Without getting into too many revealing details, my wife and I have a handful of Ring cameras that we are looking to replace, especially with the bullshit they've been trying to pull lately. They are used often, indoor and outdoor.

Last year, I tried rolling my own replacement with a standalone Frigate machine and the HA integration, but that ended up falling flat on it's face. I am not looking to troubleshoot that setup - that ship has sailed. Moving on.

Enter Unifi Protect. I'm already familiar with Unifi, my network has been running fantastically on the OG trash can UDM since it came out, plus a U7 Lite AP for extra coverage in our tall-ish 3-story duplex. The place is wired with Cat5, but since we rent, some areas will have to be handled with wifi-only units - the G4 instant looks suitable for this.

Questions:

1. Ring has a very "wife-friendly" interface. How does the Unifi Protect UI fare in comparison?
2. I'm looking at the NVR Instant to handle about 6x FHD cameras. Would a 1TB WD Purple be suitable for that?
3. Motion detection - How is Unifi Protect with this compared to Ring? Better, worse, or equivalent? How flexible is it?
4. (less important) I'm reasonably certain I can set up a doorbell replacement via HA, zigbee button, and a G4 Instant. No Cat5 to the front door unfortunately, just the usual pair of wires to the wall-mounted ringer inside. POE is not an option here. Viable? Or should I do something else?

I'm finally getting around to migrating my OMV-based NAS from its current "2014 Mac Mini + USB multi-drive enclosure" setup to a more reliable build that doesn't rely on USB. But I'm torn on CPU choice.

The "new" system is based on Intel 7th gen hardware, since that's what the majority of my whole homelab runs (with zero complaints). The motherboard is an Asus Prime Q270M-C, meant for more commercial applications, and supports Intel's vPro/AMT/ME/whatever it's called ("vPro" from here onward) OOB management setup. I would really like to utilize vPro since I'm familiar with it and most of my machines have this enabled (and not accessible from outside my LAN).

The only compatible 7th gen CPUs with vPro are the i5-7500/T, i5-7600/T, and i7-7700/T. All are cheap (≤$50), easy to find on eBay, and I have no issues using the 35W T SKU. That said - I have a spare, yet perfectly functional Pentium G4560T sitting on my desk, but the only reason I haven't installed it yet is because it doesn't support vPro. I also have a 6th gen i5 (which the Asus mobo also supports) in an unused Optiplex 3040 SFF somewhere in my basement, but I don't think that CPU supports vPro. I should check...

Anyway, I have some options:

1. Use the G4560T and deal with no vPro.
2. Swap the G4560T for the i7-7700T currently installed in my HA instance (Lenovo M710q), but then deal with virtually zero CPU overhead in HA.
3. Buy an i5-7500/7500T
4. Buy an i5-7600/7600T
5. Buy an i7-7700/7700T

I don't have an issue with any of these options, even losing vPro is something I can deal with. But I like having overhead, and hate having extra hardware laying around.

What say the Lemmings?

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P.S.: For those interested, this is the planned NAS build.

....then proceeded to get stoned and watch it roam the house, doing it's thing.

And then it dawned on me - I now have a completely self-contained autonomous robot that is free to roam my house, not attached to any cloud services, doing actually productive things; and I have full control over it.

I know it's an odd thing for a grown-ass man to get excited over, but I can attest to the fact that 14 year-old me would be over the fucking moon about this. My parents got me the first Lego Mindstorms set for Christmas when I was younger, and I had an old Palm V handheld from my uncle; I managed to figure out how to control the Mindstorms controller with the Palm V's built-in IR blaster, using just a "universal remote" app.

How far we've come.... Just accomplishing this has given me a renowned motivation for self-hosting shit; it's incredibly freeing. And knowing that the manufacturer of this vacuum could access it at any point and just outright shut it off without my knowledge.... I don't have to deal with that anymore.

The robot is a Wyze "Robot Vacuum" (model WVCR200S), which is based on the 3irobotix CRL-200S - the very same robot one author recently discovered was being intentionally shut off after he had blocked some telemetry URLs. I bought it for $20 on eBay. Fully functional, but the battery only lasted ~10 minutes from a full charge. Luckily it just uses four 18650 cells in series, so replacing those was a pretty simple task. I did not buy a whole new pack (most of them are expensive and falsify their true capacities), rather opting for individual Molicel P30B 3000mAh cells for ~$5 each. I ended up having to peel off the nickel tabs from the old cells and carefully solder them to the new cells, as I don't have a spot welder. Lots of flux and a soldering iron set to 450C were key here. I would not recommend that method 😅.

Edit: My parents dropped by last night and I gushed about it to them... My dad is a tech guy, so he was pretty interested. My mom was more "I have no idea what you're talking about but I'm happy that you're happy" 😂😂

send help

I blame my entire self-hosting hobby trajectory on a single piece of software that I used over a decade ago and fell absolutely in love with:

CCC One

If any of you have ever worked in collision repair (body shop, insurance, estimating, etc), you know what I'm talking about. The user interface was essentially - you open the program and are presented with a list of all the vehicles that have visited your shop, with some basic identifying info including the current status (estimate only, in repair, etc). You select a vehicle and open it up, and you're presented with everything related to that vehicle, including estimates, workorders, POs, parts, service time, repair time, photos, ties to LKQ and other used parts vendors for pricing, and a host of other useful shit - all separated neatly into tabs and clickable links.

I've been going mad trying to find something in the FOSS world that comes even close to this in order to keep track of my own projects, inlcuding vehicles, computer builds, other random shit. So far though, I have found only kanban boards (which are missing key project management features), or full-fledged CRM suites with way more added bloat than I will ever use.

I'm not looking for FOSS software with a 1:1 parity to CCC One; but there has got to be SOMETHING in the FOSS world that at least has some semblance of this capability. I use Planka right now, and it's fine, but there is just so much left to be desired.

Am I just expecting too much? If I am, please tell me. Or maybe help me better utilize the tools I already have.

Thank you SO SO MUCH to all who contribute to the FOSS community, you guys are serious rock stars. I barely understand if and for loops...