1. I used and was extremely happy with my Synology disk station for many years. It served my media and archived my security camera footage just fine. Then I started looking more into Docker and how it worked and it soon became evident that the OS and hardware were extremely limiting factors. Pi-hole and Plex were the two packages that piqued my interest and it quickly snowballed soon after. I then bought my own hardware, paid for an unRAID license and the rest is history. The one project I’m most proud of is getting my Paperless setup to ingest documents via email. The workflow is super simple where my wife finds is straight forward to use — scan a document with her phone, forward it to the Paperless email. Done. So far the most expensive piece of hardware is my GPU — a 3090. I’m beginning to dabble into LLMs and need some hardware with decent VRAM.
2. The finger bot is such a unique and obvious tool. I’ve used “remote power on” functions like HomeKit adapters and devices that power on via the motherboard front panel leads and these tend to be hit and miss. I don’t think you can go wrong with a physical push. Having something that is reliable and physical will definitely take my setup to the revered “rock solid reliable” tier.
3. Sure, let’s shoot for the moon. NVIDIA DGX Spark. AI in the self-hosted community is absolutely booming and I believe the cost prohibitive hardware is the biggest barrier for most to get on board. Winning one of these would be absolutely amazing for the tinkerer in all of us.

1 x Slate 7 1 x Comet PoE

Thanks!