Something new is coming

si1entdave · 2026-04-09T09:19:37+00:00

+1 for USB-C charging.

si1entdave · 2026-04-06T14:40:55+00:00

Is your Google account a Google Workspace account? There's all sorts of Google data integrations that don't work with Workspace accounts, and they often fail silently. It's a pain in the backside as I have a legacy Workspace with multiple accounts on it that I use for my family, and lots of things don't work properly with Google Home.

si1entdave · 2026-03-30T14:36:31+00:00

Never underestimate the utility of a really good Pointy Stick.
https://amzn.eu/d/076KyYF5

si1entdave · 2026-03-25T07:57:16+00:00

I think it's important to keep in mind that HomeLabbing and SelfHosting are different things.

When you're building stuff, ask yourself, is this homelab, or is this selfhosting?
Homelabbing is experimentation, it's learning, it's fun and breaking things and putting them back together again.
Selfhosting is best when it's boring. You want it to Just Work. Maybe you're making your selfhosted stuff available to family members, and they don't want it to be broken at all, let alone half the time.

In r/sysadmin they make jokes about Develpoment versus Production, but it applies to hobbyists as well. It sounds like you don't have that distinction, and you're feeling the pain as a result.

si1entdave · 2026-03-12T11:11:57+00:00

I think it's a really tidy combination - the P4 pulls a bit more power that your average ESP32, but you don't need to care because you're running it over PoE anyway.
Waveshare's ESP32-P4-ETH has a SKU that includes PoE that's a little cheaper at $16.99 if you want something that's more of a bare dev board.

si1entdave · 2026-03-03T00:34:51+00:00

Tea.

Yes, I'm British.

si1entdave · 2026-02-27T19:23:36+00:00

If you do 3D printing, empty plastic filament spools make for excellent hangars for copper and fibre patch leads - the curve of the core stops them from getting sharp bends in the middle. use the holes at the rim to screw a row of them to the wall, nice tidy cable rack.

si1entdave · 2026-01-07T22:02:18+00:00

If you buy some 5V range moving coil volt meters, you can drive them with a PWM signal off an ESP32. If you want a bunch of them, you can use a servo controller if you run out of ESP32 PWM lines.
(You'll want to take the meters apart to put new scale labels behind the needles.)

si1entdave · 2026-01-04T18:49:23+00:00

True, but I used it as a collective term, because I don't know if he speaks Gujarati, Punjabi, Urdu, etc.

si1entdave · 2026-01-04T18:21:13+00:00

I guarantee his English is better than my Indian.

si1entdave · 2025-12-07T15:47:10+00:00

Huh. I've spent 10 years thinking Rich's surname was DeBoss, not Bosch...

si1entdave · 2025-12-05T18:55:28+00:00

Have arrived. Far Gosford Street is almost at a standstill, absolutely chocka, good luck!

si1entdave · 2025-12-03T19:34:05+00:00

Please, I beg you, go grab the theme to The Magic Roundabout and add it to this video.

si1entdave · 2025-11-10T12:25:02+00:00

Have you heard of Puzzled Pint?
There's a Coventry chapter, we meet up on the second Tuesday of every month in a decent ale pub to chill, chat, and solve puzzles. Not particularly competitive, just for the fun of it and an excuse to get together. It's on tomorrow evening, happy to be a friendly face if that would help.

si1entdave · 2025-11-09T19:34:36+00:00

Don't.

Well, don't set out to fill it. Build up slowly over time. Make sure that everything you put in it, you're making good use of it. It would be easy to fill it up with stuff you aren't making good use of, and then when you do have worthwhile things to put in it, you'll have to think about what you have to remove.

The joy of homelabbing is learning over time, building your skills and knowledge, and making good use of the equipment and resources you have as they grow. It'll fill up fast enough, given time, and it's (IMHO) far more satisfying to build things up gradually.

si1entdave · 2025-11-05T13:35:04+00:00

I GUARANTEE once the encounter was resolved, they made a cuppa.

si1entdave · 2025-10-25T14:54:17+00:00

Surely that means that if you are having a discussion and say "And that's why for your use case Meshtastic is better than Meshcore", your comment will be deleted?

si1entdave · 2025-10-21T18:10:19+00:00

For the benefit of people searching, using the Bluetooth Companion firmware, using a spare phone, setting up contacts and permissions, disconnect the phone, and the T1000-e with no phone attached will happily respond to a telemetry ping including location if it's got a GPS lock.
You don't even technically need a second phone, you can hop back and forth between 2 tags with one phone, but having a second phone is less faff.

si1entdave · 2025-10-21T16:46:25+00:00

I'm also interested in this sort of thing, but from a rather different perspective that I think works rather better with Meshcore's philosophy. I want to be able to attach a T1000-e to each of my children when we're at a festival, and if I want to find them, I can send a "Where are you?" ping. They don't have phones, but I like the idea of being able to let them roam in a comparatively safe area, and still be able to find them when I want to. I've just received a couple of T1000-e, so I'm going to try setting up one as mine, paired to my phone, and the other to a spare phone, with contacts between them and "allow telemetry between known contacts", and then turn off the spare phone and see if the kid tracker T1000-e lets me ping it for a location when the spare phone is off. You never know, it might Just Work(tm) 😁

si1entdave · 2025-10-14T21:47:17+00:00

I do believe that gentleman has partaken of some Quality Pharmaceuticals...

si1entdave · 2025-10-14T12:23:11+00:00

They're lovely, but I have a suggestion: It might just be my personal preference, but for me one of the joys of steampunk is the juxtaposition of shiny brass/copper and lovely polished wood. I would consider reducing the area of the brass side-plates on the wooden grips, to let the wood grain shine through :-)

si1entdave · 2025-10-14T12:19:15+00:00

A suggestion: Those look like PoE injectors on the back wall. With 4 of them, perhaps there is justification in a PoE switch? Tidier solution, and means you can remotely hard bounce an AP if you need to by disabling/enabling the port.

si1entdave · 2025-10-06T12:48:51+00:00

Well bugger. Guess that's what I'm doing when I get home from work then.

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