Note this only works if your CPU has on-board graphics like most Intel chips (non KF variant) or AMD’s G series processors.

I’d definitely skip this in favor of something consumer-grade. You can find used Dell Optiplexes all over the place cheap and stick a large drive inside/outside of it and use it for a couple of years.

A big old server is just going to drain your wallet on both power and parts with equal or worse performance and a lot more complexity for what 99% of home users will use it for.

It sounds like your main goal is probably a media server and an Optiplex will give you an i5 or i7 with QuickSync which works excellent for processing video. RAID isnt really necessary here because you can just download more Linux ISOs if these one are lost, though it can be great later if you buy a bunch more drives and expand into other areas where data is less replaceable.

Can’t say on access behind CG-NAT, as I haven’t ever dealt with it, but Tailscale might work as a free third-party option though that’s just a guess.

I did this with ESPHome on an ESP8266 connected to an IR led for some rope lights that had IR control. The hard part is finding the codes for each control, but there’s a surprising amount of info out there.

You can connect an SSD to these boards and boot from that instead of an SD card. Definitely the way to go especially considering SSDs dont really cost more than SD cards.

I have no familiarity with Yunohost but this is just a matter of separating your services. Have one container with the *arrs, qbit, glutun, and VPN and a separate container with Immich and Nextcloud. I personally use Proxmox with Portainer to run tne containers, but you may be able to just run Portainer on your OS to accomplish the same thing.

You’ll only connect to people who do have port forwarding setup, but nobody else.

There’s also the possibility they’re referring to the current draw through the mobo connector itself frying things. A couple of HDDs at 12V, 10W will be pulling almost 2A which can be a lot for some circuit board traces, but there’s no great way know what the board can handle without documentation from the manufacturer or someone with relevantt engineering experience well above what a typical computer repair shop would have.

If I were OP I would just roll the dice and try it out. Its not as if old Dell office PCs are high dollar items.

Those are the molex to sata power adapters that are a fire hazard. I haven’t ever heard of this type causing issues and have been using them for years and years without issue.

This is what i have. Amcrest cameras tied to an Amcrest NVR which offers remote viewing, recording, and playback and then also tied into Frigate and Home Assistant also for remote viewing, event notifications, etc. I could ditch the NVR but I’d need to get a POE switch and I like having it as a backup.

I followed this dude’s tutorial to get everything setup in Proxmox: https://youtu.be/qmSizZUbCOA

As someone with no PS experience or other baggage weighing me down, I find the default UI to be insanely unintuitive. Im not even sure what the panels on the right or bottom are for, the left toolbar panel randomly disappears on me occasionally and I can never figure out how to get it back without closing and reopening GIMP. Things like Crop don’t seem to do anything obvious. Painting with the brush doesn’t work unless you first use the selection tool to draw a box around the area you want to use the brush. Etc, etc, etc. Some of this is obviously just because I’m a novice, and I manage to fumble my way through things, but at the same time it could be drastically simplified for simple tasks. It feels like a tool that was built for people who already knew how to use it.

Today I have a huge bottleneck in unpacking and moving. I’ve got 1gb fiber and can saturate it, getting a complete iso in just a few minutes, but then it’s another 30min plus waiting for that to actually be usable.

Are you doing this all manually or using the *arr suite? For me, this process takes a minute or two depending on the size of the files with Proxmox and ZFS but even previously on Windows 10 with SnapRAID it was quick.

Its honestly pretty small for what you can pack inside but they do have smaller options like the Node series. The 304 is around 8"x10"x14" with room for 6 drives.

The third alternative (and best IMO) is to buy a PC case with lots of drive slots and transfer everything into it. With a NAS you’re going to pay a ton of money for the NAS itself which is just laptop-equivalent hardware and a fixed number of drive bays meaning you can’t expand it when it fills up without buying more expensive hardware, and you’ll also be forced into buying matched drives. With an HDD enclosure, you’re spending less money but again fixed on the number of drives while also being somewhat unreliable due to the USB connection.

I use a Fractal Design Define 6 midtower case which can hold around 12 HDDs. For hardware I bought a mobo with the most SATA ports I could get and began slowly buying drives as my storage pool filled up, eventually needing an LSI HBA card to expand the number of SATA connections. This is the best value IMO as the cost is comparable to buying a NAS, you can add drives as you go with a much higher drive capacity, the connection is rock solid, and you can run real PC hardware.

It was definitely not fun stringing Cat6 through the attic, but knowing myself, I probably wouldn’t have stayed on top of battery changes and I also wanted 24/7 recording since a battery powered camera can miss movement and start recording late or not at all. I also need a doorbell camera still but I’ve had trouble finding one that checks all the boxes.

It sounds like a fun project but I dont know if I’d rely on it for security purposes. Plus with the cost of Pis now you might as well but a full fledged camera.

I have Amcrest PoE cameras hooked to an Amcrest NVR for 24/7 recording and also Frigate running separately tied to Home Assistant to record clips and send notifications when people are out front/back of my house. It all works really well thus far after about a year of use.

Same. For most people in our space, a Dell Optiplex micro is more than enough horsepower (except few expansion ports). There’s no reason to be running a legacy server consuming 2.5kW just to host some movies or store your camera footage.

Comcast recently upgraded their internet in our area to give us better upload speeds (from 16mbps to 200mbps) but I’d previously been sharing Linux ISOs with friends and family with a bitrate cap on Plex of 3mbps. With this, I was sometimes able to have 5 concurrent remote streams. Quality certainly wasn’t the best but nobody really even seemed to notice when I asked about it and I’d explained to everyone that due to the shitty upload speed I was limited on how many people could watch at the same time.

I don’t charge anyone for anything but several have offered money or bribes of beer or food over the years. As others have mentioned, with payments comes and expectations of priority or uptime and I can’t guarantee that stuff.

Consider any future clients you might have or if you decide to share with other people the clients they have. I personally think it’s worth spending a few extra bucks now to ensure compatibility in the future.