Skip Navigation
Jump
Would you buy "self-hosted in a box" hardware?
  • I’ve thought more on this yesterday, and I think my issue is-

    I don’t want something that ‘just works’, I want to BUILD something that ‘just works’

    The distinction is that I don’t want to buy premade solutions. I want to make them. Not because of the customizability, but because the fun is in the building. Think Lego- hundreds of people build the exact same product in the end, but why are they sold in pieces? Just assemble the damn things and sell them complete (with markup). You think more people wanna buy that?? I’d bet against it.

    1
  • Jump
    Would you buy "self-hosted in a box" hardware?
  • Hard agree. In fact, I think there’s a market for JUST the guides. It’s true that there’s a TON of guides out there already, from old blogs to YouTube, but the issue is: all of them start or end with: “your use case might differ, so perhaps this solution isn’t for you.” Or “make sure this setup is compatible with your specific hardware”

    For example: I want to set up some sort of backup/cloud storage type system. Well there’s about 1400 ways to accomplish that. I can easily just grab one and go, but I’ll always wonder- should I have done this a different way? Would my life be easier/more secure if I chose a different set up?

    So offering hardware that is compatible with whatever “stack” of services included would be a huge plus. Sorta like getting a raspberry pi and following a specific raspberry pi tutorial- you know the issues you get aren’t gonna be due to incompatibility.

    I think it really boils down to the scale of one’s home lab- are you just tinkering to get some skills and make something cool? Or are you hoping to do something much much bigger? Different software solutions fit those extremes differently.

    Sorry, got off rambling there. I guess I’ve been down the home lab hardware/software wormhole for too long these last few weeks.

    2
  • Jump
    TIL there's such a thing as vegetarian Spam
  • Damn. This doesn’t match my experience in Hawaii at all. My in-laws live there, and everytime I visit I sustain my life with fruit and Avacados. I’d kill for some plant based SPAM.

    4
  • Jump
    If you could regulate something relatively inconsequential, what would it be?
  • You forgot v) collaborates internationally for work, requiring them to be awake early to maximize overlapping hours in their workday.

    But even I know not to do noisy shit outside until at least 10. Those few quiet hours in the morning where it seems I’m the only person alive are to drink coffee and cherish.

    15
  • Jump
    [Highlight] The Ravens were THIS CLOSE to scoring the game-tying touchdown 👀 #KCvsBAL
  • It was awesome ending, but if you were watching the game: harbaugh was signaling that they were going to go for 2. So I think a juicier ending would be a single play from the 2-yard line- win/loss sitting on balance.

    3
  • Jump
    Weird Knife Wednesday: CIZPIROK Double Edge
  • Every time we get a weird knife wednesday- “where do you keep getting these weird ass knives?”

    It’s some of the best content available.

    4
  • Jump
    "oh? is my acting like a complete asshole offending you?"
  • It’s why I never say “eat the rich”, instead say: “compost the rich”. That way everyone knows I am serious about both parts of the ‘joke’.

    9
  • Jump
    MQTT automation trigger help
  • Edit: I remember why - I wanted to use a single button dimming option, and as far as I can tell, there wasn't that option in Shelly natively. There isn't really a "native" version of this in Tasmota, but someone had already laid out the method to do such a thing with rules and whatnot within the Tasmota console. But after tinkering with it all this morning, I think I busted it beyond repair, so I might give the native Shelly a try!

    Mostly because I'm lazy. This device was set up before Shelly made it so easy to run offline versions of the native firmware. And I've got a handful of devices already running Tasmota, so I'm just resistant to change.

    1
  • Jump
    MQTT automation trigger help
  • Yeah, Tasmota has 'setoption19' to enable autodiscovery, and I triggered it, and it finds a whole host of SENSORS - but none of them are the switches. It does add one entity which is a single switch. But it seems this just correlates to switch1. I'm thinking it has something to do with how I originally set up the dimmer... it was years ago, so I guess I need to dig into my notes and see if I can figure out what options I set on it before I moved it to it's current spot.

    for reference, the data spit out by Tasmota: {"Time":"2024-08-29T15:17:19","Switch1":"OFF","Switch2":"OFF","ANALOG":{"Temperature":35.1},"ENERGY":{"TotalStartTime":"2021-07-13T17:05:01","Total":37178.152,"Yesterday":0.000,"Today":0.000,"Period":0,"Power":0,"ApparentPower":0,"ReactivePower":0,"Factor":1.00,"Voltage":117,"Current":0.000},"TempUnit":"C"}

    1
  • I have a Shelly dimmer 2 behind one of the switches in my kitchen running Tasmota. There are two switch inputs on the Dimmer module, so I have it behind a 2 gang wall box with two physical switches. Each switch is connected to one of the switch inputs of the Shelly.

    I've set the switches to be independent of each other, so I can potentially use the different switches for different triggers. Switch one is configured as a push button switch and dims my kitchen lights. Switch two does nothing. I desire to have switch2 trigger my dining room lights, so after some digging I discovered that I can use MQTT to make Home Assistant do stuff! Perfect.

    But not perfect. I set up an automation to listen for this devices' MQTT topic "tele/lights_kitchen/SENSOR" and when the switch is flipped either up or down, my mosquitto broker hears that topic, and it just toggles my lights! I thought I had it all figured out. But what I didn't notice at first, is that the Shelly Dimmer pings out an MQTT status every so often, even if no switches are flipped. So my dining room lights have been going on and off all afternoon!

    There is some data in the payload of the MQTT that I think should be able to fix my issue, but I'm having trouble conceptualizing how.

    The payload contains a key:value pair {"Switch2":"ON"} or "OFF". So I'm hoping I can use a change in that value as a toggle. Because it's operating as a 3 way switch, I don't care if the actual value is ON or OFF, I just want to know if it's changed. Do I need some sort of helper that keeps track? This seems like something MQTT would be good at, but I can't find a good example to steal the right config from. I thought maybe I could use two triggers, one for each state, but that makes a huge complicated set of logic that needs to be added, and I really feel like there should be a more elegant way to handle this.

    Any assistance?

    5
    Jump
    File:Vegan Tofu Schnitzel.png
  • Damn. I swear it didn’t say that when I commented!

    I wish the wiki post said something about how the tofu was prepared!

    2
  • Jump
    LNXLink - Link your Linux computer into Home Assistant
  • Ooooh! Finally. I have needed something like this to control the volume on my media PC.

    I used to have an automation that detects when my HVAC turns on, and it bumps the volume of whatever I’m playing up a few clicks. Then turns it back down when the HVAC cycle finishes. Super handy due to the crazy loud HVAC in my house.

    14
  • Jump
    boot order trouble with dual boot Windows/EndeavorOS/Debian
  • Interesting… but that just replaces an existing step with another step. I’d like to reduce the overall steps to get to each system. And if I can’t do that, I’d at least like to switch the order to win>EOS>Deb

    1
  • So, I have my desktop configured with two drives, one has a regular windows install on it that I need to play games with my brother. That works fine. My second drive originally had Debian on it. But I wanted to also install EndeavorOS. At this point in time, all 3 work, but the selection process to access each system is painfully different.

    To access Windows, I just boot from cold, and hit enter or wait for the timer to run out on Windows booting. But when I hit esc to cancel booting Windows, it brings me to Debian's GRUB selector. But I think when I installed EOS I used the default settings, and I believe it doesn't use GRUB by default (systemd). So the GRUB menu I get only has Debian or Windows. If I hit 'esc' again I am brought to the grub> command line. Here the only thing I know how to do is type "exit" and it closes this grub> cmd line and opens another, very similar one. I type 'exit' again and I am finally met with EndeavorOS's boot selector (I believe this is systemd?)

    Now I know from my first dual boot with windows/Debian that I am pretty much stuck having windows boot loader run first, so my perfect scenario of having a single selector off boot is a pipe dream, but I'd love to remove a few of the GRUB cmd steps in getting to EOS (chances are I will only need the Debian system for very specific tasks. odds are I will end up removing it) I'm guessing if I would have told the EOS installer to use GRUB it would have potentially added EOS to the GRUB selection screen? Is it possible to rectify this without wiping and reinstalling with different boot loader options?

    9
    Jump
    Firefox CTO Responds On Collecting User Advertisement Data
  • Yeah… the depths of my laziness knows no bounds. But this whole downward spiral of Firefox might be the push I need to get my shit together.

    Any reason not to use bitwarden?

    2
  • Biked to the farmers market to snag some giant lions mane mushrooms. Cooked/pressed them into steaks. Marinated with beet root powder, red wine, oil, seasonings in the fridge. Take it out, sear it up, and slice it.

    I can’t add a photo in the body of this post, but if there’s interest, I’ll post another with just the “meat”

    Edit: home made fresh corn tortillas, homemade beans, and my take on Spanish rice.

    0

    Couple experiments with making tofu replicate the texture and fishiness of salmon.

    Marinade is full of seaweed(flavor) and beet juice(color).

    The “skin” is made with rice paper and nori. Struggled to keep the skin stuck to the tofu, and varying cook methods achieved varying levels of crispness. But on the whole- great stuff. Great excuse to eat a block of tofu with pretty minimal prep.

    0

    Some pan fried squash on the side.

    I love making naan in my pizza oven. Especially since I don’t make nearly as much pizza now that I don’t eat cheese!

    We use extra firm tofu instead of paneer, and it’s texture is actually pretty perfect for it.

    0

    I make seitan deli meat loaves in two flavors: Turkey and ham. This is the ham variety. Sliced thin, and lightly toasted in a pan with a dash of oil. Let the edges get crispy, pile it up, and slap a piece of fake cheese on it. Cover the pan and let melt.

    In a different pan, sauté some diced onion in olive oil until slightly carmelized. Turn off heat, add horseradish mustard, mix.

    Toast ciabatta bun, spread the onion/mustard mix on, top with the meat/cheese pile, load up some pickles and go crazy.

    I have a pic of the inside after I took a bite which better shows the texture of the “ham”, but I have no idea how to add it.

    0

    New to Wireguard and VPNs... how exactly should this work?

    EDIT: It seems something is causing my wireguard hanshake to fail. I can't find much on this particular error except "try rebooting the wg server". I rebooted everything, and I can't get it to connect unless the clients are already connected to the home wifi.

    So I installed wg-easy on my one of my virtual machines on my proxmox "homelab". It seems to be working, and I installed the client wireguard-tools on my phone (via app), and on my laptop (EndeavorOS), and on my minecraft server (mineOS also in proxmox).

    The web client for wg-easy shows all 3 clients connected and transmitting data.

    I used my routers app to open the port to the wg-easy server.

    I attempted to use my phone's cell network to pretend like I am not home, and simply ping my minecraft server. I tried with the wg ip (10.8.0.x) and I tried pinging the normal wlan ip (192.168.x.x). Neither work. I'm really confused as to why this simple test didn't work. The documentation on wireguard's site is pretty sparse when it comes to testing your own setup. Doe anyone have any resource to help me understand how this should work?

    Side note: I have to have wireguard installed on every computer in my home network if I want to be able to reach them, correct?

    other side note: If I wanted to reach my minecraft webUI (mineOS) from outside my network, what address should I use?

    19

    Okay, most of the relevant information is in the title - I got a nice deal on an old Lenovo X280, threw Debian on there with KDE. I have an HP Elite book for my work, and thus a work provided HP G2 DisplayLink dock with USBC connection.

    In order for this dock to work, I had to install the displaylink drivers for "Ubuntu" from here. The drivers work as expected, and I am able to dock the X280 to my workstation, and use both external monitors. It feels pretty nice when I am just browsing/emailing/bullshitting. But when I tried to play Minecraft on it, the game feels incredibly laggy.

    At first I thought this was due to an under-powered graphics card, but I did some testing with the external monitors using an HDMI cord directly to the X280, and everything feels clean and smooth when I use it in that way. The other odd glitch is that when I have the laptop docked, and I am trying to play MC, if I put MC on the external monitor = lag. But if I just drag the MC window to the laptop's screen = no lag.

    I'm assuming this issue is related to the dock and/or drivers. I've looked around for some sort of workaround, but came up empty handed. So now I think the solution might be a different dock. The dock would need to:

    1. support USBC connections to my HP Elitebook, preferably without new drivers needed for the HP (dumb work won't give me admin rights, but I think I could convince them to install the necessary drivers for me. I WFH, so it makes sense that I would need a setup at home.
    2. support USB/Lightning to my X280
    3. have 1+ HDMI out or 2+ Display port out

    So... Does anyone have any experience with Linux (Debian preferred) compatible docks that don't introduce input delay when gaming?

    ps. Sweet community you got here. I subbed, and it's DEFINITELY going to result in me buying more stuff...

    0

    Hi all, recently I got my partner an older Lenovo laptop (x280) to replace her aging Chromebook. I swapped the windows OS for Linux, and installed MC, hoping to get her into playing with me. She does enjoy playing, but that computer is just too weak to run it without it looking like shit and lagging like crazy. I'd like to get her something else that would be dedicated to playing minecraft, but because it would EXCLUSIVELY be for playing MC, I don't want to spend a lot of cash. It doesn't have to be a laptop (I'd expect it to be cheaper to not be one), but I'd like it to be smaller than a full-fledged desktop. Her current x280 has an intel i7 (1.9ghz) and 16GB RAM, so I'm guessing the issue is the video card or lack there of. I'm not looking for minimum specs, so answers from official documentation is pretty hard to apply here. Does anyone have any experience running MC smoothly on something like a NUC or other miniPC?

    (we only play multiplayer Java edition on my self hosted server running Paper. No mods yet, but I think eventually Ill get into the mod game.)

    10

    I have a Shelly Dimmer2 flashed with Tasmota. It has two 'switch' inputs. I have the shelly installed behind a two-gang switch box with the two inputs connected to two different switches. But currently, if I flip either switch, the same light is flipped (the one connected to the output of the Shelly Dimmer)

    I thought I could disconnect one of the switch inputs, and use it to send an MQTT message to a different light in my HA config. Effectively using one Shelly device to convert two 'dumb' switches into smart ones.

    I have dug through the docs at Tasmota, and I can't seem to find what I'm looking for. Am I using the wrong keywords?

    2

    I recently installed Debian 12 using Xfce on my SUPER old chromebook to extend its life. Everything has been really nice so far. But I use the chromebook for browsing 90% of the time, so I like to have everything as easily operated as possible, and I am used to being able to navigate forward and back in the browser using two finger swipe gestures. After some googling, I saw that the support for this just got added in Wayland environments. That implies that it already existed in X11 environments? After a while, I found that if you hold 'alt' you can use the swipe gestures. It defeats the purpose of gestures if you have to use both hands, so I was hoping there was a way to get this functionality back.

    (Mozilla Firefox version = 115.6.0esr)

    5

    Background: I'm not "new" to linux, but this is my first year daily driving it. I have been running Mint on my main PC for a little over a year, and I love it.

    My super old chromebook (Acer c720) has reached end of life. It is no longer supported by Google, and will not receive updates. I've toyed with dual-booting it to Linux in the past with Bodhi, but eventually it broke, and I ended up reverting to ChromeOS. That was years ago, and my patience/knowledge has grown, and I'm committed to switching.

    So the other day I went ahead and pulled the trigger. I removed the write-protect screw from the Chromebook's motherboard, and installed Debian 12. I really just chose Debian because I already had a flash drive with the ISO on it for a different project (rooting my Dreame vacuum). It also runs GNOME by default, and I had never used that, so I thought it would be worth a try. Turns out, I didn't mind GNOME, and I really loved the three-finger swipe to switch workspaces. BUT... The function keys on the chromebook that are used for changing the screen's brightness don't work. So I dove down the rabbit hole of trying to get those to work. Found 'xbacklight' and gave it a go. didn't work, and I struggled with it for a few hours until I discovered that xbacklight doesn't work with Wayland... So I attempted to disable wayland, and also made some other changes that lead to my Chromebook not completing its boot up... whoops. Every challenge is an opportunity, so I figured - why not explore some other distros, and see if I can't find one that fits my needs a bit better?

    Now the request: The hardware of this machine is OLD, so I am hoping to put something super light on it, but still be able to have a few features:

    1. Trackpad gestures (swapping workspaces, navigating firefox).
    2. Window snapping (left and right panes at least)
    3. I don't care too much about how it looks, but I need to be able to map the function keys to volume and brightness.

    I have been lurking on Lemmy for long enough to have watched all the memes/conversations about different desktop managers (GNOME/Xfce/etc) but I never really understood what the deal was, but now I am coming face to face with that decision, and I'd love some "professional" input!

    Edit: the only "real" activities I will use this for is web browsing, terminal stuffs for my servers/other machines/homeassistant, and some note taking. So default programs can be SUPER minimum.

    14

    I want to get my partner a replacement for an aging chromebook. I was thinking it would be easiest to just grab another super budget chromebook and call it a day. But the more I read about google and chrome, the less I want to do with them.

    So my goal is to snag a cheap ($300ish?) laptop that I can slap Linux on (probably mint, but I’m open to suggestions).

    The main caveat is the size- needs to be small. Current chromebook is 11.5” I think. I’d like to keep it under 13”. The main use (95% will be web browsing/streaming/email/bullshit) but I’d like it to have enough juice to play Minecraft on my local server.

    I’ve looked around a bit, but my god there is a lot of options. I’d love it if there was just a recommendation that was proven to work. I’m busy enough tinkering with all the other tech, and I’d like to just set this one up and forget it.

    44

    Currently I’ve got 12 can lights in my living room, entry, and kitchen. Three different sections, all controlled by an inovelli red switch.

    All of the existing can lights are just LED chips with an E27 adapter. They are all locked in a specific color temp (4000k is my fav).

    After using the adaptive lighting integration, I am convinced I want my whole house to have the ability to change brightness and color temp. I’d like to do this as cheaply as possible.

    One option is smart bulbs. That’s 12 bulbs, plus the dumb can light bulb cover things. What is the cheapest bulb for this? This solution doesn’t take advantage of the very fancy inovelli switch either.

    Any way to leverage the nice switches, and have “dumb lights” that can be controlled via the switch? I know this sounds impossible, because there is no data going to the bulbs that would allow changing the color temp, but I just can’t stand the idea of buying 12 smart bulbs.

    1

    Got some friends together to help us roll some sushi. Here are some of the prettier attempts!

    16

    Based mostly on the serious eats recipe. We added siracha to the Mayo, and smashed avacado to the toasted bun.

    I also don’t think the marinade needs to go on the tofu much before grilling. Just a quick rub to get the color for grilling. Then I spread a layer of the marinade on the bun.

    Portland pub bun. Game changer.

    4

    I’ve finally configured my garden and landscaping on drip irrigation, but I’m using some dumb valves hooked up to my house hose spigot.

    I would absolutely love a smart valve that I can have better control of the schedule, or respond to sensors.

    After some looking around, it seems like “Rachio” is the only integration I can find for something like this. It’s a bit pricy ($99 per valve), and it looks like it needs a wifi hub to work. Has anyone used this integration successfully?

    Is there any other options? There seem to be lots of “Bluetooth” controllers available in the big box stores, but I’m guessing they will need an app or something?

    40