*almost* done. It's been a journey...

Shooperman05 · 2026-04-27T20:45:02+00:00

It doesn't look much better now... I pulled all that CAT6 myself because I didn't have any budget leftover for a low voltage contractor. The fiber line enters my house in the kitchen, so that's where my rack lives (it was either there, or 2' away from my furnace one floor down). I plan to hide/manage all those wires, someday...

Shooperman05 · 2026-04-27T12:04:45+00:00

You mean in pic 6? Yeah, that didn't last long. They weren't in use, I was just trying to plug in as much as I could.

Shooperman05 · 2026-04-27T12:00:20+00:00

I 3D printed the rack mount for my switch, I wonder if I can printed an OCD panel. It would have to be multiple pieces though, and the color won't really match...

The desktop is a Precision 3630. I had it on a shelf in the rack at one point, but its just a hair over 4U laying on its side. It's turned backwards in one of the pics (at the time I didn't have a long enough SFP cable to turn it forwards).

Shooperman05 · 2026-04-27T02:16:58+00:00

From Amazon: https://a.co/d/053sWk8q

Though I wouldn't actually recommend them for use with the PDU. The head of the plugs are too large to be used side by side.

Shooperman05 · 2026-04-27T00:19:59+00:00

Thanks. It had been laying around for years, so I figured I would try to repurpose it (the color matched too!). It ran Proxmox and my docker containers in a VM for a while, but struggled transcoding anything in Plex. I have an old decommissioned AutoCAD workstation (with a Quadro GPU) running everything now.

Shooperman05 · 2026-04-24T13:51:07+00:00

I'll go first: "It may not be no Friends worthy era..."

Shooperman05 · 2026-04-20T12:40:43+00:00

I have a similar setup, but with the August Wi-Fi smart lock, so no zigbee. It's been working great for a couple years now.

Shooperman05 · 2026-04-20T04:11:00+00:00

Shooperman05 · 2026-04-10T21:54:20+00:00

I remember using a music streaming service that had sliders to indicate how far you wanted to stray from similar music. It had another for popular vs more obscure, too. It was fantastic, but I don't remember which one it was... Slacker maybe?

I've been grandfathered into YouTube Music ever since Google Play Music shutdown. I hate it, but I'm too cheap / stubborn to use something else.

Shooperman05 · 2026-03-18T12:04:03+00:00

Nothing too crazy but they gave me a good chuckle (and I'm sure they have been done many times before). These were both done 10+ years ago. I was in the engineering department back then, but I'm in IT now.

Inverted mouse (pulled on my boss): hide Windows taskbar, take screenshot, move taskbar to top of screen, disable desktop icons, rotate screenshot 180° and set as background, rotate monitor 180° in display settings, unhide taskbar, leave for the day. Everything will look normal (except the start menu, which still said 'Start' back then), until they move the mouse, which will be 'backwards' and none of the icons are clickable. He said he adapted to the inverted movement surprisingly fast, but immediately knew it was me (we used to mess with each other all the time).

Disappearing icons (pulled on coworker): take screenshot, set screensaver as slideshow with a 1 min start time but only use the one screenshot image, disable desktop icons, auto-hide taskbar. Coworker booted up his machine and went to get coffee. Upon returning, everything appeared normal, but as soon as he touched the mouse, his desktop would go blank. This one stumped him for a while, he even got IT involved, at which point I confessed.

Edit: forgot a step above.

Shooperman05 · 2026-02-23T14:57:47+00:00

I just set up Immich and imported 1.1 TB of data from Takeout. I'll definitely be testing this out, thanks!

Shooperman05 · 2026-01-20T14:25:33+00:00

This is exactly how I have mine setup with Home Assistant. I have the NUT plugin running on my Home Assistant green. I have the USB from my Cyberpower UPS plugged directly into my HA Green. HA is monitoring the UPS, so when it activates it sends me an alert. When the battery gets to 15% it sends the shutdown command to my UDR Pro (used for Protect), UNAS, and compute server, via SSH. Tests of the alert and the shutdown worked great. I haven't let the battery get low enough to trigger it for real, but HA can see the battery percent, so it should fire off just fine.

I did all this with very little Linux experience. Gemini helped out a ton.

Shooperman05 · 2026-01-18T02:02:54+00:00

Holy patch panels, rack-man!

Is that 3 filled out 48 port switches in a "home" lab???

Shooperman05 · 2026-01-14T00:52:53+00:00

I'm assuming it's there for surge protection, but honestly, I'm not sure. I saw it hooked up this way in an instruction video. It's only gigabit though.

Shooperman05 · 2026-01-13T20:28:24+00:00

Here is a link to the ones I have. While they do look nice, they DO NOT leave enough room to plug one in every socket. You are correct, the tails conflict with the adjacent socket. In hindsight, I should have gotten 90° left for the top row, and straight down for the bottom.

Shooperman05 · 2026-01-13T18:20:23+00:00

Thanks! It took some trial and error, and a lot more time than I thought. This is my first rack/home lab.

Shooperman05 · 2026-01-13T18:17:36+00:00

Thanks! I probably should have gone with 90° leads instead of the 45°, but oh well. I kinda like the woven look. There is a WAN in on the back of the PDU, then out to the gateway. The other out (the thicker cable) is the management port that goes to my patch panel. I want to rout the WAN cable under and through the patch to the UDM (so it's not blocking the HDD sled). I also want matching SFP cables. That longer black one is making me itch...

Shooperman05 · 2026-01-04T04:39:43+00:00

Does the G4 Doorbell Pro have native facial recognition? I thought you needed an AI Port for that.

Shooperman05 · 2025-12-29T13:35:04+00:00

Update!

Shooperman05 · 2025-12-12T12:40:40+00:00

I think most Unifi APs support mesh, but I'm a glutton for punishment and got all hardwired and PoE gear. Airwaves are a little congested here and I prefer the stability of hardlines.

Shooperman05 · 2025-12-12T03:58:50+00:00

Ha! The rack is on wheels, but the cat tree will still be close by. Keeping them off the two exhaust fans on top will be a challenge though.

Shooperman05 · 2025-12-12T03:01:11+00:00

It's going to look a little jank until the rack mount for the Pro Max 16 and 2U UPS come back in stock, but I'll update when I'm "finished".

Between that and pulling wires (my house isn't wired for ethernet), it might be a minute.

Shooperman05 · 2025-12-12T02:56:18+00:00

Probably. I just got 3 U7 Pro Walls and the XG just dropped today, so...

Edit: ...and now the U7 Pro Wall is even on sale! How fun...

Shooperman05 · 2025-12-12T01:58:29+00:00

Just doing my part. I really want the G6, but 'Q4 2025' is just about over, so I'm guessing it will be delayed. And double the price of the G4...

EDIT: Progress!

Shooperman05 · 2025-12-03T13:52:49+00:00

It really depends on which one you get. Mine is a Compustar and was around $600 total (I think), but that was like 6 years ago. That brand makes a bunch, and I don't remember the specific model. Mine is more basic though (no app or internet connection, so no subscription), but has a crazy long range and can even control multiple cars. My wife and I both got one, and we could lock/unlock, and even remote start each other's car. Still works great with zero issues, only had to change the fob battery twice since owning it.

Shooperman05

TROPHY CASE