Introduction I’ve been itching to work on some hardware projects lately and kept seeing ESP32-related things pop up on Reddit. In particular, I was coming across a lot of LoRa projects, and then started down a rabbit hole. LoRa LoRa (from long range) is a proprietary radio technology that is owned by Semtech. It is designed for long-range (e.g., 10km), low-bandwidth (i.e., measured in Kbps), low-power communication, primarily for internet of things (IoT) networks....

Introduction I’m slowly transitioning all of my applications from a Docker Compose-based setup to running on Kubernetes (specifically, K3s). Part of the reason I love Kubernetes is the tooling around it. I (try to) practice GitOps, so all of my Kubernetes configuration is in a public GitHub repo. I’m happily using GitHub Actions and Renovatebot for Continuous Integration (CI). For example, each PR has tests run on it, then if specific conditions are met, the PR is merged....

TL;DR You can purchase a large SSD for way less than Valve is charging and it’s easy to replace the SSD in your Steam Deck. Item Price Item Price 64GB Steam Deck $399 512GB Steam Deck $649 512GB NVMe SSD $65 Total $464 $649 Introduction I wanted to pick up a Steam Deck and was stuck on what model to purchase. The only difference between models (besides an etched glass display and a Steam Community profile bundle) is the size of the internal storage....

Hey! Listen! This post is part of a series on my journey into K3s. Check them all out! Date URL Part 2022-12-07 K3s cluster updates Updates to the cluster build 2022-03-29 Kubernetes GUIs Exploring Kubernetes GUIs 2022-03-11 K3s single-node cluster for noobs Deploying K3s Introduction It’s been a while since my last K3s post. In that time, I’ve torn-down and rebuilt my single-node cluster a dozen times, but never actually moved any workloads to that cluster....

Introduction My only PC is a desktop, where I dual boot Windows (for gaming only) and Linux (for everything else). My work provided me with Macbook (read more about that here), but I don’t use it to manage my personal servers, write personal code, browse the internet, etc… But, it would be really nice to SSH to a server from my couch on a device that’s not my phone. I figured it was time to get a laptop....

Introduction I recently started using Mend’s Renovate bot to keep my dependencies up-to-date on my GitHub projects. GitHub already has tool for this called Dependabot, but it only works with GitHub. Renovate is much more flexible, and it’s also open-source, so it can run on other Git platforms, like my self-hosted Gitea and Drone instance at home. However, self-hosting Renovate is more difficult because the hosted version takes care of a lot of the “magic” for you, so it “just works”....

Introduction I spend a lot of time on Reddit in r/devops, r/homelab, and r/selfhosted, where I always see different versions of the same question: It’s difficult to get hands-on experience in DevOps. What is a good beginner project? I’ve posted this answer to Reddit multiple times before, but this post will have more detail. Static site Build a static site. That’s the answer. Why A static site is a great beginner project because:...

Introduction This post serves no real purpose other than to match SEO keywords for people searching for PCIe WiFi cards for Linux. My desktop is on the third floor of my house, unfortunately without wired internet. I’ve been using a PCIe 802.11n (WiFi 4) card since 2016 and realized it’s time to upgrade. TP-Link TL-WDN4800 Qualcomm Atheros AR9380 chipset 802.11a - 54Mbps 802.11b - 11Mbps 802.11g - 54Mbps 802.11n - 450Mbps (WiFi 4) WPA/WPA2 Comparison My access point is a UniFi UAP-AC-PRO, so at the very least, I wanted 802....

Hey! Listen! This post is part of a series on 10" mini-racks. Check them all out! Date URL Part 2022-09-16 Homelab 10" mini-rack shelves Comparison of 10" shelves 2021-01-05 Homelab 10" mini-rack Initial post about mini-rack Introduction ⚠️ WARNING ⚠️ This is an image-heavy post (I have lazy-loading enabled, so images should only load as you scroll) I know that the imperial system of units is inferior to the metric system, but these are 10-inch racks, not 254mm racks 🤷‍♂️ For my measurements, I’ve converted fractions (8-11/16) to decimals (8....

Hey! Listen! This post is part of a series on the DeskMini H470 as a hypervisor. Check them all out! Date URL Part 2022-09-07 Adding a ZFS mirror to Proxmox Add a ZFS mirror to Proxmox 2022-09-02 Adding data center SSDs to the DeskMini H470 Add 2x Intel D3-S4510 to the DeskMini H470 2021-06-23 ASRock DeskMini H470 as a compact hypervisor Initial post about DeskMini H470 Introduction In my last post, I added two Intel D3-S4510 960 SSDs to my ASRock DeskMini H470 running Proxmox....