Challenges for a Smoother Home Automation Experience
During my network debugging efforts, I came across an intriguing observation related to the two Hubitat devices on our network. The logs below illustrate the unexpected mDNS queries they generated:1. Query for Airplay Devices
- 12 0.788177995 192.168.55.11 → 224.0.0.251 MDNS 130 Standard query 0x0000 PTR _airplay._tcp.local, "QM" question PTR Hubitat._hubitat._tcp.local
14 0.791018733 192.168.55.11 → 224.0.0.251 MDNS 127 Standard query 0x0000 PTR _http._tcp.local, "QM" question PTR Hubitat._hubitat._tcp.local
Surprisingly, the Hubitat devices were seeking Airplay and web server devices, even though I only utilized them for Z-Wave and Zigbee devices, and have not installed the Airplay application. This behavior caused issues, as the queries and responses were transmitted across VLANs, leading to a flood of broadcast packets during high query volumes.
Friday, March 1, 2024
Dazzling DIY Hexagonal LED Accent: A Budget-Friendly Alternative to Nanoleaf Lights with WLED Magic!
To start, I sourced hexagonal wood panels in multiple tones. I deliberately chose multiple-tone panels to ensure the accent piece looked appealing even when the lights were off.
Unlike Nanoleaf panels, my wooden panels don't allow light to shine through. Therefore, I planned to position the LEDs to shine out the top, bottom, and sides of the panels. This necessitated offsetting the panels from the wall to provide space for mounting the LED strips behind the hex panels.
Monday, February 26, 2024
Empowering Privacy: Unveiling the World of Affordable VPNs through Shared Bandwidth Projects and Proxmox Efficiency
Shared Bandwidth VPN Projects:
Mysterium
Mysterium is a decentralized VPN network that operates on a peer-to-peer model. Users can share their excess bandwidth in exchange for MYST tokens. By becoming a node in the Mysterium network, users contribute to the overall infrastructure and, in return, gain access to affordable VPN services. Setting up Mysterium nodes as Proxmox Linux containers ensures efficient resource utilization and easy management. I set this up following the instructions for Linux nodes.EarnApp
EarnApp takes a unique approach by allowing users to earn money by sharing their internet bandwidth. Users can convert their earned tokens into VPN services, creating an innovative system where the community contributes to the network's growth. Proxmox's virtualization capabilities make it straightforward to deploy and manage EarnApp nodes, making it an attractive option for those seeking a low-cost VPN solution.Unlocking Raspberry Pi Potential: Navigating Network Booting Challenges for Enhanced Performance and Reliability
I've set up several Raspberry Pis around our house for various projects, but one recurring challenge is the potential for SD card failur...
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Over the past few days, I've been immersed in the task of replacing the light switches in our century-old house with Lutron light switch...
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As I have mentioned before , I have been trying to use the Flock block editor to post to my blogs. Almost everything works, except one maj...
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I have updated the Akismet plugin for LifeType to allow spam comments to be submitted to Akismet . This allows users of LifeType to help ...