Today I have a huge bottleneck in unpacking and moving. I’ve got 1gb fiber and can saturate it, getting a complete iso in just a few minutes, but then it’s another 30min plus waiting for that to actually be usable.

Are you doing this all manually or using the *arr suite? For me, this process takes a minute or two depending on the size of the files with Proxmox and ZFS but even previously on Windows 10 with SnapRAID it was quick.

Its honestly pretty small for what you can pack inside but they do have smaller options like the Node series. The 304 is around 8"x10"x14" with room for 6 drives.

The third alternative (and best IMO) is to buy a PC case with lots of drive slots and transfer everything into it. With a NAS you’re going to pay a ton of money for the NAS itself which is just laptop-equivalent hardware and a fixed number of drive bays meaning you can’t expand it when it fills up without buying more expensive hardware, and you’ll also be forced into buying matched drives. With an HDD enclosure, you’re spending less money but again fixed on the number of drives while also being somewhat unreliable due to the USB connection.

I use a Fractal Design Define 6 midtower case which can hold around 12 HDDs. For hardware I bought a mobo with the most SATA ports I could get and began slowly buying drives as my storage pool filled up, eventually needing an LSI HBA card to expand the number of SATA connections. This is the best value IMO as the cost is comparable to buying a NAS, you can add drives as you go with a much higher drive capacity, the connection is rock solid, and you can run real PC hardware.

It was definitely not fun stringing Cat6 through the attic, but knowing myself, I probably wouldn’t have stayed on top of battery changes and I also wanted 24/7 recording since a battery powered camera can miss movement and start recording late or not at all. I also need a doorbell camera still but I’ve had trouble finding one that checks all the boxes.

It sounds like a fun project but I dont know if I’d rely on it for security purposes. Plus with the cost of Pis now you might as well but a full fledged camera.

I have Amcrest PoE cameras hooked to an Amcrest NVR for 24/7 recording and also Frigate running separately tied to Home Assistant to record clips and send notifications when people are out front/back of my house. It all works really well thus far after about a year of use.

Same. For most people in our space, a Dell Optiplex micro is more than enough horsepower (except few expansion ports). There’s no reason to be running a legacy server consuming 2.5kW just to host some movies or store your camera footage.

Comcast recently upgraded their internet in our area to give us better upload speeds (from 16mbps to 200mbps) but I’d previously been sharing Linux ISOs with friends and family with a bitrate cap on Plex of 3mbps. With this, I was sometimes able to have 5 concurrent remote streams. Quality certainly wasn’t the best but nobody really even seemed to notice when I asked about it and I’d explained to everyone that due to the shitty upload speed I was limited on how many people could watch at the same time.

I don’t charge anyone for anything but several have offered money or bribes of beer or food over the years. As others have mentioned, with payments comes and expectations of priority or uptime and I can’t guarantee that stuff.

Consider any future clients you might have or if you decide to share with other people the clients they have. I personally think it’s worth spending a few extra bucks now to ensure compatibility in the future.

Im running a similar setup (ZFS pool, Cockpit, portainer x2, and a few LXCs for Plex, Frigate, etc) and it’s been great. Before building it early this year, I’d been running everything on Windows for the decade prior because I was unfamiliar with Linux and struggled like OP when problems arose, but after following a guide to get everything setup it’s been rock solid and if I screw anything up I can just load a backup. I’d also looked into TrueNAS and Unraid but this gives me a more flexible setup without any extra cost and the ability to tinker without affecting anything else like you said.

What about a regular PIR sensors? Google is showing me suggestions to put tape inside the lens of one if you want to narrow the beam.

Agreed it would be nice if radarr and sonarr were combined into one, but Youtubarr is at least pretty descriptive.

Why? It’s a brand at this point and lets you know exactly what its about.

At least for now. Jellyfin was spawned from Emby who also decided to go closed source at one point. You’re still at the whim of strangers and what they want to do with the product they developed.

Regardless, the debate isn’t about “Plex vs Emby,” it’s whether “Plex is self-hosting” or not.

How is that any different than any other software package? Unless you’re coding it yourself, things can be changed without your permission.

You can do it either way. I personally have HA running on a Pi4 while frigate runs on my server, but this is just because HA is running well and I don’t want to mess with it and move my zigbee/zwave radios.

But how often are you really in there fiddling with things to the point that not needing a Philips screwdriver outweighs your need to sleep each night?

Maybe try adding some Dynamat or other noise reducer inside the case to achieve the same result.

Why don’t you buy a different enclosure for the drives? I have a Fractal Designs Define 6 and I dont hear any of my drives even sitting a foot away from it. The case cost me less than a single 8TB drive, and can hold around 12 3.5" drives, so it seems to be the most economical solution over running your drives into the ground by having them spin up and spin down regularly.

I’ve given it like half a dozen tries and can’t get through the first season of Babylon 5. Maybe the 7th time is the charm after I finish Dark Matter.

There’s nothing in the rulebook saying that image hosting software can’t play basketball!