From Coral to Hailo: Why I Finally Swapped My Frigate AI Hardware

From Coral to Hailo: Why I Finally Swapped My Frigate AI Hardware
I have been running Frigate for quite a while now. The Google Coral TPU has long been the "gold standard" for edge processing object detection. It’s efficient, cheap, and handles MobileNet models like a champ. But as my camera count grew and my patience for false positives wore thin, I knew I needed more horsepower. I recently pulled the trigger on the Hailo-8 AI Acceleration Module, and the results have been night and day. The…

Goodbye Ring, Hello Privacy

Goodbye Ring, Hello Privacy
With it being ever more likely that someone could access Ring cameras or lock me out of access to Ring footage, I decided it was time to leave Ring for the doorbell cameras. I had two, one on the house, one on the shop. The shop one needed to go anyway, the only thing it ever did is let me know the grapes were getting too long. The front door was used constantly, so I…

From Smart Bulbs to Skynet: The 2026 State of my Home Automation

From Smart Bulbs to Skynet: The 2026 State of my Home Automation
When I left Elastic, one of my goals was to dive deep into home automation and finally "level up" my setup. Looking back at where I started when we first moved to Graham, it’s almost comical. Back then, "Home Automation" was just a few Philips Hue bulbs and a Raspberry Pi running Home Assistant that didn't do much. It was essentially a glorified light switch connected to Alexa. Fast forward to today, and the Raspberry…

Co-Writing Music with AI

Co-Writing Music with AI
I set out last week with a simple but slightly provocative question: Can I write a song with AI the same way I would if I hired a professional producer and songwriter? I didn’t want the AI to just do it for me; I wanted to see if we could collaborate. After five days of prompts, stems, and late-night sessions in Logic Pro, I have a finished track... and a massive identity crisis. Here is…

Nova’s Fast dev API

Nova’s Fast dev API
Today's been about getting this thing set up properly. I'm not a developer by trade, but I've always been a coder. That being said, I consider myself a prototype developer, so my projects tend to be loosely managed. I wanted to grow this project up a bit, so I took a step back to think about how it's going to work and decided that I wanted to focus on an extensible API first. The Machine…

Nova Assistant: It was only a matter of time

Nova Assistant: It was only a matter of time
My house is definitely smart to the extreme. I have a lot of automation that runs all aspects of the house, security with AI, and dedicated servers for automation and AI. One example of how I have already wired some of these things together, is a Python service using Ollama & Llava as a false positive checker for Frigate. That being said, all of this private goodness is still connected to Amazon's Alexa ecosystem for…

Python Nerdery: Natural Language to SQL Bird Call Queries

Python Nerdery: Natural Language to SQL Bird Call Queries
Sitting at my desk with a fresh coffee, I had an idea: build a web app that lets you ask questions about the Haikubox bird data in plain English and get plain answers back. Built the whole thing using Ollama to handle the natural language → SQL conversion, then execute the query and craft a response. Used GPT o1 Preview for most of the Python. Knocked it out in just 3/4 of a coffee cup.

Ollama Notes Chat Tool

Ollama Notes Chat Tool
I've recently switched to Obsidian Notes and wanted a way to integrate my notes into my Open WebUI implantation of Ollama. I came up with a little integration on Github if you would like to play with it. It's working great now, but I got some hilarious results getting there. I've since found Smart Second Brain and highly recommend it over my code.

Can I teach AI to write MIDI?

Can I teach AI to write MIDI?
This one was one of the most detailed tinkers to date. TLDR; once I got deep enough to understand how to do it, I decided I didn't have enough time or depth to pursue it. I can share some interesting insights though. The Idea I got this idea in my head: The internet is full of MIDI. Could I download a bunch of MIDI and: Render the MIDI to audio with soft synthesizers Use Shazam…

Meet my Rat Rod Ollama Server

Meet my Rat Rod Ollama Server
Putting unused GPUs and computer parts to work for a dedicated Ollama server. I had to use the laser cutter for a quick and dirty SSD array. ai-server 16-Core Intel i7-12700KF, 64GB RAM, 5TB SSD storage, RTX2080Ti and RTX4070, 2.5Gbps ethernet. This server hosts Ollama and Open WebUI, along with a MySQL Server.