It's not cheap, but it's efficient. At least, that's my hope.

Over the past few months, I worked with a number of vendors to assemble what I hope will make an efficient but high-performance arm64 NAS. In the video embedded below, I've put together the following (some of these links are affiliate links):

• Motherboard: ASRock Rack ALTRAD8UD-1L2T (specs)
• Case: 45Homelab HL15 (backplane + PSU)
• PSU: Corsair RM750e (included with HL15)
• RAM: 4x Samsung 16GB 1Rx4 ECC RDIMM M393A2K40DB3-CWE PC25600
• NVMe: Kioxia XG8 2TB NVMe SSD
• CPU: Ampere Altra Q32-17
• SSDs: 4x Samsung 8TB 870 QVO 2.5" SATA
• HDDs: 6x Seagate EXOS 20TB SATA HDD
• HBA: Broadcom MegaRAID 9405W-16i
• Power: Comeap PCIe to 8-pin CPU adapter (to supplement the two CPU power plugs that came with the RM750e)
• Cooler: Noctua NH-D9 AMP-4926 4U
• Case Fans: 6x Coolerguys CG12025M12B2-3Y 120mmx25mm (included with HL15)

ServeTheHome covered the ASRock Rack ALTRAD8UD-1L2T motherboard, as well as the prototype Ampere Altra / Altra Max Noctua CPU coolers, but if you want some raw footage of the assembly process and some of my unfiltered thoughts, check out my video putting together this machine:

Power over Ethernet lets you run both power and networking to certain devices through one Ethernet cable. It's extremely convenient, especially if you have a managed PoE switch, because you get the following benefits:

• A single cable for power + Ethernet (no need for separate power adapters)
• No need to have electrical service near every device
• Simple remote power on/off capability (assuming you have a managed switch)
• Centralized power management (e.g. one UPS in a rack room covering all powered devices)

I have used the Raspberry Pi PoE and PoE+ HATs for years now, allowing me to have 4 or 5 Raspberry Pi per 1U of rack space, with all wiring on the front side. I also use PoE for cameras around my house, though there are dozens of use cases where PoE makes sense.

Raspberry Pi OS version 12 (based on Debian 12 Bookworm) uses NetworkManager instead of dhcpcd for managing network connections, DNS resolution settings, DHCP, etc.

I've already mentioned using nmcli and nmtui for managing WiFi settings, but I ran into a strange issue after installing Docker on a fresh Raspberry Pi OS installation today. Suddenly DNS stopped working.

Trying to ping anything on the Internet gave me:

$ ping www.google.com
ping: www.google.com: Temporary failure in name resolution

As always, It was DNS. It was like DNS just gave up the ghost! Trying to change settings via nmtui seemed to not work (I tried DHCP for IPv4 with manual DNS, and that wasn't working).

Frigate's 0.13.0 release included a feature near and dear to my heart: easy exporting of timelapses, straight from the Frigate UI.

I'm a little bit nutty about timelapses, and have made them with dashcams, GoPros, full DSLRs, webcams, and even Raspberry Pi.

But one thing I haven't done (until now) is make easy timelapses from IP cameras like the Annke 4K PoE cameras I use for security around my house.

Eventually I'm planning on automating things further, but for now, here's my process for building up a timelapse that's relatively small in file size, preserving only frames where there's motion from frame to frame.

This SimpliSafe doorbell burned up less than a week after I installed it. I never would've thought a doorbell would be the most dangerous thing I set up at my studio!

I learned a LOT about powering 'smart' doorbells, and talked directly to SimpliSafe about it. They did sent a replacement, but it has it's own problems.

I'm still happy with SimpliSafe overall, but I don't like how I've spent about 8 hours troubleshooting a 'smart' doorbell. The only thing that's been 100% reliable on this thing is the basic ding dong I could've gotten with a five dollar dumb doorbell!

Raspberry Pi is looking into an IPO (Initial Public Offering).

But wait, Raspberry Pi's a non-profit! They can't do that? And who would want stock in Raspberry Pi anyway? Their core market hates them—they abandoned hobbyists and makers years ago!

And there are like tons of clones and competitors, nobody even needs Raspberry Pi? Plus, aren't they crazy-expensive? It's like a hundred bucks now, and that's if you can even find one to buy!