DisFeb 20, 2025
I spend half the day spying on the nursery tent. Looks warm in there. (It's very very cold out here.) From last week's planting, so far we have some arugula, some cabbage and some brussel sprouts. Still early for most of the rest.

Thought I'd share my mobile view this time. (Unfolding my phone makes me so living-in-the-future happy every time)
#homeassistant #snarkhome #esp32 #espcam #garden #growyourown
DisOct 9, 2024
I forgot just how terrible the #apple touchbar is. Over the weekend I pulled my old MBP off the shelf to use as an "around the house" laptop, but between the terrible flat keyboard and the missing escape key, I can't even.

It looks like the #snarkhome cluster is getting a major upgrade soon. (Fortunately, k3s doesn't require an escape key. Unlike ALL OF THE REST OF COMPUTING.) I'll just take back the even-older MBP with the slightly-less-bad chicklet keys instead :(

In related news, here is a great way to stick laptops to the wall for fun and clustering: www.thingiverse.com/thing:3353399 Not particularly adjustable though, so mount it right the first time.

#3dprinting #homelab #smarthome
Laptop wall mount by Sithun

I wanted a dedicated spot for my Acer R13 Chromebook, but found no wall-mounts that I liked.Will fit any small laptop (13.3'' screen or smaller as far as I know, as long as the bottom part of the laptop doesn't exceed 10 mm thickness.Printed on a Flashforge Finder (14 by 14 cm). Make sure you print it sturdy. I used 35% triangle infill with 2 shell-layers, which seem sturdy enough for my small laptop. I take no responsibility for any damages incurred on your equipment.When fastening the mount to your wall, make sure the distance between the leftmost side of the left bracket, and the rightmost side of the right bracket is [Width of your laptop in mm] + 10 mm. That way, your laptop will likely rest on the "shelves" and not on the "ridges". Of course, make sure they are fastened to the wall at the same height.Edit: Added longer u-lock.

Thingiverse
DisSep 3, 2024
Today's fake #opensource shame goes to #EMQX. The version 5.8.0 release notes start out awesome, lots of good stuff. And a minor release, so how bad could it be? Unfortunately, if you click 'read more' you will find the "breaking changes" section carefully hidden below the fold. It gets very dark very fast.
It turns out this release is mostly about adding paywalls to a major clustering features, and trashing most of the useful monitoring and ops related dashboard pages. (As a bonus, that PR fixes a private bug in a private Jira.)

I guess it is time to go back to Mosquitto. It may be a pain to monitor, but I don't have to get legal counsel to read the release notes before upgrading.

#snarkhome #mqtt #emqx #mosquitto #homeautomation #paywall #enshittfication
Releases · emqx/emqx

The most scalable open-source MQTT broker for IoT, IIoT, and connected vehicles - emqx/emqx

GitHub
DisMay 27, 2024
So we're finally moving to drop cable, even though we'll lose our epic channel bundle. Yesterday I paired an hdhomerun with an attic antenna, and now PBS is teaching me to make manischewitz and doing terrible raps about Siracha. I got super lucky and it was almost perfectly aimed on the first pass. (I may have to tweak it for NBC eventually but everything else I expected is working.)

This reminds me of the early Tivo days, when I would find it watching PBS on the weekends. Our electronic monk would record "BBQ University" and still be watching when I got up, so I'd sit down with my coffee and join it.

Once we get the broadcast tuned in, its time to upgrade the downloader arm with some usenet. I might also grab a directional antenna to add Baltimore stations for football season.

(The channel bundle has been evolving since before Verizon figured out this whole cable thing. Tons of freebies, and I think we get 20 channels that aren't even on the modern plans. The thing is, 400 unwatched channels is just as useful as 0 unwatched channels. Why are we paying for them again?)

FYI antennaweb.org/

#tv #hdhomerun #selfhost #homelab #snarkhome #broadcasttv #atsc #tvheadend
Antenna Signal Prediction

Which broadcast channels can you receive for free? It's time you cut the cord!

DisMay 26, 2024
In all the excitement I may have forgotten to water the cuke-nado.

Hopefully that is not fatal, but the accompanying gnats might be an issue. Looks like cuke-nado is going outside after all.

Snarkhome didn't warn us because those moisture sensors are questionable at best and also I didn't set up any warnings for them. (That was dumb.)

#cukenado #snarkhome
DisMay 16, 2024
Last week, while my back was destroyed, I got fed up with running my #homegrow lights by hand. (#Snarkhome is still having #zigbee issues and I regret ever buying a zigbee radio. #Zwave has been so much more reliable, especially over a scale of decades.)

I repurposed an old (and terribly fucking unsafe! do not recommend!!) #switchbot plug under #esphome to run autonomously on a schedule. All it depends on is wifi + internet, and if my internet starts going down I'll just go back to plan A and build one from scratch with an RTC. I doubt a #marijuana plant keeps better time than a cheap crystal oscillator. (As a bonus, it participates in #bigear so I can remove one of the annoying rover boards. Who builds an embedded board that doesn't boot without manual button pushes!?! Ahem.)

On the first run, #HomeAssistant sends down the sunrise and sunset times but after that it relies on stored values and SNTP. I still need to test that, but first I want to watch it go on and off for a couple of days. (And maybe make a second one so I don't have to blink the grow tent every time I want to screw with it.)

I also reworked my traffic light sensor from scratch. Now it also checks the #ble illuminance sensor, not just power drain and relay state, and it doesn't go unknown periodically when HA can't get the attributes updated correctly. (Bad news there is that I did not calibrate the power sensor yet, and it seems to be reading just high enough to be irritating.)

Closing rant: Why can't I CW the post but not the media? This screenshot is significantly less spicy than the text. Not even a mention of #weed. BUT! Since I have to CW the pictures anyway, you get a bonus pic of Madam Prez (Prez Candy, listed as President Kush x ARC x 91 Chemdog.)
She's in flower week 7 and might be coming down as soon as next week. This grow is an experiment in pure low stress training. No pruning, barely any leaves off even, just wired her down horizontally, then repeated on her larger branches once they popped. It seems to have worked. I wasn't expecting much, but they are forming up some lovely secondary colas. With a little actual training it could be insane.

#homegrow #growyourown #homeautomation #smarthome #snarkhome #homelab #esp32 #esphome
DisMay 7, 2024
Here's another view of the #cukenado now that the other tent residents are outside. I added a vertical light and lifted the horizontal one. It's unevenly lit and maybe excessive, so I'll probably change it later this week. The cukes seem to be really loving stale hydro water though. (The hydro-peño was a Jalapeño in a Kratky style bubbler. It was not thriving, but the spider mites were. Once it got into the dirt and moved outside it dropped all its old leaves and became so happy that it might even provide the first pepper of the year, assuming bugs didn't get it.)

#snarkhome is still suffering from #zigbee2mqtt issues so I run lights by pushing buttons now. I'm inches from building a smart timer from an old relay and an #esp8266. An actual smart switch. Something that can download a schedule and then operate independently. Like the dumb timers used to, back in the dark ages.

#homeassistant #esphome #smarthome #garden #growyourown #zigbee #esp32 #homeautomation #cucumber #jalapeno
DisApr 23, 2024
I am so glad I still have #GoHarbor running as a local #dockerhub cache. Simply updating #calico was enough to throw me over quota. (Calico and such are exempted because GoHarbor runs on the cluster and I hate debugging cold-start issues. Also, I know I can log in and give #microsoft explicit permission to spy all over me but um no thanks? ISTR my IP address still isn't legally me, but my account is...)

Instead of sitting here hand-crafting a bunch of bullshit trying to manually load images onto half the cluster, I just updated the annotation from 'disabled' to 'enabled' and k roll -n calico-system and all was well. It didn't even noticeably impact services.

Today's picture: Has anyone else noticed that #renovatebot can't handle it's own changelogs? An appropriate example of the state of the ecosystem today. ​​

#selfhost #selfhosting #k8s #k3s #homelab #snarkhome
DisApr 21, 2024
Finally got around to teaching #snarkhome to watch the garage door. (Leftover magnet and reed switches.)
Scaled to 103% because it was impossible to get the hose into, then CYA glued to stop it rotating due to the scaling. I also removed a wire channel in the slicer (a vertical and half a horizontal cylinder) and scavenged some very old cat5.
Partner doesn't know I'm gonna find some beep-beeps (roadrunner, love bug, that sort) to go with garage notifications, and maybe some wistful thoughts on how "Rebecca" (the snarkhome) could have gotten to drive a car or something more fun..

www.thingiverse.com/thing:4820590/

#ratgdo #homeassisant #snarkhome #snarkhouse
ESP32-CAM Mountig Kit by SuperMuc303

Hi everyone, Since I am currently working with the great ESP32CAM module, I have designed a mounting kit that allows the ESP32CAM to be attached to different places. I discovered the 1/4 "coolant hoses on my CNC milling machine as a flexible solution for various brackets. I ordered the inexpensive version of this hose on the Internet ... Attention, the coolant hoses have different diameters on the balls depending on the manufacturer (my version has a ball diameter of 11.3 mm). I created the bracket for this exact diameter. Additionally I used suction cups, M3 screws, M3 nuts and magnets in this project (see pictures in the description). I used ABS filament from Sunlu in black ... I print with a 0.6mm nozzle and a layer thickness of 0.5 mm. There should also be good results with many other values ​​and materials. After printing the parts, I first inserted the M3 nuts in the bottom part from the ESP32CAM Cover. To connect the segments of the hoses to the printed parts, I first carefully pressed individual segments of the hoses into the balls with a screw clamp. Then you can put the camera in the housing and assemble everything. Best wishes

Thingiverse
DisMar 11, 2024
#Bambu LAN mode (also known as "stop literally sending all of my prints to China" mode) doesn't have to suck.

There is a great #HomeAssistant integration, and someone made an epic dashboard. I still don't have #octoprint or #spaghettidetective working but it "streams" (0.5fps) on the Chromecast dashboards so there is human oversight. (The changer sometimes poos on the build plate instead of into the poo chute.)

Next step is digging into xtouch and see if I can do it with on-hand parts or a web app or something.

#p1s #3dprinter #3dprinting #snarkhome @3dprinting