Hello good and clever people of Tildes, I need some advice.

With electricity the price it is, and my wife having a sizable workshop in the garden, I'm looking for ways to bring down the heating cost.

Her workshop is 5m x 4m x 2.2m, and the wood is 44cm thick. It's a chunky beast. She makes gifts and personalised items, so when she has the heatpresses and mug/tumbler press on the go, it gets toasty. If the sun comes out, also toasty. However, over night, it gets super chilled, almost to whatever temp is outside. To combat this I decided to use a Govee Electric Space Heater, 1500W with Thermostat, WiFi & Bluetooth. However, this barely does anything and the electric usage flies up.

What are good options here? The office is about 10 metres from my house. It's too far to extend the home central heating via plumbing, plus too much lagging. I don't want to spend a fortune, so any sensible options I'm willing to entertain. If we're talking a couple of thousand, it's off the menu.

Thanks for any help.

Dropping an edit with a link to the actual cabin: https://www.tigersheds.com/product/the-gamma-44mm-log-cabin/

It's not like a USA style log cabin, that's for sure!

Edit 2: Okay - wall insulation looks like the next thing to tackle before even thinking about heating it. Thanks folks.

I am wanting to setup a personal podcast server but I am not really sure how to go about that.

I have my own server at home with docker and I am not sure if there are any well-known FOSS (preferable dockerized) podcast server applications that I can spin up and load some podcast episodes into so that I can create my own custom podcast feed that only I would subscribe to?

and I want to be able to support video podcasts.

It's hot here in Germany at the moment, and I've found a new hobby: experimenting with different ways to keep the flat cool. Unfortunately, right now I'm doing that mostly on gut feeling, and I'd like to add some data to the mix so I can pretend that this is Serious Research™.

Does anyone know of some good smart thermometers that I can use both inside and out, and that I can regularly take automatic readings off? My main criteria are roughly:

• Reasonably waterproof and battery-powered - I'd like to put at least one on my balcony which isn't covered, so I want to be confident that it survives out there.
• Relatively cheap - I want around 4-6 different thermometers spread around the inside and outside of the flat to see how the sun's position affects the temperature, and I don't want to spend more than around 100€ on this project in total.
• Scriptable - for the data collection, my plan is to be able to run a script on a spare Raspberry Pi to download all of the data and potentially send alerts when something changes or when it makes sense to start opening doors and windows to cool the flat down.
• Not too complicated - looking around, some thermometers seem to require smart hubs and online accounts and things. Ideally, I can avoid all that - I want something that I can connect to from my home network and download data from as I need.

Right now, I've found a few different smart temperature sensors that I can buy off-the-shelf, but these seem to be on the more complicated end of the spectrum, and require central hubs and uploading all the data to clouds and things like that. Ideally I can avoid that. Alternatively, I have some RPi Pico boards at home, so if I can buy some sensors that I can connect to those, I could get those set up more simply. But with the DIY route, I'm worried about weatherproofing, especially if the temperature sensor needs to remain fairly exposed for an accurate reading.

So: do you have any recommendations either for simple smart sensors that I can buy, or for sensors that I could easily stick to a Pico and leave outside for at least the rest of the summer months?

Has anyone out there hooked HomeAssistant up to a local LLM? I'm very tempted:

• Alexa integrations fail often. HomeAssistant integrations tend to be rock solid.
• Alexa is rule/pattern matching based. LLMs can understand natural language fairly well. The "magical incantations" required by Alexa are awkward.

Other than the software, the device side seems challenging. There are $50 fully-baked POP devices. I'm less sure on the DIY front.

Also, I desperately want my house to speak to me in the voice of the NCC-1701D computer. I've read enough now to know this should be achievable with a modicum of effort via OSS voice cloning tools or training a new model (same difference except "voice cloning" seems to often refer to doing this without training a whole new model?).

Thoughts? Experiences?

I've seen several pages that have led me to conclude this is tenable:

https://github.com/myshell-ai/OpenVoice

https://github.com/domesticatedviking/TextyMcSpeechy

https://github.com/mezbaul-h/june

https://www.home-assistant.io/voice_control/voice_remote_local_assistant/

https://heywillow.io/hardware/#esp32-s3-box-lite

I'm in the process of moving apartments, and I'm realizing I don't have an elegant solution to all of the tech gadgets/accessories/junk my hoarding tendencies refuse to let go of.

By electronic accessories I mean all the cables, flash drives, SD cards, dongles, headphones, power bricks, etc. that have I've gathered over the years. There are some larger items like musical instrument cables, wireless speakers, an computer mouse, even an old PS3 I don't really know what to do with. While most don't get used frequently, there have definitely been times where one of these items comes in clutch.

I'm not opposed to getting dedicated furniture like an under-desk cabinet, although I would want to make sure the space is used efficiently, and that it can be sturdy enough to be multipurpose (e.g. my work office cabinets have a cushion that can be used for sitting on top of). I'm in NYC so space is a premium and there's a low likelihood that I'll have extra space in existing drawers/closets, so I'd prefer a standalone solution.

Hoping there might be some clever solutions/suggestions Tilerinos find handy, even if it's accepting that a Marie Kondo-style purge of unused electronics is necessary.

A few questions for those who have tried homebrewing (and general thread on homebrewing in general)

• Have you ever tried homebrewing?
• What were lessons learned?
• Did you regret the up-front investment?
• Do you bottle or keg?
• What are your favorite recipes?
• What is your setup like?

Feel free to answer only one question, all of them, or none of them and share an anecdote!

Hey folks - I've been wanting to go whole hog on automating my home, I read through this smart home automation - tips and tricks thread started by @Merry and had a lot of useful information.

Some of the things I took away from it:

• Home assistant is pretty great (if you don't mind tinkering)
• Getting something that will boot back up after a power failure is great
• Use smart plugs / switches vs bulbs
• Maintain it's usefulness if there is an internet outage

Like I mentioned I'd really like for this to be privacy focused and mostly self contained. Sure I'd love to be able to control stuff from my phone while I'm home and also recognize that I'm home or away.

I just am a bit smooth brained when it comes to even seeing "would something like this work with the wiring / circuity that I have in my home already?"

If there are any good guides to follow or really specific advice / steps I could follow to begin this process I'd really appreciate it.

Hi

I figured before I start venturing into other forums dedicated to this sort of thing, I'd ask here on Tildes since I'm at least comfortable with the community and how helpful they can be here.

I'm tired of all of the subscription services I have, movies and TV shows disappearing from them, buying a film on Prime and only being able to watch it offline through a specific app. Even then, half the time we're watching comfort TV shows that we have on DVD already (X-Files and Friends for instance).

So I figured that building a home media server would give me the chance to cut the cord with a couple of these services and allow us to start using and controlling our own data again.

I have a budget of around £300 (I could perhaps push to £400 if needed) and I'm honestly not sure at all where to start. I have knowledge on how to build brand new, medium to high end gaming PCs as I've done it since I was in my late teens and built my first PC with the wages from my very first job but building a budget minded PC for use as a home media server goes completely over my head.

I've noticed that a lot of the pre-built NAS or media server boxes are very expensive so my first thought was to buy a refurbed workstation or small form factor PC that has enough "oomph" to do the trick but I don't know what ones to even start looking at and then I start to feel a little bit out of my comfort zone.

Things like getting the right CPU in these refurbed machines that offers the features I'm looking for like hardware transcoding etc., integrated GPU's, ensuring there's enough SATA ports for multiple hard drives and an SSD for a boot drive, and then to top it all off ensuring that while achieving these features the thing shouldn't draw too much power when idling as it'll be on for long stretches of time, if not left on 24/7.

I've also got no knowledge of Linux, I've never even looked at it but if it's genuinely easy enough (for someone with next to no Linux experience) then I'd be happy to give it a shot if it offers better performance compared to using Windows 10 or something.

All the server will be used for is watching TV shows, perhaps the odd film, listening to a bit of music perhaps and the odd podcast now and again. Simultaneous streaming will be fairly minimal, perhaps 2 streams as me or my partner watch one thing and our daughter watches another on her tablet. In regards to streaming outside the house that will also be almost non-existent, perhaps, again our daughter watching a kids TV show like Pokemon or Fireman Sam on her tablet when we're out but me and my partner don't tend to watch anything when we're outside the house, certainly not TV shows or movies anyway.

Redundancy isn't something I'm too horrendously worried about, I wouldn't be storing anything like photos that we wouldn't want to lose on it and while it'd be annoying, losing a drive with TV shows or films on it wouldn't be the end of the world.

Any help would be massively appreciated, thanks.

Looking for a good wireless (probably bluetooth, but happy to hear if something other than bluetooth is recommended for a good reason) keyboard to use with my home laptop/dock setup.

I've ben using my laptop's keyboard while plugged into my dock which is probably less than ideal ergonomic-wise and am looking to improve things.

I don't need to be a fullsize or compact keyboard - I think my sweet spot would be middle size with a number pad. I'm somewhat aware of mechanical keyboards but will admit my complete ignorance as to their benefits (other than sounding nice when you type?) and so am open to those if there are more tangible benefits that I'm just totally ignorant about. Battery life would be important as charging it constantly could get a bit annoying.

Appreciate any input you all have!

I'm curious if anyone here is currently using the 6GHz channel with WiFi 6E devices and whether you're seeing a benefit in your experience. Do you feel it was worth purchasing a router/access point with WiFi 6E over WiFi 6? I've been following the rollout of WiFi 6E for a while but I haven't heard much real world feedback.

Context: I have 3 access points at home all at the WiFi 5 standard and I'm considering updating each to WiFi 6/6E. I have few (if any) 6E devices at the minute but would plan to keep the access points for at least 5 years or more.

P.S. this is my first post so apologies if it's in the wrong location or a duplicate. I searched and found no other WiFi 6E discussions ✌️

Next week, I will be closing on my first ever home (hello Michigan tilderinos!). One of the projects I want to tackle and work on after I move in is setting up a smart home ecosystem that is sustainable long-term. I saw the open-source Home Assistant but I think I need to do more research on it and find compatible products. For now, my wishlist of projects are:

• Controllable lighting from my phone or computer
• Carbon Monoxide/Natural Gas detection
• Water leak and usage monitoring
• Thermostat

Are there any other use cases that you use home automation for? If you use Home Assistant (or used it in the past), what are some things I should consider? Any products that you bought in the past and regret now?

I had a stroke last year, which left me partially paralyzed. I'm doing much better and only my left hand and arm are still somewhat affected. Even though my stroke wasn't related to my lifestyle, I would like to get in better shape, and my PT has recommended getting an indoor bike. I would like one with pulse readers in the handle bars and preferably USB port to connect a tablet or phone to keep track of my progress. I live in Europe, so something available here would also be preferable. Does ~health have any experience or suggestions?

Edit: I've just purchased an Unraid license. I'll give it a go and it may not turn out well, but for the time being, the question is settled. I appreciate everyone for providing insightful and informative answers!

Hey everyone,

I've recently bought myself a NUC (NUC11TNHi3) that I intend to run as a home server, using many of my external USB drives as the storage.

My use case is very narrow. I'll use it as a Plex server and seed/leech torrents with it.

I've never built a home server like this before (I did dabble with it on a RPi, but that was just for PiHole), so I've never had to research what operating systems are available to me. After some research, I narrowed it down to two options.

1. Windows
   This option is the most straightforward given that it's the system I'm familiar with the most. My use case is also very narrow, so I could set everything up in a couple of hours. All I'd have to do is install Plex server, a torrent client, exposing them to the outside world with port forwarding or Tailscale (never used it before but seems easy enough), and share my external USB drives locally so that I can access them using my regular desktop computer at home. The downside of this is that Windows can be finicky. I'd also prefer to have my drives pooled under a single drive. A cursory research suggests that Windows can do this as well, but not in a way that inspires confidence.

2. Unraid
   I hadn't heard about this since last week, but it seems like a nice option. It costs money, it's proprietary, and I'd likely have to reformat all my NTFS drives to be able to use it but I was wondering if this would be the best long term solution. The learning curve will be there. Arrays, cache drives, share drives etc. are terms I'm not familiar with (though I can guess what purpose they serve) so it will be more time consuming to set things up properly. But given how narrow my use case is, as elegant a solution as it seems, is it necessary? I'm only considering this because seems like this is the best purpose built OS in the market right now.

Some clarifications:

• I'm sure someone will suggest a Linux distro. I have used Fedora as my main OS for a couple of years and I was quite happy with it, however I could never wrap my head around the Linux permissions structure, which Plex is awful with, as it creates its own user and look for drives under that user. I must have spent hours and hours to make Plex read my external drives properly before, but I've never managed to make it do so without some sort of hacky way and I don't want to do that with my home server. I don't want to have any doubts that things can go wrong. I want something that just works. (If only Synology had a capable device that could handle multiple simultaneous 4K transcodings. I'd have just throw my money at them instead of buying a NUC.)

• My use case will remain narrow. Maybe way down the road I can automate stuff with Sonarr or Radarr or stuff like that, but I don't think I'll ever consume enough recently released stuff to justify it. One thing is for certain, I'm never going to host my password server, feed reader, or something like that on this device.

That's about it. What should I do?

Given that I'm a novice is this area, I'd be all ears to listen any other related or unrelated advice for someone who's just starting to build their first home server.

Thank you in advance.

My current round of insurance with TD / Primmum is due up. I have a 2021 Jeep Gladiator (financed) and a 2019 KIA Rio (no loan), house (no mortgage), and 2016 17' travel trailer (no loan) with them. Been with them for many many years. Supposedly have a group plan through my employer Ontario Power Generation. I'm not so sure anymore. While it's just me (47m) right now, my 17 year old son will likely get added Friday when he gets his G2 🤞.

I wonder if anyone could recommend a company that would do good for all, or separate for each. I also have some artwork and camera equipment I would probably tack on.
The letter I got from TD also said if I don't put a tracker on my Jeep (for theft) my premium will go up. They will pay for it, but if they supply it I won't even consider it. I don't want them following me! Giggle does that enough.

Searching "best xxxxx" will always give you sites that make money from the reviewed businesses. I won't trust any of them.

I'm in England, this is going to matter with this.

My wife's business has outgrown a small office space. She does HTV clothing and accessories, mugs, etc. Basically, personalised vinyl and sublimation. The equipment she uses is large, A3 printers, dye cutter (Cricut but about to get an A2 bad boy) and probably an A2 printer too.

I've been looking for 5m squared log cabins and similar. Something like this would be an ideal shape. One wall, floor to ceiling, will be dedicated to storage of vinyl, mugs, t shirts, etc. hence thinking there's no point in going A frame style.

I'm assuming 15cm deep concrete base by whatever size the cabin will be, squared, plus 30cm to make sure the base is big enough.

Thoughts?

Do I build something myself or spend out on the Lego cabin style everyone seems to be selling in 44mm timber? Do I put in the base and build my own cabin around it using straight timber and sheet materials from merchants?

There's two main factors for me, cost and insulation. As she's using it for storing clothing it needs to not get damp so it'll need to be a good material and probably will need a dehumidifier in and on all year round when the door is closed. Do I sheet in layers with insulation foam?

Anyway, you get the idea. Links and general advice is welcome.

My girlfriend and I have been in the market for new computer chairs at home, as we have been getting increasingly uncomfortable in our existing chairs. We are both shorter people (both under 5’5”) and the problem we’ve been coming across is in most chairs (even the ones I’ve found for “short” people) tend to have seat depths of 16+ inches. What ends up happening is the edge of the seat ends up pushing into our calves leading to bad posture because we can’t sit up fully to the back of the chair unless our lower back gets leaned forward a bit due to the size of the seat depth. This leads to bad posture and back pain.

So I’m curious fellow short people of Tildes, does anyone have any recommendations for a more comfortable and ergonomic chair for short people?

Long story short my roommate has a surround system she got at Goodwill and I set it up for her but the internal amps are not functioning properly. It's only using the front two satellite speakers and sub which is independently powered. So it's 2.1 for now.

The front two speakers barely put out much sound even cranked to max volume. The sub is fine as again it's independently powered.

I've ruled out all settings, as there is a 2.1 output mode, and the radio is just as low so it's not an input issue. I have it hooked to her PC's output. I also have proper gauge speaker wire so that's not the problem either. I did hook up the center speaker to one of the front outputs too. Same deal.

So can an inline amp help at this point? Is there anything else I can try or rule out?

Also if this is not appropriate to post here in Tech I apologize in advance.

I've been idly browsing for a home weather station for a while, hoping to contribute to the local sensor network for a region that's got lots of microclimate variation. I saw this one from Seeed Studio today, and was hoping for some reviews and advice. Seeed Studio devices are known for open source software, and I wouldn't mind playing with writing a tie-in for sprinkler system automation so we're not irrigating when it's about to rain. It wouldn't be situated so far from the house that we'd need to use the LoRaWAN feature, though.

Concurrently, we just had an inch of rain dropped on our house in the space of 15 minutes, with winds that were taking down tree branches. The weather report says "light rain", weather stations a mile away continue to indicate that everything is bone dry with quiet air. This rainstorm breaks a nearly month-long drought. I'm finding it nerve-wracking that climate change makes it impossible to use past local weather as a predictor of what to expect for gardening, home maintenance, and outdoor activities, and local weather reports are so inaccurate. So that's (hopefully) where the weather station might come into play.

That being said, any chat about your local conditions and reporting from your station is welcome.

I'm going to set up my first home server with an Intel NUC, but I can't decide what OS to use. Ubuntu seems popular but I like Pop!_OS and am not sure if that would be a good option. Then there's TrueNas and Unraid, but as a newbie, what's the best choice?

I'm also just curious what everyone else is using :)

Edit: Thank you for your great responses!

I have 3 gal of blackberry wine aging on oak cubes in a carboy right now. Relatively new to the hobby but my best so far have been elderberry wine (full bodied and tannic, kind of like a Cabernet), and apple wine from store-bought juice (dry and crisp). This fall I'm planning on sourcing some locally grown Pinot Noir and trying my hand at making a "real" wine for the first time.

What do you like to do after getting home from work?

I'm a software developer and usually feel mentally exhausted by the time I get home, so I like to unwind. I kick back on the couch, play my latest YouTube subscriptions on the TV, and browse through the day's worth of social media.

It's pretty mindless, but that's exactly what I need before tackling dinner and everything else.

I recently discovered Paperless-ngx and have immediately fell in love. I must now decide whether to host it on my VPS (risky with personal documents), on a Pi at home or finally invest in a proper home server (something cheap but with a bit more power than a Pi4). It can totally be run a Pi, but performance may not be as good.

Does Tildes have a big self-hosted community? What are you self-hosting currently, and what do you enjoy about it?

It's six months and I haven't spent it yet.

What do I need that I don't realize I need?

I already have multiple monitors, keyboards, etc. Separate headphones (that I don't use because I don't need to shut the door often), microphone (doesn't make a difference), and other obvious tech toys. I bought a new UPS right before I started the job.

It's a nice problem to have: "I don't need anything." But surely I should spend money on SOMEthing?

"New place" can be a small move to a new apartment down the street or a big move to a completely different city/country/continent.

What did you learn?
How did it change you?

Previous questions in series:

What have you learned from...
...being a parent?
...going through a breakup?

So I've seen some posts here and elsewhere about people making a home NAS setup, using it as a media server with jellyfin/plex/.arr to set up media + keep files/passwords/photos, and then managing it remotely. That sounds incredibly cool.

I also did some cursory searching that one way to do things without messing with port-forwarding is to look into Tailscale to network remotely.

I want to try this for my parents and I, especially since I will be training abroad for several years while they will be based in Asia.

The obvious problem is I don't have any experience with the process or even networking in general. I also do not know how to code in any capacity. I am in a decidedly non-tech field of work.

I've been googling but want to know if this a feasible idea at my skill level? Is this work for hobbyists or those in the professional field of computing? Am I going to potentially shoot myself security-wise if i try this? Should experiment with something smaller-scale first?

Preliminary "Research":

1. Watched Practical Networking on youtube to see what I was getting into (understood... lets say 45% of what he was talking about)
2. Plan to get a synology NAS with minimum 4 drive bays (Supposedly this is easiest for beginners?)
3. Connect to network via tailscale
4. Get a vpn
5. Install docker
6. Install apps
7. Connect it to PCs and smart tv at my parent's home in Asia
8. ???
9. Maintain it from Europe?

Any advice on how to start or any guides to recommend? (most of what I've found is 2021 or earlier so I am unsure if a lot's changed since then)