Chicken Casa v2 Paused because I’m an idiot

Chicken Casa v2 Paused because I’m an idiot
Saturday morning the gravel showed up and I got to work building the floor. Started Sunday screwing down the floor and ended with two walls built. We had guys coming to clean the gutters Monday, so I needed to clean up my material to keep gutter trash from being slung all over it. I jumped off the tractor after finishing moving the material, did NOT stick the landing, and rolled my ankle over. It's Thursday…

Time to tackle cold air leaks

Time to tackle cold air leaks
First I'd like to get out of the way that this is a gadget that I have displayed insane self control not buying before now. Maybe it was the movie Predator. I'm not sure why I have always thought thermal cameras are the coolest thing, but I am sure why I have never bought one before...cost. I'm a pretty gadget budget friendly guy, but with the FLIR TG-165x coming in under $300 I couldn't resist.…

Chicken Casa v2

Chicken Casa v2
Most of the time, I figure out the key dimensions and just come up with my own design for everything. We sadly lost a chicken to a coyote and while the coop wasn't the problem, that put us at 4 chickens. We've decided to move up to 10-12 and the old coop was too small and kind of a pain to keep clean. A walk in shed is a much better option and I found…

Network & Home Automation Apps

Network & Home Automation Apps
In all, I have quite a few components keeping my home automation system running. Some are apps I use every day, some are for managing different parts of the infrastructure and a few are for entertainment. Nearly everything here runs in docker on my NAS or one of two dedicated docker servers. Home Assistant powers the automations and connectivity between a wide range of smart devices. Security system, locks, lights, HVAC, weather, various sensors and…

Do you need more than a M4 Mac Mini?

Do you need more than a M4 Mac Mini?
Anyone who knows me is well aware that I am really particular about my setup and organization in general. I just finished managing cables after switching out my old M1 Mac Mini I use in my office for a new M4. It's the 2nd M4 Mini I've purchased. I've been using one in the shop as a workstation for a few months now. I admit I don't push these computers too hard, but for a…

A love letter to Docker Compose

A love letter to Docker Compose
Today I moved my Home Assistant setup from the NAS it's been on for 3+ years, to my frigate server. With Frigate processing 15 cameras for objects, both the CPU and GPU rarely rose over 10%. I had noticed some response issues with Home Assistant and had eliminated all of the options except giving it more power. I wanted a clean slate with Home Assistant and planned to import what I needed as I added…

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.

Shop Server Rack – Tower 2

Shop Server Rack – Tower 2
Always trying to improve organization and make things tidy. Moved all of the network and server hardware in my shop to a studio rack I was no longer using. Formally, Tower 2. Top to Bottom AI Docker Server i7-12700KF, 64GB, 5TB SSD, RTX 4070 and RTX 2080TI Ollama - Primarily used by OpenWebUI, but also regularly used as an API via Python. OpenWebUI - UI for Ollama Chat Qdrant - RAG data store for encoding…

Digging a pointless birthday trench

Digging a pointless birthday trench
Today is my birthday and I'm spending it knocking out a task that has been nagging me for months. I had originally tucked an outdoor ethernet cable between the house and shop. I wasn't able to get 10Gbps speeds to link between the two due to what I thought was distance, so I ran a fiber cable and combined them in a cable conduit that had been sitting on the grass for months. The reason…

Python Nerdery: Audio RSTP AI Listener

Python Nerdery: Audio RSTP AI Listener
Today's python experiment came after hearing an explosion outside. We never identified what it was, but it led me to be curious if I could create an AI listener to the camera. Long story short, python with numpy, pandas and tensorflow are all you need to read the audio from an RSTP feed and listen for audio events. import subprocess import numpy as np import tensorflow as tf import tensorflow_hub as hub import pandas as…