Welcome to this week’s casual kōrero thread!
This post will be pinned in this community so you can always find it, and will stay for about a week until replaced by the next one.
It’s for talking about anything that might not justify a full post. For example:
- Something interesting that happened to you
- Something humourous that happened to you
- Something frustrating that happened to you
- A quick question
- A request for recommendations
- Pictures of your pet
- A picture of a cloud that kind of looks like an elephant
- Anything else, there are no rules (except the rule)
So how’s it going?
I know a few people around here are running Home Assistant and the like. I’m keen to put in a few cameras, preferably not cloud connected but that can connect to Home Assistant. I’m planning on adding object detection via coral.
I’m thinking cameras powered by PoE. Anyone got suggestions for outdoor cameras?
What about a switch that outputs PoE and doesn’t cost thousands? Maybe something like this? Though I don’t seem to see good bang for buck switches where they are all PoE, they seem to just do half of the ports PoE though 8 PoE ports seems like it would be plenty.
And on another note, any suggestions for a network level VPN client? That is, for connecting the home nenetwork to an external VPN server (one that handles hundreds of Mbps, preferably wireguard). Is something like this appropriate? It’s CPU is only 1Ghz so I worry it will be slow.
From what I’ve encountered, that CPU will probably be just fine unless it’s doing a lot of other stuff too.
I’ve also noticed that PoE switches that aren’t crippled sme how are rare as hens teeth for consumer grade gear. I.e. only some ports, or only support one of the protocols,or are themselves really picky about supply voltage.
My only recommendation is to take the time to figure it all out: and if a fact is omitted assume the worst.
Thanks for the reply!
From what I’ve encountered, that CPU will probably be just fine unless it’s doing a lot of other stuff too.
I had a bit more of a search around, and it seems this specific UXG-Lite is giving people speeds around 30 or 40Mbps. For a whole of network VPN, that’s nowhere near fast enough! I’m looking for 200Mbps, preferably more.
This one claims 393Mbps with wireguard. I was earlier reading that you should look for a dedicated VPN box not a wifi/all in one thing but this seems to be pretty good value for money if it works. I don’t need the wifi as I have a couple of mesh access points but I’ll take it if it’s there.
I was looking at Ubiquiti as the wifi mesh is an Amplifi one but searching around it seems all the Ubiquiti gateways have really bad VPN performance.
I’ve also noticed that PoE switches that aren’t crippled sme how are rare as hens teeth for consumer grade gear. I.e. only some ports, or only support one of the protocols,or are themselves really picky about supply voltage.
My only recommendation is to take the time to figure it all out: and if a fact is omitted assume the worst.
I’m not sure I have the knowledge to figure it all out 😆. How will I know if it’s going to be picky about voltage? What PoE protocols should I be looking for, I didn’t realise there were options 😆
I have a poe managed ubiquity switch and use reolink Poe cameras and reolinks Poe doorbell. Home assistant has great support for reolink; It’s also local. I have home assistant save the streams on motion detection to a network mounted drive in home assistant
That’s awesome, looks like PB Tech have a huge range of Reolink!
But with choice comes more questions 😆. PoE means you don’t need separate power for the camera. But it looks like they sell solar powered wifi ones. Is there a benefit of using PoE instead of wifi+solar?
The solar/battery models don’t run 24/7 - you can trigger them remotely (so you can check the live feed whenever) or they can trigger with motion. Still perfectly useful for a bunch of use cases (e.g. just checking if you closed something, or installed somewhere that motion sensing is reliable like a low-traffic corridor) but not super useful for, say, a front door.
Well worth running Poe if you can. Poe can also power some wifi access points(I use ubiquity sps I bought cheap on trademr), so you can hide them in your roof space.
Just to second this - I’ve upgraded all but one camera to Reolink RLC-810A a few years back and they’re rock solid. All offline (no internet, but connected to Home Assistant on a separate LAN), all powered by a cheap unmanaged PoE switch from PB Tech. (Edit: this one).
They’re recording 24/7 to their local memory, but I almost entirely use them via Home Assistant’s ability to pull a JPEG directly from the camera (because it takes a fraction of a second at 4k vs the unbearable pain of waiting >10s for video to buffer even at SD resolution).
I have a Ubiquiti Dream Machine SE, which has POE built in, but your option would be the next simplest option.
All the Ubiquiti gear is very well priced, and dead simple to use, I plan to add some cameras at some point to the system.
Do you use the Dream Machine as a VPN client? I see mixed information online as to whether you can use it as a client or only as a server. If I could knock off two birds with one stone that would be great.
I’ll have a look at it tomorrow, I think it does have VPN functionality. I’ve never really needed it though.
Hi everyone! My big news is when I got my last covid jab I bounced back from it in just over a week. Didn’t mention it earlier in case I jinxed myself. This is the first time ever that it hasn’t knocked me back hard.
So I sort of feel like this year I’ve got an extra 6 weeks in the year!
Used some of it to visit family for a week. Also, got to hang out with a really cute dog. I love how earnest dogs can be about stuff, it’s really endearing.
Exciting! I guess practice makes perfect.
Maybe they mixed it up wrong and forgot to put the vaccine in? Just kidding 😋
I’ve been looking at our electricity usage and discovered our meter stopped reporting it’s usage a few months ago - that really skews things!
I chucked in a manual reading which wasn’t too far off their estimate, but I’m irked that ‘something’ has stopped talking. Gave it a few pokes to see but no new data. On the ph to provider now, jooyyyeeee. Powershop really do have some strangely funky hold music, it’s quite enjoyable - pity it’s mono and basically 8kHz or whatever the phone lines do to muddy everything!
Also, is it just me or have many of the gentailers stopped publishing their actual rates / seeking new customers?
My son bought a cold home last week which is working it’s way through the house. Sucks…
A few years back we would jump broadband and power companies every 12 months because there were always great signup deals. These days it’s really hard to find great deals! Plus the move to having plans between providers all slightly different so you can’t directly compare them.
We also have a cold going through the house. My brain hasn’t been working since last week so I’m guessing my body is fighting (and maybe losing) a battle against the cold.
The annual fucking of Wellington commuter trains by icy overhead lines has begun. If only there was some kind of power source nearby that could be tapped into and used to deice the lines…
I guess the question is how to efficiently heat the lines. Not really feasible to install fan heaters all the way along. Heating up the wire itself may not be that easy.
I went looking and found that some solutions are to either use a specially equipped ice cutting diesel engine, or some trains have a separate pantograph (the thing that goes against the wire) that is designed to scrape the ice off just ahead of where the power collecting pantograph is. Some interesting bits in this blog post.
It links through to this page that has photos of the ice cutting pantographs, though not in action.
Other options are a deicing spray, like what is used on aircraft, both at airports and in flight, or some type of heater that has a heating element directly on the wire.
Turning an old unit into a deicing train wouldn’t be massively difficult, I would think.
I’m wondering about the heating thing. The cables already carry current. Normally for electric heating you’d have electricity going through a wire with high resistance to make the heat. So you’d think you’d run such a wire along the length of the cable. Putting fan heaters everywhere isn’t going to be efficient, you need it on the wire in the place it’s needed.
But if it’s on a live wire, can that work? Or would it just become part of the larger wire and not heat up as the electricity flows through the path of lower resistance? Plus the risk of the pantograph damaging the heating wire.
This is how power line deicing works on systems overseas. You need two legs to the circuit, so it would involve either isolating lines from each other on double track, or earthing out the end of the lines, and using the tracks as a return path.
The option I was actually thinking about was having a heated pantograph of some type.
