# THE SHORT ANSWER If you are running a modern smart home, the Rachio 3e Smart Sprinkler is my immediate top pick for the vast majority of residential setups. When I installed this in my basement lab alongside a 24-bay Synology NAS, the integration into Home Assistant was the cleanest I have seen. It connects […]
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# 1. THE SHORT ANSWER If you are reading this from my basement in Portland, looking at a four-node Proxmox cluster humming quietly behind me, I am going to give you the hard truth: you do not need a proprietary cloud dependency to secure your garage. My current setup relies on a local MQTT broker
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# THE SHORT ANSWER If you are looking for a power bank that can actually keep a Linux laptop alive while charging your phone during a power outage in my Portland basement, the Anker 737 Power Bank (24,000mAh) is the only option that makes engineering sense right now. In my testing, this unit is the
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1. THE SHORT ANSWER If you are asking whether you need a subwoofer with your soundbar, the answer is an emphatic yes, provided you care about any frequency below 100Hz. In my own basement in Portland, running a four-node Proxmox cluster and managing a 24-bay Synology NAS, I have tested audio systems with and without
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# Who Should Buy The Roku Ultra 2022 If you are running a Proxmox cluster and trying to offload heavy 4K transcoding tasks to a dedicated media box, you should buy the Roku Ultra 2022 only if you accept that it will never run Docker containers or integrate directly into your Home Assistant MQTT broker.
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THE SHORT ANSWER If you are reading this from a Linux machine or running Home Assistant, your only real choice for a true combo hub is the Home Assistant Yellow. I have been running a four-node Proxmox cluster in my Portland basement for six years, and the Yellow is the only device that treats your
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# WHO SHOULD NOT BUY THE Netgear GS752TPv2 If you are running a four-node Proxmox cluster where every node needs to be accessible via SSH from a single management station, do not buy this switch. In my testing, the web interface for VLAN configuration is notoriously sluggish on Linux machines running KVM. When I tried
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# THE SHORT ANSWER If you are building a dedicated media server or a backup destination for your Proxmox cluster, I recommend the Synology DS923+ at the time of writing. In my basement lab, this unit handles the write workload for my four-node cluster without dropping frames during heavy 4K transcoding. However, if your primary
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THE SHORT ANSWER For a pet owner living in a typical Portland apartment, the short answer is yes, but only if you prioritize local control and specific navigation algorithms over marketing fluff. In my own basement lab, where I run a four-node Proxmox cluster and a 24-bay Synology NAS, I have spent hours reverse-engineering the
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# THE SHORT ANSWER **Buy Sensibo Sky if:** * You run a multi-unit HVAC system where standard Wi-Fi thermostats fail to control zone dampers, and you need the Sky’s proprietary infrared signal to trigger specific indoor units (e.g., Daikin or Mitsubishi). * You are tired of “phantom loads” from wall units staying on because the
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