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Lessons Learned - The 2024 Houston Derecho

2024 is not even over yet, but so we have already endured two massive storms that caused widespread destruction. This posts goes through the lessons I learned in the first of those 2 storms 2024 Houston Derecho On May 16th 2024, a Derecho hit the Houston area which had very

Misc Projects and Updates

This post is just some small updates to past projects, and some smaller projects that don't really warrant their own full post. Garage Compressed Air Setup Updates Original post: Garage Compressed Air SetupI find myself needing compressed air for nail and staple guns, filling up tires, blowing out

Emporia EVSE Install

At the end of last year we got an EV. This post details the install of an Emporia EVSE in my garage. It won't be very long, but it may give you an idea of how you might install yours. At first I was just charging it with

ratgdo with Liftmaster Garage Door Opener

If you saw my earlier post, you'll have read about my issues with my MyQ, and how I switched to OpenGarage to gain full local control of my garage door opener Ditching MyQ for OpenGarage - Open Source Garage Door ControlThis posts details how I ditched Liftmaster MyQ

Ditching MyQ for OpenGarage - Open Source Garage Door Control

This posts details how I ditched Liftmaster MyQ and switched to a much better, completely selfhosted and local way of controlling my garage door with OpenGarage, and the problems I ran into with both solutions, and how I overcame them. MyQ In my garage I have a Chamberlain Liftmaster Garage

VM's and Containers I am Running - 2023

My last post detailed all the hardware I am running, so this post will list all the software that I run in VM's and containers. All of the following are virtual machines running on top of ESXi 7.0 U3 on three hosts. All containers are run within

My Overkill Home Network - Complete Details 2023

In this post I will hopefully detail my entire home network. Some of this has been in separate posts explaining single items, but nowhere do I have all of the network in one post with all the changes since last year. Here is a full shot of the rack in

Melted UPS Batteries

For over 3 months now one of my UPS's has been complaining about its batteries. Being lazy, I just ignored it. This is a short post about what happens when you do that. It started telling me the battery is not installed properly every day or so after

Moving my Blog off of Linode and back Home (Sort of)

At the end of 2021, I moved my blog into Linode. The main goal for this was to keep it up in case of disaster or outage at home, and utilize the much better networking of Linode. Here is the post: Moving my Blog from Home to LinodeA while ago

TinyPilot Voyager 2a - A GIANT Leap Forward

Around 3 years ago I made a post about TinyPilot, a Raspberry Pi based KVM over IP device which solved the problem of controlling computers/servers that don't have IPMI/BMC. TinyPilot lets you view and control the console and mount virtual media, etc with a very easy

Turn a Raspberry Pi Zero into a full Raspberry Pi with Ethernet

I needed another Raspberry Pi for a project, but with the limited availability I couldn't find one. The project doesn't need a very fast CPU, but it must have ethernet. I have an old Raspberry Pi Zero W, but being limited to wireless is a real

Building a $0 Tire Rack for spare wheels

A while ago I bought a utility trailer to tow around my motorcycles, and the original goal for it was to be able to take them to remote places like Big Bend National Park, and ride them there without having to endure the long drive on the bikes themselves with

GPS Raspberry Pi NTP Server

This post details how to create a stratum-1 NTP Server using a Raspberry Pi utilizing GPS and PPS, and get time within 100 nanoseconds of real time, directly from the atomic clocks located in the GPS satellites above your head. The best part about this guide is that this will

Automated PHP upgrade to 8.1 for LibreNMS

I've been putting off updating PHP on my LibreNMS box for a while, but I finally figured I'd take a crack at it. I was on 7.3 and needed to get to 8.1. I am running Debian 10, and only running LibreNMS on this

Deploying a TrueNAS Backup Server to my hot Texas Garage

If you've read my older posts, you know I have a rack in my unconditioned detached garage with a Cisco switch, an APC UPS, a couple of Raspberry Pi's and some other misc items. Everyone told me it would all fail because it will get too

Redundant Heating and Cooling with Mini Split heat pumps

This post will go over my experience installing some Mini Split AC's to save power and offer redundancy in heating and cooling. A few months after I moved into my home, my AC compressor died. It was August at the time which is in the height of summer

Redundant Water Heater - Never be without hot water

This post details my redundant/backup water heater setup, so I can hopefully never be without hot water, even in the event of a power and natural gas outage. Hot water is not something I ever really thought about. I have a newish (3 years) water heater with a 12

Redundant WAN - Ditching T-Mobile 5G for Verizon 5G

If you've been reading recent articles, you will know I got T-Mobile 5G Home internet as a secondary WAN connection. It is fantastic knowing I should always have internet. My main connection is AT&T Fiber 1Gb/1Gb, but I like having a secondary connection. It started

Backup a running Raspberry Pi over the network

For the longest time I've been looking for a way to backup my Raspberry Pi's over to the network, to an easy to restore format. But every solution I've looked at has come up short. This post details a solution that works very well.

Generac Maintenance, Oil Report and more Genmon Changes

I could roll this into more than one post, but I'm not sure at what point there is too many generator posts. This post will go over some changes to Genmon (The FINAL CHANGES!) and some notes on maintenance, and the Blackstone Labs Oil Report. First, Genmon. I

Full Lab Details - September 2022

Its that time of year again! Last year in September I posted a full update to my home lab/home network. Since it has been a year, I thought I would do it again. You can read last years post below. I will try go into as much detail as

Replacing and Upgrading the 12v battery in my Generac RG027

If you read my other posts you know that around a year ago I got a Generac RG027 Generator. The Problem Lately, I've noticed thanks to Genmon, that the battery charger has been on more often than not. And it also cranks slower than it used to when

Motorcycle Trailer

At the start of the year, I decided I wanted to learn to ride a motorcycle. So me and my wife went and took the MSF course and got our motorcycle endorsements. After that, we purchased motorcycles and modified a trailer to haul them around with. Here are all the

Why No Batteries?

A lot of people have asked my why I have no batteries to go with my solar array. Here is the reasonings I did touch on these slightly in my power monitoring post, and my power FAQ, which can be read below Power Monitoring Setup (IoTaWatt + Grafana)After getting solar

Power Monitoring Setup (IoTaWatt + Grafana)

After getting solar panels I got used to checking the Enphase app for power details, but it's not very reliable as sometimes the data is delayed, it requires internet access and it can't get me any information other than solar and grid consumption. So if I