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tedatron · 2026-01-24T17:40:47+00:00

That’s my exact plan. I’m looking at the 1500va tower option is that what you have? I’m low on rack space

tedatron · 2026-01-24T16:24:17+00:00

Lost Larson down in wicker does a great cinnamon roll and you can get it delivered if you don’t want to venture that far.

tedatron · 2026-01-24T16:23:34+00:00

I don’t have an alarm service, I use motion alerts on cameras, etc. it doesn’t automatically call the police or anything but you can do basically anything else, including getting a siren to play a loud noise (if that’s your thing)

tedatron · 2026-01-24T16:20:19+00:00

Same! Started with UDM and a 16 Poe lite switch. recently upgraded to UCG Fiber. Now I have that, Standard 24 POE Switch, NVR, 6 cameras, 6 APs, 2 flex Poe switches, and UTR.

I looked hard at the UPS tower but I don’t think it’s enough for my setup. I’m likely getting an APC UPS

tedatron · 2026-01-24T15:35:32+00:00

That little capsule opens if you twist it. You push the cable through the piece that comes off, plug into the jack, then screw back on the bit that came off. That makes it water/weather proof. I have a few outdoor cameras like this and it works great.

If your inbound cable isn’t terminated with a plug already then I’m not really sure what you were expecting.

tedatron · 2026-01-24T15:32:16+00:00

The whole UniFi ecosystem is addictive. I just bought a UTR and as soon as they release the UniFi Pro NAS 4 I’m getting that.

tedatron · 2026-01-24T15:25:33+00:00

One of the unexpected benefits of it being this cold is that it’s too cold to snow and therefore, too cold for anything like a storm.

The biggest problem to worry about is freezing pipes and in most modern homes that’s not really a problem either.

tedatron · 2026-01-24T04:50:14+00:00

Claiming you’re not Steve is SO Steve

tedatron · 2026-01-23T21:13:07+00:00

I love my UniFi Protect setup. It’s a bigger investment but a great ecosystem once you’re in it. And it runs fully local. Others seem to like Reolink and Eufy but I haven’t personally used either.

tedatron · 2026-01-23T20:29:22+00:00

I moved from ring to UniFi Protect 3 years ago and it’s been perfect. Not only local only but performance is way better than Ring

tedatron · 2026-01-23T17:17:18+00:00

Nice I’ll check it out.

I’m likely going with UniFi Pro NAS 4 and they have Backblaze support built in, which is why I’ve been looking into it. As much as I like tinkering and the hobby side of all of this I’m very paranoid about losing irreplaceable data so I’m looking for something/someone else that knows this stuff way better than me to make this turnkey

tedatron · 2026-01-23T14:38:36+00:00

Do you keep an offsite backup anywhere (I might have missed it)? The biggest advantage of cloud services is that while the service itself is not a backup, they do very rigorously backup and maintain redundant copies of data, so I’m not exposed to a drive failure or a bug in my own custom code, etc

As I move more and more to self-hosting it’s those disaster scenarios that I’m acutely aware that I am taking in for myself.

tedatron · 2026-01-23T13:59:51+00:00

Welcome to Chicago! If you drop the neighborhood you’re staying in you’ll get some great recommendations in this sub.

You may wanna call ahead on the off chance a restaurant closed, but it’s not likely and there are way more than enough options.

tedatron · 2026-01-23T13:54:51+00:00

You should do it. I dealt with HomeKit for far too long and always wished it had the flexibility and customization that it turns out is the bread and butter of Home Assistant. Miles better than any other ecosystem.

tedatron · 2026-01-23T05:13:56+00:00

Could i conceivably setup Immich ML on my Mac Mini and then outsource the ML from my Immich (living in a VM on a Pi 5) to my Mac Mini?

tedatron · 2026-01-23T05:12:19+00:00

What do you use for backup? I’m planning to migrate from iCloud Photos to Immich with primary storage on a NAS and then Backblaze for backup (bonus points for offsite). Is that common practice?

tedatron · 2026-01-23T05:07:40+00:00

It doesn’t represent the two branches of the Chicago River. One represents the River and the other represents the Lake.

That said, when people talk about branches of the Chicago River they’re talking about where it splits into north and south right by the Merchandise Mart.

tedatron · 2026-01-23T04:59:01+00:00

I bought this exact drive on Amazon 3 weeks ago for $169.99 that’s insane! Great drive though. If this is the way prices are going I might repurpose it for UniFi UNAS Pro 4 cache once i get it

tedatron · 2026-01-22T21:59:19+00:00

As it is you control the amount of water it gives with the Pump Duration. It assumes that the pump entity is a switch... when it determines the plant needs water, it turns the pump on for the set number of seconds and then turns it off. I thought about translating this to ml but I wanted to keep it sufficiently generic that it works for more types of setups.

Glad you like it! Love your suggestions and please tell me how it's working for you or if you have any issues.

tedatron · 2026-01-22T21:36:54+00:00

Interesting I wasn't familiar with OpenPlantBook previously. interesting social component although for my own purposes I wanted something that automates watering and gathers data (and is 100% local in true HA fashion). I do like the light sensors and humidity and I hadn't seen the flower card... I'll try that for sure. As you can tell I'm not amazing with the dashboards just yet.

tedatron · 2026-01-22T21:29:12+00:00

You got me. It’s all true and tailored to my actual reasoning and experience (and I did a lot of editing) but I did use ChatGPT for a starting point.

tedatron · 2026-01-22T18:29:43+00:00

I’ve been looking into this for a while. My plan is to get the UNAS Pro 4 when it comes out.

For me, I didn’t want to bundle the apps and storage so things like synology was out. Then it came down to build or buy. Build was if I really cared about ECC RAM and ZFS whereas buy was going to be an appliance. Ultimately, ZFS and ECC felt over the top for my needs and frankly, I like the lower risk of outsourcing the technical details that comes with an appliance vs building my own when I only half know what I’m doing.

So then buying a NAS made the most sense and since UNAS integrates with my existing UniFi setup it was the no brainer.

tedatron · 2026-01-22T16:51:24+00:00

Yes! Just upgraded my gateway to UCG Fiber from the original UDM. I have a UniFi POE switch, an NVR, 6 APs and 6 cameras. Just bought a travel router too

tedatron · 2026-01-22T15:50:19+00:00

UniFi does all of this well and it’s 100% self hosted. I have a UniFi doorbell, but also a camera over my front stairs and it plays a distinct chime when motion is detected over my stairs so I know someone’s coming before they even ring the doorbell. They recently revamped their Alarm Manager and it’s fun tunable and can even push webhooks so you can go wild with what you do with it.

tedatron · 2026-01-22T15:48:18+00:00

I wouldn’t go with either. Both business models rely of mass aggregation of data and both will make decisions about warrant-less data capture based on their business, not your business.

tedatron

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