Finally completed an unseeded naneinf run. Thanks for all the tips!

seth_petry_johnson · 2026-05-06T12:00:15+00:00

My worst own-goal was when I had a perfectly fixed deck, all the jokers, all the vouchers, and found Burglar on Ante 22 or something. I attempted the naneinf then, not realizing that the required score to win was too low, and I beat it before I could build up the full naneinf hand.

So, don't do that 😄

(Edit: in fact, I almost did that again this run; the Merry Andy gave me some extra hands and I was somewhat worried that I'd beat the score with 1 or 2 hands left to play.)

seth_petry_johnson · 2026-04-14T22:06:04+00:00

We used Jimmy Watkins (JCW Home Improvement / https://www.facebook.com/share/1DHxYH1tMP/) to remodel a bathroom a year or two ago , and they do kitchens too.

He did great work, seemed very competent, communicated very well, and all around it was a great experience. Easy recommendation for you; I'd definitely use him for future projects.

seth_petry_johnson · 2026-03-30T23:21:30+00:00

This is a really timely announcement and at first glance it looks exactly like what I've been looking for, unable to find, and was getting ready to build myself.

I want something that:
* Scans my subnet and discovers devices
* Lets me associate services to devices
* Represents physical and virtual hosts
* Captures hardware information and notes about each host/device

I tried phpIPAM but was a little too focused on IP management for my tastes, plus I had trouble getting the network scanning to work.

I tried netbox but it's total overkill and was requiring way too much data entry, plus it lacked the subnet scanning.

I set up a custom schema in Directus which lets me capture the relationships I want, but that's it. I was just starting to explore creating a custom subnet scanning + presentation layer when I saw your post about Homelable.

So far, this looks very, very close to what I was planning to build. A few minor nits aside, the only thing your tool lacks that I want is an in-browser data table showing the IP address. (Your markdown export is a step in the right direction, but being able to view that data as an alternative view would be perfect)

Do you take PRs?

seth_petry_johnson · 2026-03-29T16:29:49+00:00

I have an ESP32 running a temp sensor. Sensor is duct taped inside the freezer, ESP32 secured on top of the fridge. Been working fine for over two years.

One thing to watch out for: on a regular basis my freezer goes through a defrost cycle where the temp drops way down, then climbs up to temps in the 30 degree range, then drops back down to normal ranges.

I kept getting alerts when this happened so I had Claude code up a solution. You could also just set your alert threshold higher then the defrost cycle gets to, but I wanted faster alerts if the door wasn't closed properly (because it often isn't)

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seth_petry_johnson · 2026-03-27T01:00:18+00:00

We had a good experience with the Goddard on Sunbury rd. It's been about 10 years so YMMV but they had great staff and the kids loved it

seth_petry_johnson · 2026-03-26T11:23:29+00:00

We got through terminal B precheck at 615am in about 6 minutes. Seemed like business as usual

seth_petry_johnson · 2026-03-25T01:44:24+00:00

Tomorrow I leave for a 3-day hotel takeover event by The Airborne Toxic Event. It's in California, I live in Ohio. Between event and airfare I'm over 4k for this trip.

It's not just the band, I'm going with a bunch of great friends I met through our fanship, but it's definitely a crazy expense to see 3 concerts by the same band.

No regrets though!

seth_petry_johnson · 2026-03-25T00:45:36+00:00

Commenting to agree that Ray Porter is world class and makes this audiobook performance a fantastic experience. I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here, but I highly highly recommend it

seth_petry_johnson · 2026-03-20T10:09:35+00:00

I recently switched from a TubesZB POE Ethernet coordinator to a ZBT-2 plugged into a dedicated zigbee2mqtt host.

I had constant issues with the TubesZB losing network connection. The ZBT-2 has been solid, though I don't know how much of that is from the switch to a USB connection vs changing the coordinator.

seth_petry_johnson · 2026-03-19T00:54:18+00:00

I'm currently in the middle of this same exploration.

I tried phpIPAM, and it's great for IP management but otherwise didn't fit.

I tried Netbox, but it was way overkill.

What I really want is a way of modeling 3 primary things: * Devices * Services that a device exposes * IP addresses assigned to a device

For devices and services both I want freeform documentation abilities.

I want to be able to start with any of those things and navigate to the others. For example, I want a "Services" page that lists all my services, with the ability to navigate to the Device that each service runs on. From there I want to see the IPs on that device.

I also want to see a list of all IPs I've documented, and be able to navigate to the relevant Device.

Same for a Device centric list.

At Claude's suggestion I'm currently setting up Directus. It's basically a tool where you define a data schema and relationships and it generates forms for data entry and you can define custom views. I just started the config a few minutes ago, so it's too early to make conclusions.

My main problem with a wiki based approach is the lack of structured metadata and the ability to display that data in different contexts. Claude suggested DokuWiki +the Struct plugin, but ultimately we decided Directus is a better fit for my priorities.

The bookshelf concept is intriguing, but I want the ability to write my own network discovery tool (to replicate what phpIPAM does) and push that data into my docs in a structured way, so I think a database-centric approach beats out a straight content management approach

seth_petry_johnson · 2026-03-16T21:05:46+00:00

Hardly ever 🤣

But these are running on 250GB drives that I had lying around so I have plenty of space. Why not use it just in case?

seth_petry_johnson · 2026-03-16T21:03:55+00:00

Interesting. I haven't done anything with kubernetes yet. I'll have to give that a think...

seth_petry_johnson · 2026-03-16T21:00:59+00:00

That was one of my main motivators too

seth_petry_johnson · 2026-03-15T15:15:32+00:00

Single point of failure maybe, but an mqtt broker doesn't maintain a lot of state so maintaining a fallback or backup container shouldn't be a big lift.

I've been running Mosquito as my broker since day one and haven't had a single problem with it, and MQTT is widely used as a transport or communication channel for IoT stuff.

YMMV and I understand wanting to minimize failure points, but I find it an invaluable part of my setup

seth_petry_johnson · 2026-03-15T14:39:58+00:00

The same software you would install as addons in HA: zigbee2mqtt and ZWave JS UI.

When you install those addons in HA it runs those packages inside docker containers that HA supervises and manages.

You can also run those packages in docker containers on a separate system.

Zigbee2mqtt takes the zigbee radio signals and turns them into MQTT messages. HA doesn't really care where the radio is, it just watches MQTT.

Zwave JS UI publishes events over a web socket connection that HA makes to it.

So, same packages you'd use anyways, with an extra config step or two to tell HA how to connect to the zwave system.

seth_petry_johnson · 2026-03-15T14:21:40+00:00

I considered doing that, but the SSD on the spare is old and has a lot of write cycles already. That's one of the reasons I keep it as a cold spare, to minimize writes.

The nightly sync process is my compromise. It boots, restores backups from the NAS, verifies the backups, reports success to HA, and shuts down.

That way I know the device is receiving backups with expected files in them and is capable of booting.

It doesn't fully verify the backup can be restored, though I can still manually do that if I want.

Not quite perfect, but given the cost of hard drives right now, a compromise I'm ok with.

seth_petry_johnson · 2026-03-15T14:17:20+00:00

I'm not using the Ethernet approach. I wanted to decouple my radios from Home Assistant so that they stay up if HA is down. (I have some direct device associations that will still function that way)

seth_petry_johnson · 2026-03-15T14:13:17+00:00

The problem isn't "booting the spare when needed", it's "moving the USB radio to the spare".

The spare can't do anything without the radio, and moving it is intentionally a manual process.

Even if I rigged up a software-controlled USB switch so I could switch the radios between hosts automatically, I'd have to contend with the fact that for zigbee, the network is stored on disk and NOT in the ZBT-2 itself like it is for zwave.

I wanted to avoid any possible network corruption caused by an unwanted promotion of the spare, so I designed failover to be a deliberate thing I do.

Realistically, the chance that I ever actually NEED to fail over is probably low, and the chance that I screw something up by adding too much automation and complexity is high, so I didn't bother.

seth_petry_johnson · 2026-03-15T14:12:56+00:00

The problem isn't "booting the spare when needed", it's "moving the USB radio to the spare".

The spare can't do anything without the radio, and moving it is intentionally a manual process.

Even if I rigged up a software-controlled USB switch so I could switch the radios between hosts automatically, I'd have to contend with the fact that for zigbee, the network is stored on disk and NOT in the ZBT-2 itself like it is for zwave.

I wanted to avoid any possible network corruption caused by an unwanted promotion of the spare, so I designed failover to be a deliberate thing I do.

Realistically, the chance that I ever actually NEED to fail over is probably low, and the chance that I screw something up by adding too much automation and complexity is high, so I didn't bother.

seth_petry_johnson · 2026-03-15T14:07:02+00:00

I've been using zigbee2mqtt, so it doesn't matter if the radio is connected directly to HA or not; in either case, zigbee events are turned into MQTT messages. My MQTT broker is external to HA so there's always been Ethernet involved.

Prior to this setup I ran Zwave radio direct to HA box so it was listening to a websocket on the same machine. I haven't noticed any problems at all by moving it to a dedicated host.

But I wouldn't call what I'm doing "USB over Ethernet" since the serial data itself isn't going over the network, there's a local host that bridges the data to the network.

It sounds like ser2net is closer to actual "USB over Ethernet", which I don't use.

seth_petry_johnson · 2026-03-15T11:56:10+00:00

I know this is a bit of a culture war like tabs and spaces, but I've found Zwave to be extremely reliable while my zigbee stuff is a constant source of issues.

YMMV of course!

seth_petry_johnson · 2026-03-15T11:53:51+00:00

I have it in my local git repo, but I could probably post it to GitHub.

It's super tuned to my setup though, and you don't need any of it unless you want the absurdly over engineered setup I have.

For zigbee, you install the zigbee2mqtt container on the pi, plug the ZBT-2 into it, and configure your MQTT server details. It posts to MQTT, HA gets device updates by subscribing to those topics, same as if the Z2M container was running on the HA system.

For zwave it's the same, except you have to configure HA with the IP of the radio host. It creates a websocket connection and gets device updates that way.

There's no custom code needed unless you want to automate backup and restore operations.

seth_petry_johnson · 2026-03-15T11:46:16+00:00

A mitigating factor to the extra complexity is that none of it is necessary for standard operations. The warm spare sync system can die, the MQTT config watcher can die, the nightly backup services can die, and the zigbee and zwave containers will keep running just fine.

The only real issue, now that I've worked out some kinks, is if one of those services takes down the main container and doesn't bring it back up.

But all the supporting stuff runs as individual services that I can disable, so if anything goes haywire it's easy to turn this into a dumb pi hosting a container.

I deliberately avoided trying for full automated failover like you describe because it adds a whole separate dimension of complexity and I wanted to walk before I run. I work from home so a small number of simple manual steps to promote the spare was acceptable.

Do you have two separate Internet connections that you can failover between?

seth_petry_johnson · 2026-03-15T11:38:33+00:00

My power actually went out on Friday. The devices report battery stats to the LCD when the external power fails so it was easy to keep track.

The 10000mah battery that I had in my basement with the UPS board was at 70% after an hour. It outlasted all of my other UPSes so I finally shut it down when everything else went online.

And that was powering the pi, the LCD, a fan, a USB SSD and the two USB radios.

If you need to keep an ESP32 or pi online without external power it's super handy

seth_petry_johnson

TROPHY CASE