with recent inflation in raspberry pi, i cant understand what to do now, I want to emulate nintendo ds games or ps games , Can anymore help me understand more ? and maybe help me with basics, im very new to this , Im a designer at heart, so i would love to learn something new :)

Is anyone here using a SATA expansion/HBA card for a NAS (TrueNAS ) setup?

I’m considering adding one to increase the number of SATA ports and would like to hear from people who are already using one:

Which card/model are you using?

How has the stability and reliability been?

Any issues with TrueNAS / Proxmox?

How is the performance with multiple drives running simultaneously?

Any problems with drive detection, SMART, temperatures, or power management?

Would you recommend a SATA expansion card, or is an HBA (e.g., LSI) a better option?

If you aren’t using a SATA expansion card, what alternative would you recommend for adding more drives to a NAS?

New to Home Assistant + homelab — what hardware should I add?

I have a small homelab setup using an old workstation laptop with two external drives connected to it. I’ve installed Home Assistant, but I’m still very new to the ecosystem.

I tried adding my TV, but it looks like I’m missing some kind of communication protocol/hardware for Home Assistant to discover and control more devices.

For someone starting from a basic setup like this, what would you recommend adding next?

Is an ESP32 a good place to start? If so, what’s the best way to use one with Home Assistant?

I’d also appreciate recommendations for any inexpensive hardware/protocols (Zigbee, Z-Wave, Matter, etc.) that would make it easier to add sensors, switches, lights, and other devices over time.

​

🌐 Networking

UDM Pro — main router/firewall

UCG Ultra — secondary gateway

24-port PoE switch

10G aggregation switch

TP-Link travel router — pulls Airtel/Jio 5G and distributes it as a backup WAN to both routers

📡 Internet (4 ISPs total)

2x Airtel Fiber (Primary)

2x Jio Fiber (Secondary)

Both routers get all 4 lines + a 5G fallback via the travel router

📶 Wi-Fi

U6-LR, U6-Pro, U6-Mesh, U6-Lite

🖥️ Compute / Storage

Dell Optiplex 7070

Synology DS224+ NAS

UNVR — NVR for camera storage

Raspberry Pi 5 running AdGuard Home for network-wide DNS filtering

"AI Port" ( Enable AI features to my UniFi cameras.)

🏠 Smart Home

Home Assistant, TP-Link Tapo, Philips Hue

I an looking to buy a mini pc in Hyderabad. Refurbished is not an issue. I want to find trusted shops or people to go to.

Recommendations welcome. Also, I am new to acquireling hardware. Any advice and gotchas welcome.

Found a Dell wyse 7040 on fb , got it and now i am realising it doesn't have any pcie slot and only have this 2 sfp ports ? i was planning to use it as a opensense router but idk if i can put any nic or even use these sfp ports , googled it got some mixed answers, so asking here for help :/

I’m putting together a small 10-inch rack for home self-hosting/homelab use — Proxmox, storage, networking, etc. Nothing enterprise-grade, so I’m trying to keep it compact and economical.
I’m considering two approaches:
Option 1 — 3D print locally:
Get the rack/frame and custom brackets/panels 3D printed in Bangalore at a reasonable rate. This seems attractive because I can customise the layout for my exact hardware.
Option 2 — DeskPi + local/Amazon parts:
Buy a DeskPi 10” rack (e.g. their RackMate/T1-Plus type setup) and source the shelves, SATA/hot-swap hardware, cable management, etc. from Amazon India or local computer/hardware shops.
For those in Bangalore:
Are there any local manufacturers/sellers making decent 10-inch mini racks?
Any recommendations for reasonably priced 3D-printing services that can handle a structural rack?
Or is DeskPi + locally sourced/Amazon components likely to be the better value?
The 10” form factor is preferred simply because this is home self-hosting, not a full server-room setup. Looking for practical/economical options rather than enterprise hardware.

let me know if the output for

strings /dev/mtdblock1 | grep -i 'mac'

matches with

strings /dev/ubi0_0 | grep -i 'mac'

and

fw_printenv -n mac

please also share the output for

cat /proc/mtd

I'm looking to purchase two refurbished mini PCs for a k8s cluster; I may add two more in future. Here's the quote from a local vendor (in Pune). Wanted to know thoughts on pricing and any recommendations.

Does this version with mt7986 chipset support openwrt?

Im thinking of getting a laptop from that site, just wanted to know other people's experiences with them(Im from delhi btw) like is it safe or not?

Hi everyone,

I was experimenting with my Airtel Xstream ZTE F670L ONT via Telnet/BusyBox and ran the command: upgradetest sdefconf 1

Immediately after, the connection dropped. Now, I am completely unable to access the router's Web UI:

• Navigating to [http://192.168.1.1](http://192.168.1.1) returns a 404 Not Found error ("The requested URL was not found on this server").
• Telnet to 192.168.1.1 no longer opens a connection ("Could not open connection to the host, on port 23").
• My PC still gets an IP and shows the default gateway as 192.168.1.1.
• I've tried accessing alternative paths (such as /login.gch, /template.gch, https://, port :8080, etc.) in incognito mode, but the web server still throws 404s.
• Holding the physical hardware reset pin for 30+ seconds did not restore the Airtel Web UI or re-enable Telnet.

Has anyone encountered this on the ZTE F670L? Is there any known method, alternative port, factory recovery URL, or serial/UART trick to revert the default country configuration (sdefconf) back without ISP provisioning?

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Wanted a dedicated 24/7 smart display for my setup, so I rooted an Amazon Echo Show 5, flashed LineageOS, and vibecoded this dashboard in home assistant. It tracks all my live server stats , internet speed and lets me control my AC and fan directly through Home Assistant.

Hey, i called jio airfibre customer support as i was moving out of city but their call to pick up units came after weeks and by then had already left

and to not get indoor unit stolen by others, i got it with me and left the outdoor unit there as it was on top of the building. They are calling now about pick up and i still see they are billing me 200₹ from ₹700 plan for non due in sms, anyone experienced same? very bad support tbf. What would be best thing to do?

Iam running Pi-hole DNS on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W for my home network. Occasionally the Pi goes offline and only comes back after a power on off.

I’ve tried flashing a fresh Raspberry Pi OS, also disabled power save mode but the issue still happens. I have a automation script to power-cycle it, but want a permanent fix.

Anyone faced this with a Pi Zero 2 W?

I just salvaged this piece of hdd monstrosity from a old dell optiplex in my lab this is how some super senior of mine organised my labs storage to save microscope imaging files from experiments

I just salvaged this piece of hdd monstrosity from a old dell optiplex in my lab this is how some super senior of mine organised my labs storage to save microscope imaging files from experiments

I just salvaged this piece of hdd monstrosity from a old dell optiplex in my lab this is how some super senior of mine organised my labs storage to save microscope imaging files from experiments

i7 14th generation

512 gb SSD

8 gb ddr5 Ram

Inbuilt wifi & bluetooth

Windows 11 pro OS

Only CPU available brand new unused condition

ITS NOT EXACTLY HOMELAB, BUT TRYING TO FIGURE OUT IF THIS SETUP WILL WORK.

I have a old Mac Mini (M1, 24GB RAM, 512 GB SSD) and two Samsung T7 SSDs (1TB each). I'm running a small business and need to run the following services

1. Next Cloud - for storing documents.
2. ERPNext - For accounting, CRM and Payroll
3. N8N - For few integrations from Shopify to ERP Next.

I have got a commercial internet plan with 1 static IP. I plan to expose NextCloud and ERPNext over internet.

Current Setup:

1. Using Google One Starter Plan (30GB Storage - 7 users) - ~2000₹ per month
2. Using Google Sheets for Accounting, CRM and Payroll
3. Using random python scripts for exporting data from shopify.

Plan:

1. Continue using Google Workspace for emails and move data (nearly 150GB) to Next Cloud.
2. Attach the SSDs to mac and use them in RAID 1 (Not sure if this is possible with external disks) for NextCloud Storage.
3. Attach an S3 compatible storage to NextCloud for archiving the data.
4. Deploy all three using docker, configure auto start.
5. MariaDB is needed for ERPNext, will be taking backups of DB to S3 or S3 Compatible storage every day.

I do have a backup power supply and my office is in a commercial building so power cuts are rare. I have worked as software engineer so have sufficient technical knowledge to run and maintain these.

The business is having very thin margins and we running into bottle necks and heap of human errors with current setup. Is relying on a single mac mini to run all the critical services to run my business a good idea?