Hi all. I was curious about some of the pros and cons of using Proxmox in a home lab set up. It seems like in most home lab setups it’s overkill. But I feel like there may be something I’m missing. Let’s say I run my home lab on two or three different SBCs. Main server is an x86 i5 machine with 16gigs memory and the others...
It's the same reason I like running things in Docker; you can just wake up and read about something while enjoying your morning shit, then switch the computer on and try and boot it before that thing you're meant to be doing. If you can't do it you can just delete it and try again later.
I started Self Hosting with Proxmox 4 months ago and so far my only real snafu has been mapping drives directly to Proxmox with Fstab. If you're gonna do it, add "nofail" FFS.
I pass my drives through to my NAS VM to handle rather than Proxmox because it's easier to fix my NAS if it fucks up using Proxmox, than to try and fix a none-booting Proxmox.
Anyway now I'm at a point of stability and dim sat thinking about redoing it bare bones, but I love tinkering so I'm sure this is just the plateau before I discover something new to play with, so I'm keeping Proxmox
Hi, I am planning to purchase a 2.5-inch HDD. If I connect it to my computer using a SATA to USB adapter instead of directly to the computer's SATA, can it somehow affect the result of this scan?...
I've had a usb to sata running to a 2.5" sdd that acts as the main storage and boot for my pi4b, and it's been in use for 4 years with zero issues so far.
I've now got 3HDDs attached to my Proxmox machine for NAS storage via usb ATM. It's been running since Feb. It's had it's issues but those were more my fault for not understanding the flake factor (since my experience with the sdd) I had one drive forget what I named it, so my whole Proxmox died.
But that was remedied by passing the USB straight through to OMV.
Just saying, I've not really had the same experience as you with them, they seem fine if you have an idea what may fuck up.
I'm currently in the market for a music server myself.
I want it all, I want something that will fire music at my Google home links, and also some raspberry pis with speakers, and also serve to my phone in the house and away from it.
I have Logitech Media Server running ATM and for a long time, but it is, and always has been a bit hot and miss.
I have a music file system in OMV which I can access on my LAN. This is the source of music for LMS. But I also have Plex pointed at it
This allows me to play the same music from any TV or phone with Plex on it. Plex even have an app called Plex Amp. I use Symfonic though, I liked it enough to buy it.
These apps give me the option to cast my audio to the Google Homes minis I have, I need something for my Pis.
Another advantage I recently found of adding my music library to Plex is I downloaded a program called MediaMonkey to stick music on my old iPod that I have in the car. It picked my Plex library up straight away, although to its credit, it also found my original music Share, it just didn't advertise the fact.
I use Plex myself but there's Emby and Jellyfin to look into too.
I understand that people enter the world of self hosting for various reasons. I am trying to dip my toes in this ocean to try and get away from privacy-offending centralised services such as Google, Cloudflare, AWS, etc....
I've self hosted home assistant for a few years, external access through Cloud flare now because it's been so stablez but previously used DuckDNS which was a bit shit if I'm honest.
I got into self hosting proper earlier this year, I wanted to make something that I could sail the 7 seas with.
I use Tailscale for everything.
The only open port on my router is for Plex because I'm a socialist and like to share my work with my friends.
Just keep it all local and use it at home. If you wanna take some of your media outside with you, download it onto your phone before you leave
No major question here, just thought you might find this interesting. It's an example of the kind of (off-the-wall) things you can do with HA that aren't immediately obvious. When I was starting out with HA, I enjoyed reading these examples, because it gave me ideas for my own setup. And, I wrote many automations that should...
Yeah WOL was one of the first things I looked for in HA because I just didn't have all that much in the way of Smart stuff.
Anyway nowadays I have an automation you may like. I have set up a little wireless dock for my phone on my desk. It's the only wireless charger I use, so using the Companion app sensors (namely the charger type) I have set up an automation that turns on my PC when I dock my phone.
Meaning I literally flop down on my chair and put my phone on the charging stand and the PC turns on.
Now when that PC is picked up on the network HA will turn on my monitor (via a smart plug) and my desk lamp.
I also have a program on the PC that detects what I'm doing, and can switch the PC off!
So I can add switching the PC off to my automations, like my Goodnight automation
It's been written by a self_admitted noob at integrations, but it effortlessly pulls in all data from my Sleep As Android alarm clock and even introduced me to features of the app I didn't know existed, and I've been using it for years....
That was the idea! I came across it looking for something else. I've been using a blueprint for a while (since you haven't even looked yet) that will pull when the alarm is sounding and snoozed and such.
I have moved back to Node Red and made it myself there now though. What I use it for is I set the alarm to ramp up volume after 3 minutes, but the alarm also triggers my lights turning on.
Since the lights usually wake me up I usually have a silent alarm clock, meaning I don't wake The Wife at 5am when I get up for work.
My son heard about it so now he also wakes up to the lights coming on.
You can use that to start your morning automations if you're so inclined, so when your alarm goes off and the Kitchen motion sensor is triggered for your morning cup of Joe, you can fire your morning reminders and traffic info
I have been using linux for a couple of years already, very casually, just browser, media, games. Recently I bought dell micro pc and installed proxmox on it. I don't have a lot of hdds or raid or anything, just one 6tb usb external drive. I know, I could lose everything, but I don't have anything important in there, just media....
I've solved this exact issue and numerous others with samba / CIFS recently. This is how I have my Proxmox on a mini pc with usb mounted HDDs at present:
1 VM Home Assistant OS, not relevant really
1 VM OMV Open Media Vault.
1 VM Debian with Docker installed.
So in my experience over the last few months you want your usb drive to have absolutely nothing to do with Proxmox. Nope.
I had 3 hooked in mounted in Proxmox and when one of them threw a fit Proxmox refused to load.
Better to have a NAS VM installed and have the drive(s, I have 3, 2x1tb and 1x750gb) passed straight through, whole usb, to the NAS VM.
This means if the drive fails Proxmox doesn't break, and also in my experience with OMV, it'll still run if a drive breaks
Then what I did was set up the shares and made them samba in OMV then set my other VM, the Debian one, with mount points in the Fstab.
The key for me in this endeavour was to make sure the Fstab entry made sure that the OS wouldn't fail if it couldn't find a drive, as happened in Proxmox, so I made sure "nofail" was somewhere in the Fstab config.
For Samba to work in Linux you need to install cifs-utils, then add a line in /etc/fstab. Mine goes:
Then what I do for Audiobookshelf and whatnot is mount the mount point as directories in Portainer under the volumes:
- /mnt/Downloads:/Downloads
Then in the UI of the service I'm using in Docker I can use the Downloads folder and it's the mount point.
This is what's working well for me. If a drive fails I try and fix it in OMV instead of trying to plug a monitor into my mini pc to try and work out from the logs why Proxmox has failed...
Use this comment as a framework for your research and save yourself some heartache. You can mount the CIFS/Samba share to Proxmox and use that, so you can still use the drive in Proxmox for backups and such
I have a friend who isn't into metal. All his friends are into metal though, but he isn't. So when we all talk about metal, he always brings up that one band he knows.
I read comments! I watch a lot of videos about self hosting services and the comments is where you find other people who have followed the video and struggled at some point. If you're lucky it's a common sticking point you're stuck on and someone in the comments has a way of fixing it.
I love self-hosting a bunch of apps I use, so I don't have to rely on anyone but my ISP for my digital life. Jellyfin, Immich, forgejo, memos and more....
This actually sounds like what they're doing at Home Assistant.
Buy a HA Yellow or whatever, plug it in to your network and turn it on. It loads up and you log in on a web page on your phone. Install an app, sign up for Nabu Casa and get your services working outside the network.
And it'll pick up a lot of what's already on your network and set it all up for ya.
I woke up this morning at 6 am with IBS cramps. I tried to go back to bed but I'd woken fully up so by half 7 I was sat at my PC with a brew for some uninterrupted tinkering....
I only figured it out after fine tuning for hours to try and stop it. But the fine tuning I did while I was getting interference has actually made espresence better.
It was bouncing around stations a lot, but by turning the absorbsion up on the station in my front room it's sorted all that out and now it's accurate.
I believe the other comment is correct, there's 2 ways of adding Bluetooth presence, one is espresence which I'm using and the other is a less feature filled version in esphome.
I have done a lot of moving my esp boards around though to improve it. They seem to work better when they're in different locations.
So for example I had one at the top of my stairs but I've moved it across the room, further away from the one on the floor below which was at the bottom of the same stairs. I also moved that one into a room and higher up because it was interfering with the one on the floor below that.
And that one I moved to the other side of the room, and the one on my ground floor has been dropped to floor level instead of sitting at waist height.
Point being, if you're putting it onto already placed sensors, ymmv
I’m solidly leaning towards a Schlage Connect Lock due to its local only Zwave capabilities (which has the benefit of also extending battery life). I was strongly considering the Aqara U100 for its many features, but based on what I’ve seen I can foresee it being a nightmare to get working locally with home assistant and the...
The point I think is that while most locks are really easy to pick relatively, the people that it's really easy to pick to, aren't the same people robbing your house.
The ones that sit and practice picking the locks are the ones that install them, or come out when you've misplaced your keys and get you in the house.
The robbers are mainly opportunists that wander around looking for open doors and windows, knock to see if you're home then try to force a way in.
Since my air fryer notification I've bought 2 more Esp32 Dev boards from The Greal Mall of China- AliExpress. A couple days later I'd read about MMwave sensors and purchased a couple of those too....
I tried Room Assistant a year or 2 ago and it SUCKED. I have a 4 storey townhouse and had 2 nodes running Room Assistant and I could be stood next to 1, two floors away from the other and that's the one it said I was closest to.
The idea is that by detecting the strength of the Bluetooth signal, the node with the best signal was closest, but it just didn't work (for me).
Anyway espresence is better, especially because I've doubled up and I bought 4 esp32 boards with pins off AliExpress for under £12, and arrived within a week.
You connect the little chip to your pc and flash a firmware from Google Chrome, then hook it into your WiFi, go to its page and give it a name, and hook it into your MQTT.
4 boards later I have a node per floor.
Next I added our phones to it by pairing them to it, then deleting the pairing on the phone. Add the Bluetooth connection to HA config and you're away! Well...
So you have to connect what the boards say to what it means in HA yourself. You get "bedroom" off Espresence and have a Bedroom zone but you have to put the pieces together yourself.
I ended up making binary sensors for each room in Node Red. Did I leave the room? Who else is there, nobody? Ok mark it clear... You could just make helper switches and use them but I was feeling fancy. I've already posted recently about the Binary sensor.
But once you've done that, you just base your automations off the state of the switches you made.
So the age old "The front room motion sensor stopped detecting, should the lights go off?" question, now becomes...
Huh I must have stopped typing there...
...much easier to solve. I can still have the old "TV on?, wife's laptop connected to Bluetooth?" bits in, but having Bluetooth presence detection AS WELL makes it much more reliable, for a measly £12
You pair the device to a base station once to create an entity but you don't have to if you know the mac of your phone. So there's no pairing involved in the tracking.
You can use the HA app to create a beacon on your phone when you're on your home WiFi and not pair anything, just plumb the id into HA.
The speed is quite fast but there is still a lot of false positives. I've sat and watched mine and my wife's phones just pinging around the house, but if you add some "for X seconds" to your automations it becomes much more stable.
I've got 3 android phones and an iPhone tracked at present
The secret is not caring it's 4m away as long as it says you're closest to that one. It's not accurate, it's a guess made with software.
As I've said I've sat at my PC on the front room and watched it say I'm in my bedroom and kitchen.
So for example my front room lights are based around an input boolean. They're triggered on by motion but back off by whether the TV is on, my wife's laptop is connected to the WiFi, the pc is switched off, and everyone's presence is not in the front room. I already did all that and now I have presence as well.
It used to be that my wife would be sat there on her phone and the lights would go out, now because her phone is on her person they stay on.
Like I say, they're not perfect but they are better than not having them.
I don't think I'll ever have my music follow me around the house.
Oh also try instead of basing automations around whether you are in a room, instead use "is not"
So for example when I get out of bed and get up for work by bedroom lights come on with my alarm. When I go downstairs and make a brew I am no longer in the bedroom so my automations turn off the lights in there. Is not "bedroom"
It's triggered by the motion sensor outside my bedroom door, then it waits for my presence to be anything other than bedroom. Since I'm moving around the house it'll trigger at some point.
Similarly my sleep automation turns off when the bedroom is no longer occupied. But that's when my wife gets up 2 hours after me. It's also triggered by motion, but then waits until my bedroom presence sensor no longer reads anything
Yeah I have a million Bluetooth devices picked up but I've only put 4 of them so far into my Ha sensors. Fuck knows what the others are, but we have soany devices in the house that I can't keep track, then there's the neighbours' stuff too...
Interestingly I stumbled across a YouTube short yesterday about hacking an android device from only knowing it's Bluetooth Mac address, so theoretically I could really piss off my neighbours if they drove me to it.
Just coming back in to say that yeah, now I've used it as a primary trigger instead of a secondary check it seems I'm all over the place in Bluetooth land...
I don't have a motion sensor in my bedroom. I do have an old phone on a charging stand that I use as a Smart Clock, and the camera of that can be used as a motion sensor. It's pointed at my head when I'm in bed so it's not in an optimal motion sensor position... Just setting the scene for you.
Now I had an automation that turns bedroom lights on based on motion so when I wake up in the middle of the night for a pee I have a lamp that turns on for five minutes.
Well of course I wanted MORE from this extra from my clock, so I've added presence in the room as a primary trigger of my lamps.
I'm stood in my room watching my lights popping on and off again every 30 seconds...
Not great as a primary trigger, more a secondary check.
Anyway I'm gonna try and change it by adding "in room FOR 30 seconds" to my sensors, seems to be helping so far.
Also limiting reporting distance in the settings for each node to 4-6 meters.
Or maybe stop trying to use it as a primary sensor lol
how do you know when to send the notification btw? Did you configure some automation or script that just says how long until notify?
When power drops below a certain wattage I figure the cooking it complete. I've set it to 20 because it seems my air fryer drops to 24W every few minutes (when it's reached temp I guess) and my rice cooker drops below 50W when it's on the Keep Warm cycle.
So above 50W it checks the room and below 20W it calls a notification from the people that were in the room.
Also, as a minor annoyance, I could only flash the board from chrome when connected to a WINDOWS machine which I find pretty nasty 🤢, but I may be in the minority there.
Yeah I was a Linux-boy for a decade before a friend gave me a gaming PC he made out of spare parts for me. His one stipulation was NO LINUX so I'm stuck with Windows. But I get ya.
Don't know why you've been down voted but don't worry I put you back up to positive.
Your toaster automation sounds like what I had to do with the old dishwasher. It would finish the cycle but not stop, so it would continually try to keep up to temperature for some reason.
So I had my notify automation for when it was done and then I had it switch off when the power dropped.
Minor inconvenience to that setup was having to turn it back on again when I wanted to use it. I didn't wanna have to go under the sink and wade through all the shit in there to get to the plug so I used Google "Hey Google, wash up"
But we have a new one now so I can leave it on.
I also have the washing machine notification. At present it announces when the motion sensor in the kitchen picks up movement and the washer is finished, and sends a notification to the phones in the house when the announcement is made with "I emptied it" and "Ignore" so you walk in the kitchen, get shouted at to empty the washer and a phone notification.
But I am planning on having the same presence detection pick up who triggered the motion sensor and only notify that phone, just haven't gotten around to it just yet
Inspired by a post since deleted, I feel bad for probably coming off judgemental about the poster's taste in the movie that drove him to consider sailing....
It was the early days of the internet and I liked Metal music.
To get me some legal Metal I had to catch a train to the nearest city for like a half hour trip, then walk around to the tiny metal shop and hope they had the CD I wanted.
And I did that. I bought a CD a week from the local store and went on monthly trips to the City.
But I also got them off torrents. Sure it may take a week to download a track but that meant just leaving my PC on.
So I built up a collection. I copied the CDs I bought. I made track lists of the best songs and made my own compilation CDs and took them to work at Deep Pan Pizza, and we would put them on while throwing pizzas at the customers.
I ended up with a DJ case of copied CDs which is still on my loft. They weren't all downloaded, but copying media is Piracy, and I made CDs for my friends. Fartknocker Volumes 1 and 2 are still talked about by my old friends because they were full of Bangers.
Now I have a Spotify Family account and every few months they add a quid onto the price. The other day I put on The Global News podcast by the BBC and it had adverts in it! I pay my licence fee for the BBC, they don't do advertising. Pisses me off.
So now I use Audiobookshelf for my podcasts. Currently I'm curating a music collection I've pulled from my old iPod in my car. Not sure it's feasible to replace Spotify but I can try
This week I've been playing with Espresence, which for anyone that doesn't know, is a program that runs on an ESP32 and tracks Bluetooth. It then has a guess where you are based upon the strength of the signal....
I've been in the HA world since the time the government placed the world under house arrest. Since then I've seen all sorts of amazing things people can do with an esp32 device....
Yeah I played a little with the breadboard when I first got the pi but didn't do anything spectacular. I need to have a look but I feel like I may have a camera module in my bag of tricks so I guess I could theoretically knock up a camera doorbell or something with some tinkering.
Soldering looks like it's a whole thing but I feel like if I bought an iron I'd get the hang of it really easily.
But then I feel like I'll just be soldering everything and my family will get exasperated with me.
My energy supplier (Octopus UK) rolled out these beta test monitoring gadgets that sit on the network and connects to my smart meter, super convenient, hooks straight in to HA with an add-on someone made.
Before I got one of those I was looking at the clamps Myself
I've got a friend that I've basically lost over the last couple of years because he bought an Ender 3 in lockdown and now he's fat and pasty white because he just stays home making things with his printer.
Don't buy it and don't look into robotics, you don't need to make a automated robot that can kill other robots Luke.
A month later and I have to say my automations are so much cleaner!
I started using HA's automation engine just to have a go. I bought some ESP32 sensors and set up ESPresence and thought it was time to reinstall Node Red.
What I've done is just made a presence page for all the complicated logic, then separate pages for rooms and automations.
So my Front room gets quite complicated so it has it's own page but hallways just require motion sensing and maybe illuminance, so there's just a Hallways page.
I've also discovered how to make Binary Sensors in Node Red so I've less need for all the Input Booleans I once used.
I'm a week in to having an espresence node on each of my 4 floors and it's just really useful. Motion sensor stopped tracking motion? Well is someone still on that floor? Yeah? Don't turn the lights off then...
I'm currently moving my HA automations back in to node red and there's some bugs when I forget to turn off the HA counterpart, but that will go as I clear out the automations.
Pros and cons of Proxmox in a home lab?
Hi all. I was curious about some of the pros and cons of using Proxmox in a home lab set up. It seems like in most home lab setups it’s overkill. But I feel like there may be something I’m missing. Let’s say I run my home lab on two or three different SBCs. Main server is an x86 i5 machine with 16gigs memory and the others...
Can the SATA-to-USB adapter affect the result of the bad sectors scan? ( lemmy.world )
Hi, I am planning to purchase a 2.5-inch HDD. If I connect it to my computer using a SATA to USB adapter instead of directly to the computer's SATA, can it somehow affect the result of this scan?...
Funkwhale + Portainer? ( www.funkwhale.audio )
Has anybody here managed to install Funkwhale using Portainer?...
Is it practically impossible for a newcomer selfhost without using centralised services, and get DDOSed or hacked?
I understand that people enter the world of self hosting for various reasons. I am trying to dip my toes in this ocean to try and get away from privacy-offending centralised services such as Google, Cloudflare, AWS, etc....
Using HA to start my work laptop
No major question here, just thought you might find this interesting. It's an example of the kind of (off-the-wall) things you can do with HA that aren't immediately obvious. When I was starting out with HA, I enjoyed reading these examples, because it gave me ideas for my own setup. And, I wrote many automations that should...
Sleep As Android integration I just found out about is pretty ace. ( github.com )
It's been written by a self_admitted noob at integrations, but it effortlessly pulls in all data from my Sleep As Android alarm clock and even introduced me to features of the app I didn't know existed, and I've been using it for years....
Recommended something to a co-worker yesterday ( sh.itjust.works )
I need help with my first home server. Permission/ownership and samba issues.
I have been using linux for a couple of years already, very casually, just browser, media, games. Recently I bought dell micro pc and installed proxmox on it. I don't have a lot of hdds or raid or anything, just one 6tb usb external drive. I know, I could lose everything, but I don't have anything important in there, just media....
Everything means everything ( lemmy.world )
YouTube has now begun skipping videos altogether for users with ad blockers ( www.androidpolice.com )
Would it be a good thing for the average person to self-host their apps? If so, how to get there?
I love self-hosting a bunch of apps I use, so I don't have to rely on anyone but my ISP for my digital life. Jellyfin, Immich, forgejo, memos and more....
Finally figured out why Espresence was so shit
I woke up this morning at 6 am with IBS cramps. I tried to go back to bed but I'd woken fully up so by half 7 I was sat at my PC with a brew for some uninterrupted tinkering....
Best Local Smart Lock for Privacy/Security
I’m solidly leaning towards a Schlage Connect Lock due to its local only Zwave capabilities (which has the benefit of also extending battery life). I was strongly considering the Aqara U100 for its many features, but based on what I’ve seen I can foresee it being a nightmare to get working locally with home assistant and the...
I'm still having fun with esphome
Since my air fryer notification I've bought 2 more Esp32 Dev boards from The Greal Mall of China- AliExpress. A couple days later I'd read about MMwave sensors and purchased a couple of those too....
Queen thought Meghan’s wedding dress was ‘too white’ as Sussexes mark 6th anniversary ( www.independent.co.uk )
My friends and family don't understand why I'm so happy with my air fryer notification.
"Hur Hur that's what a timer on your phone is for dude"...
What drew you to the high seas?
Inspired by a post since deleted, I feel bad for probably coming off judgemental about the poster's taste in the movie that drove him to consider sailing....
Presence/occupancy with a Node Red Binary Sensor, what a revelation!
This week I've been playing with Espresence, which for anyone that doesn't know, is a program that runs on an ESP32 and tracks Bluetooth. It then has a guess where you are based upon the strength of the signal....
With the recent Open Home Foundation announcement I decided to finally buy some ESP32 chips. They're arriving today, what can I do with them?
I've been in the HA world since the time the government placed the world under house arrest. Since then I've seen all sorts of amazing things people can do with an esp32 device....
Always have a backup ready, go check now
I thought I had a backup. I use the Gdrive add-on and it should have had a backup....