# Smart Bulbs for Alexa and Google Reviews — 6 Months in a Portland Home Lab *By Marcus Webb — 8 years enterprise network engineering, 6-year Portland home lab* ## The Short Answer After six months of continuous testing on my four-node Proxmox cluster with Zigbee2MQTT handling the heavy lifting, I found that **Philips Hue

# Zooz ZEN77 Smart Dimmer Review — 6 Months in the Portland Home Lab *By Marcus Webb — 8 years enterprise network engineering, 6-year Portland home lab* ## The Short Answer In my testing over six months of daily use on a four-node Proxmox cluster running Zigbee2MQTT and Z-Wave JS, the **Zooz ZEN77 Smart Dimmer**

# Smart Speakers & Displays for the Hearing Impaired — A Portland Home Lab Perspective *By Marcus Webb — 8 years enterprise network engineering, 6-year Portland home lab* ## The Short Answer In my testing of smart speakers and displays designed to assist households with hearing impaired family members, there is no single “winner” because

# How to Use Soundbar with Xbox Series X in a High-Traffic Home Network: A Portland Lab Guide *By Marcus Webb — 8 years enterprise network engineering, 6-year Portland home lab* ## The Short Answer In my testing across the four-node Proxmox cluster and the 24-bay Synology NAS DS1821+, using a soundbar with an Xbox

# 2N IP Verso Review — Enterprise Intercom for the Portland Home Lab *By Marcus Webb — 8 years enterprise network engineering, 6-year Portland home lab* ## The Short Answer The **2N IP Verso** is a solid choice if you are building an intercom system that needs to integrate with Linux-based infrastructure like Proxmox or

# The Ultimate Guide to Privacy from ISP Snooping for Your Proxmox Home Lab *By Marcus Webb — 8 years enterprise network engineering, 6-year Portland home lab* ## The Short Answer If you are worried about your Internet Service Provider logging every packet that leaves your basement in Oregon before it hits the backbone, **privacy