rack

Today I'm announcing Project MINI RACK, an open source project to help those building homelabs, RF/wireless rigs, and other electronics projects into mini 10" racks.

In today's video, I walked through setting up Axzez's Interceptor 1U case with a Raspberry Pi as a Frigate NVR, or Network Video Recorder.

Doing so allows me to plug multiple PoE security cameras straight into the back of the device, and record their IP video streams to disk (the case has space for up to 3 hard drives or SSDs). And by adding on a USB Coral TPU, I can also run inference on frames where motion is detected, and identify people, cars, bikes, and more using built-in object recognition models.

...at least if you have a family, and need to transport datacenter racks.

Consider this:

• You can fit full 4' x 8' plywood sheets in the back (assuming you fold down/remove the seats)
• You can fit up to 12' long dimensional lumber (1x2, 2x4, etc.) inside (passing it through the gap between front seats)
• You can seat 7 or even 8 people inside, somewhat comfortably, with at least 2-3 cupholders per person (still preserving 20-30 ft³ ((0.8m³) of storage space in the back!)
• You can fit a full 42" deep 42U datacenter rack in the back, with space left over for one or two 2U 1500VA UPSes

From: Look at my HUGE RACK! (moving vlog 11).

All that, and all 140ft³ (4.2m³) of interior storage is fully enclosed and climate-controlled.

This week I finally moved my gaming/Linux PC into my little office rack—it's that 2U box above the UPS at the bottom:

I remembered seeing Linus Tech Tips' 4U build in a video a couple years ago—but he has a full 42U rack in his basement. I don't have that much space—just 2U (technically 3U if I wanted) in my little under-desk studio rack.

So after working with them last year on a similar build (but with a prototype case), I got in touch with MyElectronics and they sent over their new production Mini ITX short-depth 2U PC case.

AnsibleFest is fast approaching, and this year it'll finally be back in person, in Chicago. Since that's a short jaunt from St. Louis, I'll be headed up to talk about my Homelab this year!

More specifically, I'll be giving a talk titled Ansible for the Homelab, and I'll walk through how I have at least part of my sprawling homelab environment automated using Ansible.

No stranger to rack-mounting Macs that were never meant for the task, I reached out to MyElectronics to see if they had a rackmount solution for the Mac Studio when I bought mine in March.

They said they were already working on a Mac Studio Rack Mount system, and they'd gladly send me one to review, since they knew how much I loved rackmounting my M1 Mac mini and all the Raspberry Pis I run in my homelab.

Over on the Geerling Engineering YouTube channel, my Dad and I just posted a video where we installed the ASUSTOR Lockerstor 4RS - AS6504RS at his radio station, to increase their raw network storage capacity from 4 to 16 TB:

In the video, we focused on the installation, though I highlighted the unit's top-line features at the beginning.

In this blog post, I'll quickly recap the main features, then give more impressions of the unit from our experience setting it up, and my Dad's use of it at the station since we recorded the video.

MyElectronics, a small business in the Netherlands, specializes in small computer rackmount solutions. They sent me these two racks (a 1U and 2U Raspberry Pi rack) and asked me to test them out and compare them to the 3D Printed Raspberry Pi Rack I built earlier this year, based on a design by Russ Ross.

They also have a 3U Raspberry Pi rackmount unit, but I won't be reviewing that here.

The contents of this review are summarized in this video I posted on YouTube:

Now that I have a half-height rack and a 3D Printer, I figured I should finally move all my Raspberry Pis from sitting in odd places in my office to the rack. And what better way than to print my own 1U Raspberry Pi Rack mount unit?

The rack unit you see above was assembled from 6 'frames', 6 hot-swappable Pi carrier trays, 2 rack mount ears, and a couple lengths of threaded rod for rigidity.

It was printed from these plans from russross on Thingiverse; Russ Ross also made an assembly video, and shows how you can build a 2U 12-Pi enclosure using the same basic design, with interchangeable Pi trays!

Video

There is more detail and a full walkthrough of my home rack in this video:

I am starting to rack up more Pis (quite literally) using the official Pi PoE HAT to save on cabling.

The one thing I hate most about those little HATs is the fact the fans spin up around 40°C, and then turn off a few seconds later, once the temperature is back down to 39 or so, all day long.

I'd be happy to let my Pis idle around 50-60°C, and only have the little whiny fans come on beyond those temperatures. Even under moderate load, the Pi rarely goes above 55°C in my basement, where there's adequate natural convection, so the fans would only really be necessary under heavy load.