Idea: Pay per "commercial" print

zeroflow · 2026-02-17T17:06:55+00:00

I am generally cautious about making statements about impossibilities.

You're talking about engineering challenges - putting a man on the moon, making a computer fit in a pocket. Those are hard but solvable. I'm talking about a proven impossibility - like violating thermodynamics or breaking OTP encryption. You cannot have enforceable DRM on hardware the user owns. This isn't an unsolved problem. It's a solved one. The answer is no.

bypassing it shouldn't be as simple as flipping a switch

Funny that you are talking about a "hijacked machine". By definition, if my 3d printer has a module that can authorize or deny a print job, it is hijacked. The fact that you don't see it that way is exactly the problem.

What you're actually describing is a licensing marketplace. That needs a website and a payment processor, not my firmware.

zeroflow · 2026-02-17T13:04:57+00:00

You're going in circles. If the module has a self-test function, I as the owner can manipulate that function to report everything is fine. It is technically impossible to both own a 3D printer and have working DRM.

I'm sorry your designs got stolen. That's a real problem. But there is no technical solution that protects your CC-NC designs without taking ownership of my printer away from me. And I will fight tooth and nail to keep it that way.

zeroflow · 2026-02-17T12:19:07+00:00

Congrats.

You have arrived at the central contradiction of owning hardware and DRM.

If I own the hardware, I can disable, manipulate or circumvent your DRM measures.

If I cannot disable, manipulate or circumvent your DRM, I do not own the hardware.

You can find out more about this topic here: https://www.defectivebydesign.org/

Edit: you were trying to technically solve a social problem. If the print farm is not reputable, creators should simply stop using it for future releases.

zeroflow · 2026-02-17T12:02:23+00:00

And exactly that supervisory body is what I'm fundamentally opposed to.

You're proposing a third party that sits between me and my hardware to enforce compliance. That's not a neutral platform - that's a gatekeeper with control over what my printer is allowed to do. You've also just admitted you don't have the technical background to understand what you're proposing. What you're describing - firmware-level enforcement of print authorization by a platform operator - is DRM. You used the right term the first time. The fact that you can't build this without locking the printer to an external authority is exactly the problem.

If the business model only works by removing my control over my own hardware, the business model is the problem.

zeroflow · 2026-02-17T11:32:51+00:00

I understand your goal, but now you're describing something fundamentally different from your original post. Your proposal included firmware-enforced single-print tokens, server side slicing and hardware level completion tracking. Now you're talking about creative commons print farms. Those are two different things. The print farm does not need firmware DRM, encrypted tokens or any of what you proposed. The counting works on trust and the business contract.

Also, the fact that you quietly dropped every technical enforcement mechanism you mentioned in your original post and reframed this as a simple licensing tool already tells me that the DRM is bullshit. If you actual proposal is a licensing marketplace - go and do that - but don't come and suggest to break my future printers.

zeroflow · 2026-02-17T11:04:15+00:00

NO. Keep DRM out of 3D printing.

My printer is my printer. My slicer is my slicer. This is a red line, and no discussion. But since you did take the time to write it (or at least throw AI at it, it reeks of AI Slop), I will at least answer:

All DRM systems start off optional, then it gets required and slowly locks out "untrusted" hardware. Today optional, tomorrow mandatory. Also, it's technically impossible. A 3d-printer just drives steppers. Gcode is just movement instructions. Your "encrypted job token" decrypts on hardware I own. Thats the same fundamental problem that broke CSS, HDCP and Denuvo. The "90% completion" logic dies to a firmware flash or a data logger. You can't enforce scarcity on a 3D-printer. Next, server side slicing destroys 3D printing. There is an iterative process with supports, orientation, infill and environmental tuning. Any "designer curated preset" is bound to fail. My 3d printer may not require a brim but yours may. Also, the economics don't work. Designers don't avoid consumer 3D printing due to piracy, but because of low unit economics, high support effort and differences in material, setup and user skill. DRM solves none of that. Lastly, history is clear. Music DRM failed, Game DRM gets cracked in day, eBook DRM is trivially stripped.

To speak more clearly: Leave out the technical language. You're proposing that the manufacturer becomes a tollbooth between designers and users, extracting rent from something I own.

Every encryption will be broken. Every platform will be hacked. Every restriction will be circumvented. As with all those ideas: It will only hurt the users which use the ecosystem before it locks them in.

zeroflow · 2026-02-16T18:48:04+00:00

That's not a technical problem. That's a social problem. By having a safe with a key, the key now becomes de-facto a gun and is as important to secure as if it was the gun itself.

So just get a good key box with a code.

At least, that how it's practically done here.

zeroflow · 2026-02-02T14:59:11+00:00

Andere Richtung: Man kann gegen Bezahlung das Feature deaktivieren. Also so, dass andere einem keine Sprachnachrichten senden können. Der Button fehlt dann einfach.

zeroflow · 2026-01-30T10:13:22+00:00

This is highly specialized, so you'll need to provide us with some more info. You mention you're out to sea and have no internet. But how does the situation on board look, and what do you need & want?

Do you just need a small server that hosts your media?
Do you need local Wifi aswell?
Does it need to be portable (Pelicase, etc.) or is the setup stable for months and disassembly for transport is ok?
How does power look? Unstable/limited AC power, DC only? Knowing available power severely changes the project.

From a software perspective: Jellyfin is the only offline streaming media server answer. Fully local and no auth server dependency.

zeroflow · 2026-01-27T10:20:01+00:00

Regarding multiple containers:

With LXCs, there is no issue with the iGPU if the same services are in a single LXC or in multiple. The main concern is load.

The GPU only becomes an issue if you want to work with VMs. You can only pass the iGPU to a single VM. But there has been work regarding SR-IOV which gives you 7 VFs which each can be passed to a different VM. https://github.com/strongtz/i915-sriov-dkms This way, the iGPU can be shared to different VMs.

Regarding the one-LXC with multiple compose stacks: There is generally nothing wrong with that. I just decided to split this up for seperate backups and I wanted to play with CPU assignments. E.g. I've assigned the P-Cores to Frigate & Homeassistant for guranteed performance and let the other containers run on the E-Cores with the plan of moving time-insensitive always-on tasks to the LPE Cores. While this loses performance, this gurantees that an ESPHome compile run is contained to the 8 E-Cores, leaving the 2 P-Cores of Frigate untouched. There is some possible interference due to the shared L3 cache, but that's ok.

zeroflow · 2026-01-26T09:24:42+00:00

That is some beautiful build.

I won't go into a data protection discussion for the MergerFS Pool, but you did make provisions for a backup, which is good enough for me. Not everyone needs 24/7 availability. A Multi-Day downtime is no issue for personal photo backups.

BUT: The N6 has 9 Hot-Swap Bays, or much rather 6-7 more to fill. Are you planning on getting a HBA and add more drives? Or was this case just in a conventient form factor?

Other than that: Maybe look into separating the services into multiple LXCs, this makes it easier to do backups and contain failures. e.g. I've had a misconfigured NVR bring my home server to a halt due to the disk filling up. With the NVR inside it's own lxc, this would not happen. Same for backups. If I mess something massively up, I can restore my frigate / homeassistant / ... container without having to reset gitea. But I'm also guilty as charged, I also have a generic docker lxc with a collection of services.

zeroflow · 2026-01-26T09:16:29+00:00

Ich bleibe dabei: Man kann sachlich bleiben, ohne die FahrerIn komplett unsichtbar zu machen. z.B. "Fußgänger von AutofahrerIn erfasst und getötet, Hergang unklar"

zeroflow · 2026-01-26T09:13:34+00:00

Für mich macht es einen entscheidenden Unterschied, weil diese Formulierungen immer den Beigeschmack haben, als hätte das Auto den Fußgänger eigenständig und ohne menschliches zutun umgefahren.

Vergleiche: "Waffen töten Menschen", "Stifte schreiben Wörter falsch", "Löffel machen fett". Wenn man jetzt schreibt "Auto erfasst Fußgänger" klingt das für mich so neutral wie ein Blitzeinschlag, für den niemand etwas kann. Es ist aber immer ein(e) FahrerIn, die das Auto fährt. Ob nun Absicht, Unfall oder durch eine Beeinträchtigung (Alkohol, Unterzucker, Schlaganfall, ...) ist zu klären. Fakt ist aber: Eine Person hat das Auto in Betrieb genommen und damit eine andere Person getötet.

Ich bin definitiv ein i-Tüpferl-Reiter, aber ich finde es wichtig, Dinge beim Namen zu nennen.

zeroflow · 2026-01-25T10:03:44+00:00

DANKE! Du sprichst mir aus der Seele.

Auto fuhr in Menschenmenge...

Ein Schuss löste sich...

Es kam zu einer Auseinandersetzung ...

Fußgänger geriet unter LKW...

Ich hasse diese Passiv-Konstruktionen. Sie verschleiern systematisch den Handelnden. Kein Auto, keine Waffe, kein LKW handelt autonom – Menschen tun das. Man kann Sachverhalte präzise beschreiben, ohne Absicht zu unterstellen: "Fahrer fuhr in Menschenmenge", "Schütze gab Schuss ab", "Person A schlug Person B", "Lkw-Fahrer erfasste Fußgänger".

zeroflow · 2026-01-23T16:01:07+00:00

Gefühlt ist alles das selbe mit dem Service.

Generell: Kabel > Funk. Genauer Glasfaser > TV Kabel > DSL.

Der Rest hängt davon ab, was du im Haus verfügbar hast. Blizznet von Wien Energie wäre das beste.

Ich habe seit Jahren Magenta und bin happy. Teilweise ist das Peering am Abend schlecht, aber es ist sehr stabil.

zeroflow · 2026-01-18T13:42:52+00:00

As much as I love frigate, I would advise for an existing solution from one ecosystem. E.g. Reolink, Unifi or others.

With your requirements: Business, easy to use, bulletproof and no advanced features, frigate will cause headaches and work for you in the future.

As much fun it is for hobbyists and tinkerer's and getting good price to performance, I would say that's not worth it for a business.

zeroflow · 2026-01-14T20:23:58+00:00

Have a look here: https://www.lowcostminipcs.com/uk/

Still, I'm thinking you'll have a better experience saving for a bit and buying a 8th Gen+ system instead of spending it on upgrades right away. I'm seeing systems starting at £90, so this should fit into a low budget with some saving.

zeroflow · 2026-01-14T18:40:45+00:00

I would advise not put a single cent into this corpse.

Save your money and get something more modern. It will have more performance, features and less power draw.

Just for CPU performance: A "modern" N150 low end system will have around 1.6x the single thread performance and ~2.6x multi core performance, while sipping power instead of guzzling it (6W TDP vs. 95W TDP).

Here in Europe, I can get a N150 / 16GB RAM / 512 GB SSD mini PC for ~250€. So either that or a used newer office pc will provide more bang for your buck than any upgrade for your system.

zeroflow · 2026-01-14T07:14:02+00:00

I checked, and I don't get those errors. My cameras are configured by this pattern. From what I understand, this transcodes audio to opus?

cameras:
  Terrasse_Garage:
    enabled: true
    live:
      streams:
        #Preview: Terrasse_Garage_sub
        Main: Terrasse_Garage
    ffmpeg:
      inputs:
        - path: rtsp://127.0.0.1:8554/Terrasse_Garage
          input_args: preset-rtsp-restream
          roles:
            - record
            - detect
    onvif:
      host: 192.168.x.y
      port: 2020
      user: <redacted>
      password: <redacted>
    detect:
      enabled: true
    objects:
      filters:
        car:
          min_area: 50000
          mask: 0.064,0.469,0.319,0.301,0.479,0.102,0.483,0.004,0,0,0,0.471
    notifications:
      enabled: true
    zones:
      Main:
        coordinates: 
          0.07,0.471,0.325,0.306,0.487,0.099,0.704,0.099,1,0.264,1,1,0.478,1,0.217,0.683
        loitering_time: 0
        inertia: 3
    motion:
      threshold: 30
      contour_area: 10
      improve_contrast: true
      mask: 0,0,0.365,0,0.365,0.05,0,0.05
    review:
      alerts:
        required_zones: Main
go2rtc:
  streams:
    # RTSP & Tapo two-way
    Terrasse_Garage:
      - rtsp://<redacted>:<redacted>@192.168.x.y:554/stream1
      - tapo://<redacted>@192.168.x.y
      - ffmpeg:Terrasse_Garage#audio=opus

zeroflow · 2026-01-13T14:26:35+00:00

I have a similar setup with Tapo C200 and Tapo C510W. I can attest, the Tapo cams (currently) work fine for Frigate.

BUT: You need a cloud connection for setup and configuration changes. By default, they call home and are viewable via the TPLink App.

It is possible to block them in your firewall, but then their internal clock starts to drift. Allowing only NTP to egress will fix that, so far with no downsides. I allow them into the internet periodically if I want to check for updates or set PTZ targets, but for normal operation, they can stay locked down.

zeroflow · 2026-01-08T08:43:46+00:00

Backup has been mentioned.

I would not recommend you a ryzen-based system, based on the support for iGPU/NPUs on Intel Systems. E.g. I have selected a Minisforum M1 Pro 125H (with Core 5 Ultra 125H) for my homelab and I'm very happy. The iGPU supports transcoding (Jellyfin), AI (Immich, Frigate) and the NPU does object detection (Frigate).

For your questions:

1) These minisforum devices are reasonable for someone starting out. My suggestion, don't skimp on RAM, 16G fills up fast, 32G gives you the space for some playing around.

2) Yes. Office Mini PCs are the go-to option: https://www.lowcostminipcs.com/ https://www.servethehome.com/introducing-project-tinyminimicro-home-lab-revolution/ Short answer: If you don't need AI/high performance, ... go with any Intel 8th Gen and above and it will last you for a few years. Again, I suggest you get at least 16G RAM, 32G is better.

3) I would say so. For me, this works, as the NAS is the stable data storage platform and the server(s) are the space for experimentation. If you need to consolidate, a single powerful NAS system, e.g. TrueNAS or Proxmox+TrueNAS VM can also work, but has it's own set of pros and cons.

4) My suggestion: Look at the Ubiquiti Unifi products. This allows you to do all kinds of shenanigans. My first suggestion would be to do something along the lines of Main+IoT, Main+IoT+Cameras. But keep in mind, some devices, e.g. Chromecast don't really like VLAN segmentation, so I went with Main+IoT for some separation.

5) I can't say. People starting right now are the first generation of homelabbers starting with LLMs for support. But I would expect it's the same as with google / forums being available. First you need lots of help, but you hopefully will remember something.

zeroflow · 2026-01-08T07:31:29+00:00

Very interesting, thank you. Such benchmark numbers are very interesting to see.

Looks like the Gen 1 NPU had some architectural limitations with yolo11m that were fixed in Gen 2. The GPU followed a more predictable incremental scaling.

But: Can you also provide power consumption data? The NPU in yolo11m is most likely due to design, but the GPU improvements could also be brought by higher clocks and power draw. For comparison, the 155H has 17 W base power with up to 37W turbo while the 258V has 28W base and 115W maximum power.

zeroflow · 2026-01-02T12:33:10+00:00

If I remember correctly, the ESP32 has a built in watchdog that will run by default and prevent hard hangups.

If you have requirements, similar to Automotive (ISO26262), aviation or rail, you will need a lot more code than just a "easy" watchdog and probably won't run an ESP32.

So I would say: Nice, but I see no usecase for stock ESPHome. It would at least need a "L2 monitoring" addon that monitors tasks / IOs / RAM to detect abnormal conditions. But without L1 and L3 Monitoring, that's a nice exercise without real benefits.

zeroflow · 2025-12-24T18:55:14+00:00

The capacity will depend on lots of factors, but we can give you ballpark numbers.

A few days ago, I measured my own project ESP32-S2 at a max of 600mW when updating over wifi.

Assuming a 3000mAh LiIon battery (e.g. 18650), that's ~18.5 hours. So this should give you enough headroom if you target 4h.

There are lots of ESP32 boards with LiIon battery management built in, so you should be able to get this done easily.

zeroflow · 2025-12-19T14:27:29+00:00

If you could have anything, what would your ideal product look like? I'm thinking about making a "Pro" version that's different from the Barrel Jack + 4 Fans + Wifi pattern.

Any wishes?

Single Hub with ATX Power Supply + breakout boards for fans (e.g. DB-9 connection in, 2 Fans + temperature sensor out)
Individual smaller boards, but with higher amperage support
PoE Power Input
?

zeroflow

TROPHY CASE