Listening to the Birds with AI – My Local HaikuBox

Listening to the Birds with AI – My Local HaikuBox
A few year ago, I saw a very cool product. Haikubox, is a small device that listens to birds at home, identifies them and gives you a nice web interface to see what's going on. Over time, I realized one microphone on a property this size is a problem. If the birds came near our pond it heard them, but we regularly saw and heard birds in the front yard, back yard and other side…

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…

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…

Home Automation Server – Tower 1

Home Automation Server – Tower 1
With the Frigate server complete, Tower 1 is officially out of space. Top to Bottom Home Assistant & Frigate Docker Server Ryzen 9 5900X, 64GB RAM, 8TB SSDs (2x2TB nvme, 2x2TB SATA), 16TB HDD RAID, Coral m.2 dual TPU Home Assistant Frigate Netdata Dozzle UPS Power Supply Cisco 24-Port Switch with PoE and 10GB SFP (10Gbps between house and shop, main PC and main NAS) Go bag HD for critical files Punchdown Patch Panel Keystone…

Cisco Network Upgrade Complete

Cisco Network Upgrade Complete
I've been using a variety of different brand switches in a patchwork to get all of the network and camera devices I am using connected. The network mess was causing performance issues so it was time to take a more serious approach to the network. I need to connect two buildings, and power many PoE devices. The backbone of the network is two Cisco CBS350-24P-4X managed switches connected via 10Gbps SFP+ over copper. The old…