HomeLab Equipment

Equipment with Amazon links (Amazon Associate, I earn a small commission from purchases via links below)

HomeLab:

• Tecmojo 12U Network Rack, 10 inch Mini Server Rack

• Waveshare POE Hat for Raspberry Pi 4B/3B+with 0.91" OLED uses 802.3af
  Review:

  • • • Very happy with the POE Hat from Waveshare, using the Unifi USW Ultra 210W to provide the 802.3af  POE and using a OLED to display hosname, IP address, Temperature readings for the RPI4, and disk space utilization. Even with a full kubernetes load and the fan on not much noise can be heard.

• CanaKit Raspberry Pi 4 Extreme Kit - Aluminum Edition (8GB RAM) Had 3 of these laying around after moving HomeAssistant, Kodi, and one that was unused so decided to try setting up a Kubernetes cluster on them

Review:

• • • • • A little on the expensive side now, honestly if i was going out and buying fresh for a home lab I'd buy either a set of Pi5's or  a renewed Micro PCs from Dell or HP, you cant pay me enough to buy a Lenovo.

• Samsung 870 Evo SATA SSD 500GB Internals Solid State Drive

Review:

• • • • • Great drive!

• WD 5TB My Passport, Portable External Hard Drive, Black

Review:

• A great drive for long term storage for lots of data

SMARTHOME Pieces:

• YOLINK (uses LoRa Tech for longer range) 

  • Decided to use this brand because the research I had done said that LoRa radios would work really well in enviornments that traditional Smarthome wireless technolgies like WiFi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, Z-wave wouldnt. In my case it was my high rise apartment in Asia that used concrete for exterior and interior walls that attenuated the hell out of just about all signals that were not in the same or adjcaent room as the emitter. LoRa Based YOLINK sensors worked beautifully in this enviornment  my yolink hub was in the office and the first sensors i purchased were the door sensors that i put on the front and back doors, that were just about as far away from the hub as i could get in my apartment layout.

  • Motion Sensor

  • Door Sensor Starter Kit

    • Includes 4x door contact sensors and the Yolink Hub

  • Indoor Hygrometer Thermometer

    • LCD 1 Pack w/o hub

    • LCD 3 Pack w/o hub

  • Outdoor Hygrometer Thermometer

  • Alarm Fob

• Phillips Hue

  • Expensive, but works really well and easily integrates with HomeAssistant

  • Philips Hue Play HDMI Sync Box

  • Bloom

    • I use 4x of the Blooms with the Hue Sync box to as background lights for my tv they are great

  • Philips Hue A19 LED Smart Light Bulb

• WIZ

  • WiZ Connected Smart Light Bulbs

    • Works with the Phillips Hue Hub I have

• Govee 

  • (Takes a little bit of work to get working with Home Assistant but the Govee2MQTT integration works relatively well)

  • Outdoor Projector Light

  • Christmas Lights 2

  • Smart Outdoor String Lights 2

  • Govee Smart Light Bulbs

• TPLink

  • Tapo Matter Supported Smart Plug Mini

  • Tapo Smart Wi-Fi Power Strip- 6 Individually Controlled Smart Outlets and 3 USB Ports 

  • Smart Plug, white (Tapo P100(4-pack))