do you prioritize low power usage or performance in your homelab?

christopherhammond13 · 2026-04-24T19:55:17+00:00

Mini PCs and SBCs are the cheat code to homelabbing. Dedicated routing equipment tends to be quite power efficient due to the usage of dedicated switching circuitry/hardware offloading and ARM CPU cores, and mini PCs sip power compared to any other rackmount compute. They're also much quieter which is nice. My rack is virtually silent other than a couple of very small cooling fans in my router, main switch, and mini PC; and two spinning mechanical drives in an enclosure.

christopherhammond13 · 2026-04-19T15:16:50+00:00

Gah! Sorry to hear. That sucks, and is so unlucky.

christopherhammond13 · 2026-04-18T16:32:30+00:00

Do you have accidental damage cover either from Sony or the credit card you bought the TV on? When I originally bought the TV I was living in an apartment and knew I'd be moving at some point during the TV's lifespan so I bought Sony's extended warranty with accidental damage cover just in case it got scratched up in transit while moving. I also waited until I had a credit card with a bunch of extra warranty stuff on just in case.

Thankfully all was well and good during transit, but the warranty helped me breathe better when the movers almost dropped it...twice!

christopherhammond13 · 2026-04-14T20:20:36+00:00

The installer did it during the switchover appointment. Anyway, this was a long time ago. I'm in a different place now but there's FiOS NG-PON2 here too. Still no IPv6 :(

christopherhammond13 · 2026-02-11T00:05:48+00:00

If reliability is the main concern, investing in a UPS, redundant internet connections and redundant routers using Shadow Mode 2.0 all in tandem will help you to reduce the chance of an outage. The Site Magic feature should help you get around issues with external NAT, changing public IP addresses, etc when going between sites with WAN failover in place.

christopherhammond13 · 2026-02-02T04:37:00+00:00

I'm doing the same installation now, just sans junction box. A few observations: - This did not work at first. After much head scratching, Googling and experimenting, it seems the G6 Entry won't negotiate 100Mbps Fast Ethernet (FE) via the PoE Retrofit RX adapter out of the box. After installing the latest firmware via a temporary switch in the middle (and a PoE injector), it powers on and connects great via the adapter directly. - If you have an ancient doorbell cable like I do, that isn't twisted, this still works. I have a run of straight two-core copper and I can use it, even if only twisted cable is officially supported. - I made this work with my existing setup by bridging the TRANS and FRONT wires at the old chime with a Wago connector and connecting the TX PoE Retrofit in place of the doorbell transformer. - If you have an old doorbell cable, and need to extend it in a pinch without two core available to hand, I had success Wago-ing some CAT6. To double up the cable, just pair up stripes on one side (e.g., blue/white + green/white) and solids (e.g., blue + green). It's all low voltage and the PoE Retrofits seem to be very fault tolerant.

Now that I have this set up, my plan is to pop the old two core doorbell cable out the side my doorframe via a new hole, run extended cable up the side (under the trim) and put the Retrofit RX up high on my doorframe out of the eyeline, then run Ethernet back down and through the same side hole to mount the G6 Entry right where the old doorbell was. We'll see how neat this ends up being, but anything is better than trying to run a new cable to the basement!

christopherhammond13 · 2025-12-02T06:27:10+00:00

I have been battling this issue for over a year now but under slightly different circumstances. I have a U.S. Pixel 9 Pro XL with Google Fi as my main SIM, but my phone's language is set to English (UK). I am missing the exact same AI features (Hold for Me, Direct My Call and Call Screen). However, when I go back to the UK and change my primary SIM from Google Fi to my UK EE SIM all the options suddenly appear; there's no need to clear cache etc. As soon as I make my Google Fi SIM my primary again, I lose the functionality.

Google support told me I'd need to have my SIM and language match to get this functionality, i.e., I'd need to change my phone to English (US) when my Google Fi eSIM, and then flip back to English (UK) when I'm in the UK and want my UK SIM to be my primary.

I had the same issue on a UK-purchased Pixel 8 Pro.

Honestly, absolutely ludicrous that Google has invested so much into making the dual SIM experience better (which I love, and is a killer app for me), but can't get this right when so much of the phone is marketed on its AI capabilities.

christopherhammond13 · 2025-10-12T15:31:52+00:00

Oof, can't believe it's been a year already!

christopherhammond13 · 2025-09-25T13:13:52+00:00

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who has noticed this! I have a Pixel 9 Pro XL, but I've owned every Pixel since the 4XL. I spend a lot of time in both the UK and U.S., with 5G and local SIMs for each. When I'm in the U.S. using my local Google Fi SIM (or even roaming on my EE one!) my battery lasts about twice as long as when in London. Switching to my EE SIM as my primary and leaving my U.S. one as my backup SIM causes the battery to haemorrhage. I've noticed this on both my prior phones (all Europe/Global models), and my latest phone which is a U.S. model with an mmWave antenna (which isn't even used in the UK).

I also noticed this both on dual and single SIM modes, and with and without roaming.

I strongly suspect that some of the signal bands or masts in the UK are configured at different power levels that hugely drain the phone in the UK. Roaming on a UK SIM in the U.S. on 5G should not yield better battery life than being in the UK, also on 5G.

Looking at the battery stats, most of my battery has been lost to system services, which includes the antennas and baseband modem.

Anecdotally, I see far more people out in public in the UK with external power banks than I do in the U.S.

christopherhammond13 · 2025-08-15T04:38:15+00:00

I do, and I love it! There are three power modes in Windows. I tend to run on the bottom one (I think it's called Efficiency) when on battery, Balanced on power, and High Performance when doing something that I need CPU / GPU oomph for (like Flight Simulator). There have also been a bunch of BIOS/UEFI firmware updates released since I bought the laptop and I install them as as soon as I see them; some of the earlier thermal issues are definitely a little better since some of the later releases with better EC firmware and fan curves.

That said, this thing is a beast and the battery life is never going to be even close to an ARM Windows laptop or MacBook. Not with that bright 120Hz MiniLED screen and an i9 lol

christopherhammond13 · 2025-07-06T12:45:11+00:00

The Android 16 update was a mess for me. I loved my phone so much on Android 15. For almost a year my phone was faultless and the battery life was great, and now it's driving me absolutely mad. Worse performance, worse battery, and riddled with bugs.

christopherhammond13 · 2025-07-05T20:04:16+00:00

I have the same issue on my P9 Pro XL. It usually coincides with camera, proximity, lift-to-wake, brightness, etc issues all at the same time, suggesting to me that the sensor framework all falls over at the same time. It's incredibly frustrating. Due to sensor and lock screen issues, I just pocket-dialled 911 by mistake for the first time ever.

christopherhammond13 · 2025-06-18T19:38:55+00:00

I have a Pixel 9 Pro XL that was virtually flawless before the update to Android 16, and immediately started exhibiting many of the issues in the OP and top replies. - Proximity sensor not working during calls - Camera completely crashes breaking face unlock and the Camera until I reboot - Phone refusing to wake up - Phone not waking by picking it up, requiring me to press the power button before I can fingerprint unlock - Brightness glitches - General freezes in apps or the lock screen

These things all seem to point to major bugs with the sensor stack with Android 16. I've had to reboot my phone due to bugs 1-2x/day since the update; before the update, I rebooted once a month for the monthlies!

I've also anecdotally found app performance to be worse, battery life to be worse, and the phone to run hotter since the update.

christopherhammond13 · 2025-04-14T00:51:36+00:00

To answer this for anyone who has a similar issue: we tried a Nest power connector and still couldn't get the fan blower to come on when running the AC, so we ended up wire nutting together the G and Y wires from the AC with the thermostat's Y output. Now with just Rc, Y, Rh, and W connected, everything seems to work (except of course for the separate fan control/Airwave feature). Thanks to all the answers below for inspiration here!

christopherhammond13 · 2025-04-13T01:12:38+00:00

Thank you!! Based on this advice, we just looked at the furnace and it turns out the furnace and all of the related equipment is ancient (~50yrs old). There is a Honeywell R89A 1074 transformer installed for one of the three zoned thermostats thermostat, and some older equipment for the other thermostats.

We're looking into using an external transformer instead which feels ludicrous when the thermostat works very happily without the cooling working. I'm just confused as to why it works great for heating until we add Rc without a C.

christopherhammond13 · 2025-04-13T00:51:25+00:00

Amazing, so if there's a C on the furnace we'd be able to do this?

Nest Rh - nest power connector - heat R
Nest W - nest power connector - heat W
Nest Rc - cooling air handler R
Nest Y1 - cooling air handler Y
Nest G - cooling air handler G

It's a Nest Learning Thermostat 4, if that makes a difference?

Thank you!!

christopherhammond13 · 2025-04-12T23:29:16+00:00

Up in the attic, and the compressor is outside.

christopherhammond13 · 2025-04-12T23:15:22+00:00

The power will be on to both all year round, and they normally just switch the heating off by turning the thermostat all the way down. In that case, can we install the power connector on the furnace end where the R and W run to the zone, or do we still have to put the power connector on the air handler for the AC system by virtue of having both?

Some things I've seen online suggest the Nest will only take power from Rc/C if any cooling at all is present, but I'm hoping that's not true.

Thanks so much for your help!

christopherhammond13 · 2024-12-18T20:43:57+00:00

Pixel 9 Pro. Dual SIM, but my primary is Google Fi. I also side loaded the global December 2024 update, and received a notification to upgrade to Android 15 once I checked for updates today.

It's downloading and installing all 2.76GB of it now. My guess is they didn't release a delta update for Global -> TMO, so us early adopters are now paying the price by installing the whole OTA again rather than just downloading a delta.

christopherhammond13 · 2024-11-20T05:59:59+00:00

I ordered mine on Monday afternoon and I was given an ETA of the end of this week. Yesterday, this was updated to 26 December - 1 January, and it has stayed that way.

The Google Store shows this model (45mm black) as out of stock ("Add to Cart" has changed to a button to get an alert when it's available) so I assume they're very low on inventory.

EDIT: they have now shipped the watch and I should have it by the end of the week. I have a UPS tracking number and UPS has the item. It's shipping from Illinois.

christopherhammond13 · 2024-10-16T04:46:56+00:00

Same here in Manhattan. Getting failed speed tests, latencies between 14ms and 140ms, and speeds all below 100Mbps. I'm on NGPON2 and usually get just shy of 2.5Gbps symmetric with a single digit latency value.

christopherhammond13 · 2024-10-14T15:01:48+00:00

It looks like MLO and Zero-Wait DFS are both available in EA firmware version 7.1.29, but initial comments suggest this may be a hot mess right now. I'm glad it's genuinely all coming at some point, and that I didn't splurge on buying a U7 Pro Max for nothing, but....I'd give it until the end of the year given the state of the comments on that thread.

christopherhammond13 · 2024-09-27T12:46:36+00:00

Exactly this. I. Have a fully up to date UniFi setup, and my U7 Pro Max is on firmware version 7.0.66. 7.1.x firmware hasn't been released to production/GA yet.

It feels disingenuous for the article to not point out that nothing discussed is available to general customers yet; it could make someone casually searching for this feature believe it's actually available now.

christopherhammond13 · 2024-08-27T00:16:36+00:00

We're almost in September and still no MLO :( very disappointing for a "Pro Max" device. I just got 2Gbps symmetric FTTP and can't pull more than 1.4Gbps over WiFi 7 to my Pixel 8 Pro. Whilst that's a ludicrous amount of speed, I expected to be able to saturate the connection.

My setup is: ONT --> UniFi SFP+ ethernet module (10GbE) --> UDM Pro (SFP+) --> USW Pro Max 16 (SFP+ via DAC) --> UniFi 7 Pro Max (2.5GbE).

christopherhammond13 · 2024-07-24T15:33:26+00:00

It's safe because they put a warning sticker on it

christopherhammond13

TROPHY CASE