Use Restic backups to a local drive then sync that with something like rsync to ovhcloud cloud archive (not cold archive but that can work too). You can also skip the local copy but it’s better to have one and if you sync weekly it gives you opportunities to do things like cull photos you took too many of before it slaps them all up. There are plenty of GUI based restic interfaces now if you want a quick check or browse. Use healthchecks.io to monitor the cronjobs and alert you if they aren’t working.

Abefinder/Neofinder is great for cataloging but it costs money. If you do a limited backup it’s good to know what you had. I use tape formatted to LTFS and Neofind both the source and the finished tape.

Hi, I’ve had a good experience with the G6 dome cams. Works well. The door bell has been difficult. It works better on android than iPhone. Talking to people at the door sucks on iPhone (quiet voice from the phone to the door person) it has been a bug for some time they haven’t fixed. Google forums of people complaining about not working or quiet voice. If all you want is video recording on the door bell it’s good enough. But frequently interacting with multiple phones and guests gets frustrating on the G4 Pro.

I wonder why current consumer HDD’s don’t have NVME connectors on them. Like I know speeding up the bus isn’t going to make the spinning rust access faster but the cache ram would probably benefit from not being capped at 550MBps

It’s not free but it’s awesome and cheap. Setup a WebDAV share and join it using “Mountainduck.io”. It connects to everything like SMB but I find WebDAV’s multichannel is more performant in the long run. Checks notes Win/Mac only sorry.

I’ve read on the internet some people export their Spotify to a YouTube playlist to then pass through Parabolic and enter the result into Navidrome. Maybe as a feature you could add a Spotify to YT playlist creator somehow.

I switched to Fastmail about 2 years ago and have been happy with it. Does everything I want and it is quick and smooth like it’s name.

Remember you aren’t just backing up the data but also backing up the hours of effort it takes to rebuild and get it how you want. If frequently backing up just the service OS you can store heaps for $2 on offerings like OVH cold archive.

Remove yourself from the backup you’ll forget or it will be inconvenient the week it blows up, so automate it, check the automation monthly. Don’t care that the 2nd cold backup takes ages if you have a quicker main backup.

Fireproof safes aren’t melt heatproof. Don’t rely on a local house backups for fireproofing.

I’m a self hoster, and hate subscription services but I believe cloud storage for use with a compressed encrypted backup makes sense.

Backup media and other stuff separately to avoid one large slow monolithic backup.

RPi Digital Signage is really good. Binaryemotions.com. it’s built thoughtfully for a bunch of different situations. The kiosk mode paired with some sort of start page would work.

If you have a Google account you can setup webhooks to a chat space. That’s the best way if it supports it. If you continue to have this problem with email only you could setup n8n to receive notifications via other methods and forward them to a webhook.

The Ikea stuff works fine. When it comes to smart plugs, The IKEA switches make a louder solenoid “chonk” sound when they turn on. Xiaomi plugs are quieter and the smallest I’ve seen. Means you are more likely to fit something next to it. They are a little bit more expensive but I think worth it.

Looks a little pricey but probably would work fine. I bought my first zstack based Texas for $25. Worked fine for a couple of years till I realized it had a limit on how many devices it could handle. so I upgraded it to the next model up for another $25. That’s when I found out if you change methods you have to re adopt everything. But if I kept it on the same method (zstack Texas zha) all I did was swap the dongle and everything kept rolling just with a higher limit of devices.

If you VPS it, remember to add a snapshot backup. Such as $5 vultr VPS always add the $2 snapshot backup option.

Pfft, what no LXDE