Lots of good advice here. I’ve got a bunch of older WD Reds still in service (from before the SMR BS). I’ve also had good luck shucking drives from external enclosures as well as decommissioned enterprise drives. If you go that route, depending on your enclosure or power supply in these scenarios you may run into issues with a live 3.3V SATA power pin causing drives to reboot. I’ve never had this issue on mine but it can be fixed with a little kapton tape or a modified SATA adapter. It’s definitely cheaper to shuck or get used enterprise for capacity! I’m running at least a dozen shucked drives right now and they’ve been great for my needs.

Also, if you start reaching the point of going beyond the ports available on your motherboard, do yourself a favor and get a quality HBA card flashed in IT mode to connect your drives. The cheapo 4 port cards I originally tried would have random dropouts in Unraid from time to time. Once I got a good HBA it’s been smooth sailing. It needs to be in IT mode to prevent hardware raid from kicking in so that Unraid can see the individual identifiers of the disks. You can flash it yourself or use an eBay seller like ThArtOfServer who will preflash them to IT mode.

Finally, be aware that expanding your array is a slippery slope. You start with 3 or 4 drives and next thing you know you have a rack and 15+ drive array.

Same, though I’ve got a couple Decepticons sprinkled in. They all connect to the Allspark ssid.

I’ve been using the Killswitch since the non-magnetic version came out. It makes the whole system a little larger, but has a nice grip for holding and protects it well in my bag. It also takes up a lot less space in my bag than the stock case did. I haven’t had any issues plugging in USB-C cables into what ends up being a recessed port with the case on.

Seconding the Shield, for all of the above plus Nvidia’s update commitment to it. IIRC the 2015 Shield is the longest continually updated Android device ever. I have a 2015, 2017, and a 2019 at my house, and a couple of 2017s at my parents’ place. I upgraded the older ones to the toblerone remote last year. All are still working great, and continuing to receive regular updates.

My error, I just checked and apparently it’s actually a Precision. I don’t deal in Dells so I don’t know all their nomenclature! It’s still been a downgrade though from my ThinkPad.

Even on the Windows side of things they’re frustrating. Company took my perfectly working Thinkpad and replaced it last September with an “upgraded” Dell Inspiron laptop. It’s a piece of crap. Wakes up all the time in my bag, randomly drops wifi, and randomly drops ViewSonic monitors. Official IT solution: this happens sometimes, we don’t know why, and we’re going to send you Dell monitors instead.

*Edit I guess it’s actually a Precision, not Inspiron. I don’t buy Dells so I don’t know all the names!

Are you in the US? I believe call screen is region limited.

I’ve been using one for several years now with one of the documented switches that add multiple ports. https://docs.pikvm.org/ezcoo/#connections First in a DIY and then with the v3 hat Kickstarter I guess total I’m at $270 between the Kickstarter HAT and ezcoo switch plus the cost of a Pi (which I already had) I can reach 4 machines over my Tailnet and jump between them reliably. I can also control power on my primary server. (others are on a network managed PDU and can be forcibly reset that way if needed)

I had an old console from a job but it was so old that it required an ancient version of Java to access through the web interface. I’m sure there may be better options, but for my homelab setup the pikvm has worked well at a price that fit in my budget.

A bunch of companies seem to be implementing that version (not being able to paste the 6 digits). It’s just asinine and makes me think less of any product / company using that style.

Personally I’ve been pretty happy with Unifi Protect. Reliably records locally but accessible remotely and notifications are quick within a few seconds. Cameras can connect to HA and support RTSP if you want to link them into Frigate.

I’ve had the exact opposite experience historically. Of 5 Seagate drives I’ve purchased over the last decade or so, only 1 of them is still working. Meanwhile 25+ WD hard drives are still in production over the same time with only 1 that started throwing smart errors a couple years back.

Yes, but they’ll have to add you to the group chat using your Apple ID instead of your primary phone number unless you use one of the “workarounds” to get your number attached to iMessage.

https://airmessage.org/help/guide/phone-number

The workarounds listed are for Airmessage but they apply to Beeper as well in terms of getting your phone number attached. I’ve been using method #1 successfully for about a month now.

No need for an always on Mac with Beeper. I was previously using Airmessage and then Bluebubbles in this manner on an old Mac Mini. Have been on Beeper for a couple of months now. They use their own Macs as servers.

In the future there are going to be certain features behind a “Beeper Plus” paywall. https://blog.beeper.com/p/beeper-is-now-free

Oddly enough in this wave of people having issues mine has actually been working better than ever. Pixel 7 Pro / Honda Civic / AA Wireless. It’s been a month since I had a connection drop.

They’re coming as part of the new Find My Device network. The launch has been delayed until Apple releases their portion of the joint anti-tracking effort.

see last paragraph on Google blog post on this topic

Same! Every time I deploy a new machine I look a the list of characters and pick one. It’s been serving me well for over 15 years now.

Also if doing this sometimes remote playing over Sunshine/Moonlight has dramatically better performance than the built in Steam remote play. Seems to vary by game.

I spend a night or two every week in a hotel for work. The Deck has been clutch as a distraction while working out on a stationary bike, or while relaxing in my room and being able to play games without lugging around an entire gaming PC. At home I use it to stream from my PC so I can spend time on the couch with my wife and dogs. I’ve also used it on planes and car trips with great success.

I tried it in a dual boot configuration for a month or so to try and get Gamepass stuff running locally instead of through Cloud Gaming. While it’s great that it’s an option for some people, it’s definitely not preferable.It wasn’t a great experience and Gamepass installs were just as buggy as was the last time I tried it. I ended up reverting mine completely back to SteamOS and am using Moonlight/Sunshine to connect to my windows rig as needed. It’s been a great experience to play in the house when my wife is watching something else on TV. I’ve even pushed it over the internet (with a little lag) using Tailscale.