0:00

If we had a laws of self-hosting, I think

0:02

this would be in the top 10. And

0:04

it would be the easier something is to

0:06

set up and share, the more likely it's

0:08

eventually going to cost you something.

0:10

Like those 10-minute, super smooth, really nice

0:13

UI, get things set up, and now

0:15

you're using some sort of proxy

0:17

cloud service to share stuff, eventually

0:19

someone has to pay that bill. You know

0:21

what I mean? Like it always ends up

0:24

happening that way. And the easy stuff always

0:26

seems to be where it goes first.

0:28

I absolutely feel that way

0:30

about snaps. The Ubuntu Snaps?

0:32

Yeah, yeah, Ubuntu Snaps. Sorry

0:34

any Ubuntu people listening, but

0:36

you know, for example, someone

0:38

setting up NextCloud, oh, you

0:40

used to snap install NextCloud.

0:42

Okay, but where's the data live?

0:44

What's the database back end? Like,

0:46

there's a bunch of questions that

0:48

you should be answering before you set

0:51

things up. And I don't want to

0:53

sound too gate keeping in saying this

0:55

stuff. we should be working towards

0:58

making things easy, but there's

1:00

also a balance of trade-off to

1:02

be made between the level of

1:04

magic and the simplicity of deployment.

1:07

Like too much magic is

1:09

a bad thing. Yeah, I agree there.

1:11

I think, I was just thinking,

1:13

what if they had like a

1:16

little yamel file and you could,

1:18

and I'm like, well, you just

1:20

created darker composed. Yeah. Yeah. I

1:22

started thinking about that. Really, just

1:24

because of the news this week

1:27

from PLEX. They've had a week,

1:29

haven't they? My goodness. It's like

1:32

they're trying to burn,

1:34

deliberately burn, any goodwill they've

1:36

got left. Yeah, I was

1:38

thinking, Alex, their arc on this

1:40

show, it starts with PLEX, we're

1:42

doing great, we had, that we

1:44

had them on the show, like it was

1:47

the gateway into self-hosting, and

1:49

here we are at episode

1:51

145, Now, of course, there's a price

1:53

increase that always makes some people

1:55

upset. That's taking effect April 29,

1:58

2025. But this is their first price. like

2:00

in a while so okay it's it's not so

2:02

bad I suppose you're going from a

2:04

hundred and twenty dollars for the

2:06

lifetime now to two hundred fifty

2:08

dollars for the lifetime so it's

2:10

it's a jump it's a jump but that's

2:12

not really the bad news no

2:15

not really I bought my lifetime

2:17

past ten years ago for about

2:19

seventy five dollars and that's looking

2:21

like a smarter and smarter investment

2:23

but on top of the price increases

2:25

plex are also making some

2:27

significant changes to putting remote

2:30

playback behind a paywall.

2:32

They're taking a free feature and

2:34

locking it behind the plexpass

2:37

subscription. Yeah, that's the

2:39

big one. So after April

2:41

29th, you'll have to have

2:43

plexpass to remotely stream for

2:46

someone else's plex server or

2:48

any users you've invited to

2:50

stream from your plex server.

2:52

They're also going to offer now a

2:55

remote watch pass. It's like a new thing.

2:57

two bucks a month or 20 bucks a

2:59

year. So you can get that for a little

3:01

bit less than a plex pass, easy for

3:03

me to say. And then you can still

3:05

get remote streaming from friends and family,

3:08

I guess. So I mean it's two bucks a

3:10

month if you use it a lot, maybe it's

3:12

worth it. Now we should probably temper any

3:14

panic at this point by saying that if

3:16

you already have a subscription for a lifetime

3:19

pass or a plex pass before the cutoff

3:21

date of what is it April 29th,

3:23

you will be grandfathered in. I don't

3:25

know how that works for rolling

3:27

monthly customers at least, but certainly

3:29

for lifetime customers. You'll be grandfathered

3:32

in, at least for now, to

3:34

be able to continue doing remote

3:36

watch and all that kind of

3:38

stuff. And anybody that if you as

3:40

the admin of the server are

3:42

the Plex Pass subscriber, anybody that you

3:44

share that server with for friends and

3:47

family, they won't need a Plex Pass.

3:49

Only the admin of the server does.

3:51

So for now at least in the

3:53

short term. It's not a

3:55

pants-on-fire emergency situation, but

3:57

what it does do for me is it

3:59

highlights a very worrying trend in

4:01

the plex management suite of

4:04

let's take our core product and

4:06

monetize the heck out of it

4:08

in the most egregious way that

4:10

we can you know right the red

4:12

flag here really is a core product

4:14

feature which has always been free

4:16

is now going behind a

4:18

paywall the feature take your

4:21

media anywhere that was wasn't that

4:23

plexus strap line for a while

4:25

watch anywhere? Indeed, I mean, it's

4:27

to me an indication that maybe

4:29

things are desperate. I mean, that's

4:31

just speculation on my part. But

4:33

it's a, I mean, everybody on the internet

4:35

knows you don't take something that's

4:37

been free the whole time and part of

4:40

the core product and move it behind the

4:42

paywall. You knew cool stuff that adds a

4:44

lot of value that people really want,

4:46

but it's new. They put that beyond the

4:48

paywall all the time and people live

4:51

with that. But something that's been free,

4:53

then you make you make you pay

4:55

for it. I mean, that always gets

4:58

people upset. That's just the way it

5:00

is. Yeah. Once it's free, it should

5:02

always be free. And, you know, I

5:04

just wonder, why is there

5:07

no innovation from Plex to

5:09

add new features? One feature

5:11

that comes to mind immediately

5:13

is audiobook support.

5:15

We've been asking for that

5:18

for years. And yes, there's prologue

5:20

on iOS and plapper and audio

5:22

bookshelf, like there are apps that have

5:24

come along to fill that gap, but

5:26

it's been a top feature on

5:28

the PLEX request in the forum for

5:30

years at this point. And if they'd

5:33

come out today and said, we're going

5:35

to add audio books and it's a

5:37

one-time unlock of $50 or something for

5:40

even if you're a lifetime subscriber or

5:42

something, different story, but taking

5:44

a feature that was free and making

5:46

it paid is just no bueno. There

5:48

are things that are low-hanging fruit. You

5:51

know, those of us that are on

5:53

limited connections, I would happily

5:56

understand if they made downloading

5:58

on the Android TV. and

6:00

iOS TV platforms, a pay-walled feature? I

6:02

mean, I wouldn't love it, but I

6:04

understand. Just let me download files on

6:07

the TV, so that way I can,

6:09

before a movie starts, maybe I can

6:11

get 15 minutes in, so I don't

6:13

have to worry about buffering, and I

6:16

can look at watching the highest quality.

6:18

It's just such a basic feature. There

6:20

are some improvements. The one-minute playback limitation

6:23

on iOS and Android apps is going

6:25

to be removed. So local playback on

6:27

mobile is now free. Plex is updating

6:29

their privacy policy in terms of service.

6:32

They say they're adding transparency about data

6:34

usage, and they say no data about

6:36

your personal media or server usage will

6:39

be sold or collected. And consent for

6:41

new data use will be requested. Yeah,

6:43

that's a pretty big change in stance

6:45

for the company, actually. If we think

6:48

back to the faux social network that

6:50

they tried to put together a few

6:52

months ago, where they started to broadcast

6:55

everybody's watch history to everybody else, you

6:57

know. Okay, if this is true, great.

6:59

I'm glad to see that. But you

7:01

know, the good news is tempered with

7:04

yet more bad news because the watch-together

7:06

feature is going away as well. True,

7:08

yeah. Yeah, that, I mean, I maybe

7:11

there was some sort of server side,

7:13

I could understand, you know, their proxy

7:15

in the connections there. So maybe there

7:17

was some cost to them, but as

7:20

far as I understood, once the streaming...

7:22

started. It was from Plex instance to

7:24

Plex client. It didn't have to go

7:27

through their servers. So you wouldn't think

7:29

it was a big overhead for them,

7:31

but I'm sure it's technically a tricky

7:33

feature to maintain. Yeah, what do we

7:36

know? We're just pesky end users, just

7:38

like our features. I mean, the reality

7:40

is, I'm very happy with my jellyfin

7:43

setup now. It works fantastic, but when

7:45

I travel... I almost always end up

7:47

falling back on plex because either where

7:49

I'm staying they have a plex app

7:52

built into the TV or where I'm

7:54

staying. It's easier to stream from one

7:56

of my friends' systems, perhaps. And so

7:58

I lean on PLEX still for basically

8:01

the friends and family streaming aspect of

8:03

it. And I, like yourself, have the

8:05

lifetime subscription. But I don't think I'm

8:08

going to, in good conscious, recommend friends

8:10

and families to get new systems down

8:12

the road, get PLEX and get the

8:14

lifetime subscription. I just feel like the

8:17

deals changing too often. I do appreciate

8:19

the new privacy policy improvements. All in

8:21

all, I think the package isn't quite

8:24

as attractive as it used to be.

8:26

I mean, what do you make of

8:28

this, right? Plex is a company, okay,

8:30

and companies have to make money, and

8:33

the reality of the situation is that

8:35

most people with Plex libraries acquired their

8:37

content in interesting ways, and there is

8:40

no way to monetize that. We've put

8:42

up with the identification creep over the

8:44

last few years of adding ad supported

8:46

this and ad supported that and remember

8:49

plex arcade for a bit that kind

8:51

of came and went and Is that

8:53

even still a feature? I don't know

8:56

but like They've got to make money

8:58

somehow and I just I just think

9:00

they're going about it in the wrong

9:02

way like innovate rather than What's even

9:05

the right word like? Feature Gate I

9:07

mean the reality is in a vague

9:09

don't feature gate that yeah, that's the

9:12

strap line I feel like they need

9:14

to go out into the real world

9:16

and Use plex in the real world

9:18

and just feel the pain points that

9:21

are just out there that are low-hanging

9:23

fruit That they could monetize We've mentioned

9:25

a couple of them in this show

9:28

they're there. They're available for the grabbing,

9:30

but I I think maybe they're too

9:32

insulated. They're looking at it from a

9:34

KPI and kind of goal standpoint. They're

9:37

not looking at it from actual end

9:39

users out in the real world. At

9:41

least, it seems to me, otherwise some

9:44

of these features would be obvious to

9:46

them. You know, don't even get me

9:48

started on the current state of downloads.

9:50

I mean, yes, technically they do work,

9:53

but I can only set... I used

9:55

to be able to... a per movie

9:57

or a per series like quality threshold

9:59

and it would transcode the files and

10:02

then shoot them across the network to

10:04

my iPad or whatever. I used to

10:06

do that every night before you know

10:09

I used to have to commute from

10:11

Norwich to London on the train for

10:13

two plus hours each way so I

10:15

used to load the iPad up the

10:18

night before with the current episodes or

10:20

whatever I was watching. Yeah and you

10:22

know it was it was great I

10:25

could just be like right. Well, this

10:27

cartoon I put in 480P because I

10:29

really don't care about South Park. And

10:31

we should start, when you got back,

10:34

what you watched would sync up with

10:36

your server, so the watch status would

10:38

be all in sync with your mobile

10:41

setup and your home setup. Yeah. Oh,

10:43

it was great. I used it consistently

10:45

for flights for a long time. 10

10:47

years ago and I've used it every

10:50

single day near enough since. I understand

10:52

that's not sustainable, but as I keep

10:54

saying, innovate, don't feature game. Right. Create

10:57

Plex Plus for me. Plex Pass Plus

10:59

and improve the mobile clients, improve the

11:01

TV clients, and then give me as

11:03

a Pex Plus Plus. User, let me

11:06

have access to the beta APK. You

11:08

know, I mean, let's fix these features,

11:10

fix the download plan. Why have both

11:13

of Alex and I switched to use

11:15

Infuse with local files on the file

11:17

system on our IOS devices for travel

11:19

instead of using Plexink or something like

11:22

that? It's just, they've slid. You're right,

11:24

Alex. Once again, you've nailed it. And

11:26

then, you know, the the comment sphere

11:29

on on Reddit, of course. all roads

11:31

lead to jellyfin apparently. I'm not I'm

11:33

not necessarily sure I 100% agree with

11:35

that take. Jellyfin as you know on

11:38

this show back in when was it

11:40

January what two years ago we did

11:42

jellyfin January and both Chris and I

11:45

were very pleasantly surprised by the state

11:47

of jellyfin. There are. Just a few

11:49

rough edges still remain. You know, just

11:51

stuff like tone mapping, support, HR stuff

11:54

is a little bit wonky sometimes. Live

11:56

TV is not always perfect. Just a

11:58

general fit and finish of the clients

12:00

just isn't quite as high end as

12:03

the PLEX clients. And this is all

12:05

very minor stuff, but those paper cuts

12:07

add up to overall a mildly worse

12:10

user experience, which is just enough sometimes

12:12

to push me over the edge particularly

12:14

when traveling to go back to PLEX

12:16

which I've kept running in the background

12:19

because it runs my wife's audio book

12:21

server for prologue so it's not much

12:23

of a stretch for me to switch

12:26

between the two and on my TVs

12:28

it's fine I just used jellyfin all

12:30

the time just works does the thing

12:32

for the most part but I've always

12:35

got PLEX running in the background and

12:37

I would really genuinely love if jellyfin

12:39

could... Just close that last 5-10% in

12:42

user experience to match PLEX and really

12:44

just shut this conversation down once and

12:46

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12:48

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14:29

you'll love it. tailscale.com/self-hosted. Now did listener

14:31

Jeff deliver my package to you? I

14:33

got this tiny little Apollo Air One

14:36

that fits in the palm of my

14:38

hand and when they say it's compact

14:40

they are not kidding and it is

14:43

the Air One quality sensor that integrates

14:45

automatically with home assistant from Apollo. It's

14:47

powered by USBC. It starts out on

14:49

Bluetooth. Home Assistant immediately detects it and

14:52

then walks you through getting it on

14:54

Wi-Fi and into ES-P home and then

14:56

it shows up as a sensor. And

14:59

I got the unit that has an

15:01

actual CO2 sensor in it. You know,

15:03

I've been looking for this. And they

15:05

say that the sensors in this thing

15:08

have about a 10-year lifespan. Now the

15:10

CO2 sensor is an add-on, so the

15:12

unit starts at 92 and 99. But

15:15

if you add the CO2 sensor, it

15:17

comes out to about $113. So it's

15:19

an optional add-on. And it technically doesn't

15:21

meet the requirements for CO2 safety monitoring

15:24

per like, you know, government agencies and

15:26

all that kind of thing. But it's

15:28

monitoring CO2. Which really what I want.

15:31

because it's been a journey trying to

15:33

find the right one. And the software

15:35

that runs on this thing and the

15:37

CAD drawings are available up on GitHub.

15:40

So it's all there if you kind

15:42

of want to go through it. And

15:44

it essentially runs on ESP Home. Design

15:47

engineered and assembled in the USA. So

15:49

yeah, this is the same Apollo automation

15:51

company that we talked about in the

15:53

last episode that had just been certified

15:56

as the first made with ESP Home

15:58

that works with home assistant. certified product

16:00

line. Yeah, and it's pretty cool that

16:02

we're at that point where that's a

16:05

thing companies want to do. Heck yeah,

16:07

it is. It is, and it's so

16:09

nice. I mean, I'm not kidding, I

16:12

plug this thing into the USBC power.

16:14

And by the time I brought up

16:16

the Home Assistance Dashboard, you know, five

16:18

seconds later, it was already in my

16:21

notifications that it detected the device. Yeah,

16:23

it's great. Because it just broadcast over

16:25

Bluetooth, doesn't it? Yeah, I have the

16:28

Bluetooth dongle hanging off of my Home

16:30

Assistance box, so that helps. But then

16:32

once you start the process, it's all

16:34

Wi-Fi after that. That's the culmination of

16:37

the project, didn't they? Been a minute.

16:39

Yeah, and this is the culmination of

16:41

years worth of work. I remember, do

16:44

you remember when we did a self-hosted

16:46

live hack stream about W LED back

16:48

in the day? Yeah, I do. And

16:50

we were flashing our Dueno code onto

16:53

these boards and it was all a

16:55

little bit kind of sketchy and hacky

16:57

and it was fun, don't get me

17:00

wrong, but for home assistant and its

17:02

associated ecosystem of products like the Air

17:04

One from Apollo Automation to really stand

17:06

a chance for muggles in the marketplace

17:09

in the marketplace. It has to be

17:11

as easy as you just described. I've

17:13

really enjoyed testing it too. So what

17:16

I've realized is that what I'm home,

17:18

the CO2 in the RV shoots up,

17:20

and then when I leave it goes

17:22

down, and I definitely see it spy.

17:25

when I start the diesel heater for

17:27

a bit, just for a couple of

17:29

minutes, when the diesel heater is starting

17:32

up, it spikes up. And so it's

17:34

been fun like going to perplexity and

17:36

like researching the different parts per million

17:38

CO2 levels, what they do. Do you

17:41

feel it? You know, because I think

17:43

one of the things, I got one

17:45

of the, I forget the name of

17:48

it now, but I got a different

17:50

air quality sensor a little while ago

17:52

for my office. It's only a small

17:54

room right now. And I noticed that

17:57

when I have the door close when

17:59

I'm filming. But I just feel a

18:01

little prickly sometimes when the room is

18:03

short of air. And sure enough, I

18:06

can correlate that feeling with high CO2

18:08

levels. Have you felt anything like that?

18:10

I haven't gotten there yet. Although I'm

18:13

going to start paying attention to that.

18:15

But what I have noticed is definitely

18:17

makes a difference when we're cooking if

18:19

we have a window cracked. Now I

18:22

know that's obvious to say, but it

18:24

is interesting, something that's just sort of...

18:26

you know, common knowledge passed down, everybody

18:29

says, oh, yeah, crack a window if

18:31

you have a guest over something like

18:33

that. It's really fascinating to actually see

18:35

it in the data. And so I

18:38

guess, according to perplexity, you usually have

18:40

to get pretty high before it starts

18:42

affecting, like, you know, your decision-making and

18:45

mental acuity. But, you know, maybe I'll

18:47

get there, as especially, you know, as

18:49

I go through winter and I use

18:51

different heaters and stuff like that. I'm

18:54

going to start paying attention and I'll

18:56

probably blame it on the CO2 levels

18:58

regardless now. Yeah, yeah, you've got a

19:01

new excuse under your belt, huh? Right,

19:03

and point at the chart and be

19:05

like, look honey the CO2 levels were

19:07

high, I couldn't make a decision. So

19:10

this thing's about the size of what,

19:12

a deck of cards or so? Yeah,

19:14

it's a 3D printed case, it's a

19:17

really well done one, and it's maybe

19:19

a little narrower and a little thicker,

19:21

but it's around the size of a

19:23

deck of a deck of a deck

19:26

of a deck of a deck of

19:28

a deck of a deck of a

19:30

deck of a deck of a card.

19:33

And it says here in the documentation

19:35

that it's just running an ESP-32 inside.

19:37

Yeah. So sometimes the temperature sensor needs

19:39

a little offset due to heat build

19:42

up from that device that's inside. But

19:44

have you found it to be accurate?

19:46

Like I don't have the temperatures. sensor

19:48

up on a dashboard anywhere that I

19:51

constantly am monitoring, but I did notice

19:53

when I first fired it up that

19:55

it seemed like it was reading a

19:58

little bit warm. So that doesn't surprise

20:00

me too much. In fact, if I

20:02

go look at it right now, one

20:04

of the things they do, this is

20:07

really cool, is they do separate out

20:09

in Home Assistant they have, when you're

20:11

looking at the device, a separate diagnostic

20:14

panel where they'll tell you the ESP's

20:16

temperature. So right now, the ESP that's

20:18

running this thing is at 91. That's

20:20

freedom. Freedom units. Yeah, yeah, in freedom

20:23

units. Okay. And it's this current version

20:25

since I reboot it has been up

20:27

for 83,000 seconds. So there you go.

20:30

Yeah. Although it says my air quality

20:32

is extremely abnormal right now. So. Oh,

20:34

have you been, have you been eight?

20:36

eating baked beans or something. Maybe I'll

20:39

have to ask the wife, she was

20:41

home last. I have to ask her,

20:43

hey my VOC meter says things are

20:46

volatile, what's going on right now. Yeah.

20:48

So I should point out we had

20:50

a couple of listeners write in and

20:52

offer up a correction saying that you

20:55

and I were talking about CO2 when

20:57

actually they thought we meant CO for

20:59

carbon monoxide. Obviously it's an important distinction

21:02

but they are two different senses that

21:04

you can optionally add. to this unit.

21:06

So the unit that Chris has has

21:08

the CO2 sensor optionally installed. You can

21:11

also add a gas sensor based around

21:13

a mix 4514 sensor that will detect

21:15

CO, so carbon monoxide, ethanol, ammonia and

21:18

methane levels as well. Yeah, that I

21:20

really want to add. You know, it

21:22

does add to the cost a little

21:24

bit, but their page makes it really

21:27

easy to go through and configure. I'll

21:29

put a link to this in the

21:31

show notes because the page is awesome.

21:34

So you start with no sensor. So

21:36

you add the CO2 sensor. And if

21:38

you add the gas sensor, you can

21:40

also then add a GPio header, which

21:43

is kind of neat. And you can

21:45

also opt to get it with a

21:47

charger if you want, but I already

21:49

have USBC. So I don't need to

21:52

do that. And when I add it

21:54

with the gas sensor. and the CO2

21:56

charger, the total price comes out to

21:59

about $153 U.S. dollars. Now, for me,

22:01

I think it's worth it. I'd probably

22:03

buy two of these and they last

22:05

about 10 years and they're always going

22:08

to work with Home Assistant and I

22:10

never have to worry about a cloud

22:12

connection or... Even the vendor going away

22:15

because the software is open source and

22:17

the CSP home. So for me, it's

22:19

open source, the little components inside. Yeah,

22:21

it's kind of no brainer. From Ali

22:24

Express, you know. And generally, good sensors

22:26

are not cheap. That's what I have

22:28

been discovering. I've seen stuff as expensive

22:31

as, you know, three or four hundred

22:33

bucks. So a hundred fifty three dollars

22:35

with a gas sensor and a temperature

22:37

sensor and other things. It's, I don't,

22:40

it's not bad. I think I think

22:42

I think I think I probably end

22:44

up, I probably end up ordering two,

22:47

ordering two, ordering two myself, two myself.

22:49

Then the review unit's done its trick,

22:51

huh? Yeah, I guess so. So of

22:53

course, because it's only SB 32 underneath

22:56

as well, it's got Bluetooth tracking capabilities

22:58

built right in. You know, I hadn't

23:00

really thought about what I would use

23:03

that for, is it maybe presence detection

23:05

or what, like when it's just getting

23:07

information on one of a certain device

23:09

is nearby? Yeah, well, one of the

23:12

use cases they have here is say

23:14

attach a beacon to your dog's color.

23:16

Oh. That would be

23:18

really great because I've thought about

23:21

I've thought about how do I

23:23

set certain automations for when the

23:25

humans are gone But the dog

23:27

is home. Yeah. Hmm. That's how?

23:30

Cool You just get yours and

23:32

hoodies Bluetooth IDs added into the

23:34

database whatever and then have automations

23:37

that track that track those three

23:39

items and you could to go

23:41

unraid.net/self hosted Unraid 7.1's beta is

23:43

cooking right now and it is

23:46

packed with exciting new features. First

23:48

up, the big one for me,

23:50

you wouldn't think it, but wireless

23:53

networking is now officially supported, which

23:55

means you can connect your unread

23:57

server via Wi-Fi, which is great

23:59

for setups where you just don't

24:02

have access to e-Fi. internet, dorm

24:04

rooms, city flats, you know, my

24:06

RV. I mean, seriously, this is

24:08

great for mobile rigs now too.

24:11

Or like the past week when

24:13

I was at an Airbnb and

24:15

all we had was access to

24:18

Wi-Fi. We sort of roughly set

24:20

up something that worked. This would

24:22

have just made things so much

24:24

easier. And the other nice thing

24:27

that's in 7.1, especially for those

24:29

of you that are moving from

24:31

other platforms. It's now possible to

24:33

import foreign ZFS pools easier than

24:36

ever. So if you're switching, say,

24:38

from Trunaz or ProxMox or Ubuntu,

24:40

Unraid will automatically detect and import

24:43

your ZFS pools, simplifying that migration.

24:45

And 7.1 just made virtualization and

24:47

GPU support even better. Enhance GPU

24:49

support for Linux VMs in particular,

24:52

including multi-screen setups. And I think

24:54

the user VM templates feature is

24:56

going to be really nice. Save

24:58

and reuse custom VM configurations. Make

25:01

it really streamlined to just spin

25:03

up a new VM. And of

25:05

course there's an update Linux kernel

25:08

in there too, which has support

25:10

for Intel's next-gen battle image goopu.

25:12

Yeah, I call it go-poo. So

25:14

what? What matters is that you

25:17

go check out Unraid, go check

25:19

out the new features, participate in

25:21

the beta too. It's available at

25:23

unraid.net. self-hosted. Head on over right

25:26

now, support the show, unread.net/self-hosted. Unread,

25:28

unleash your hardware. All right, so

25:30

server, shame, time, my epic server,

25:33

as you all know, died just

25:35

before I went to scale. And

25:37

here we are over two weeks,

25:39

nearly three weeks later, and I

25:42

still don't have a functioning server.

25:44

Oh man, that's rough. Travel makes

25:46

it hard to, you know, fix

25:49

a server, so there's that factor.

25:51

Yeah, I mean, putting together a

25:53

server doesn't take, doesn't take that

25:55

long. But I have had a

25:58

time with ThreadRipper Pro. Oh

26:00

really? I take it not a

26:02

good time? No. No. Okay. What's

26:04

going on? We're about to part

26:06

ways. So I'm going to take

26:08

another trip to Charlotte to return

26:10

it to micro center. Back to

26:13

micro center? You just want to

26:15

go back to micro center. I

26:17

know you. Yeah, well, okay, so

26:19

there are lots of very nuanced

26:21

reasons for this, but the biggest

26:23

reason, well, there's two biggest reasons.

26:25

First of all, it was a

26:27

two grand purchase. for a Zen

26:29

3 part. Now Zen 3 was

26:31

released about three years ago and

26:33

that's Zen 3 is the architecture

26:35

of the Thread Ripper Pro CPU

26:38

5000 series that I purchased. Doesn't

26:40

sound like a big deal. You

26:42

think, oh yeah, two three year

26:44

old processors, fine, whatever. But then

26:46

I started actually looking at benchmarks

26:48

of the Zen 3 thread Ripper

26:50

Pro versus a 9950 X which

26:52

is a Zen 5 AMD part,

26:54

the Verizon chip. It has roughly

26:56

a 32% higher aggregate performance score

26:58

compared to the ThreadRipper Pro, which

27:01

when you consider that it's a

27:03

desktop class chip versus a gargantuan

27:05

hunk of silicon that's designed to

27:07

go in a server with a

27:09

million PCIE lanes, the performance is

27:11

something you can't really ignore. So

27:13

then I was going to live

27:15

with it and then I ran

27:17

into a bunch of issues, I

27:19

couldn't boot. the Proxmox installer. Uh-oh.

27:21

Okay. Yeah, I could boot the

27:23

Knicks installer. The Arch installer, bun

27:26

two, is all fine. But Proxmox

27:28

just would not boot. I have

27:30

a HP, like one of their

27:32

cheap servers that's in a workstation

27:34

case. It was given to me,

27:36

so I'm very grateful, I'm not

27:38

complaining. But same deal. I can

27:40

boot everything but Proxmox on that.

27:42

So I ended up spelunking onto

27:44

the internet, trying to find out

27:46

all the different. PCI, all the

27:48

different kernel command line flag. so

27:51

I could pass this thing. And

27:53

in the end, I found one

27:55

that worked, which was PCI equals

27:57

non-conf, which is some kind of

27:59

memory. It changes the way that

28:01

PCI-E devices address the kernel or

28:03

something. I don't know. It's kind

28:05

of weird. Okay. So that allowed

28:07

me to boot the installer and

28:09

get Proxox installed. But I'm seeing

28:11

a ton of errors in D

28:13

message as I do it. And

28:16

I'm like, well, hopefully they'll go

28:18

away once it reboots. So I

28:20

rebooted into the fresh install and

28:22

I'm still seeing a bunch of

28:24

errors related to PCIA devices, bad

28:26

TFP, bad DLLP errors. So I

28:28

started asking Claude and perplexity like,

28:30

what's going on? What do these

28:32

errors mean? And it turned out

28:34

that the WRX 80 motherboard from

28:36

Aseuss has a pair of six-pin

28:39

auxiliary power cables to power the

28:41

seven PCA slots. I hadn't plugged

28:43

them in because I was like,

28:45

well I've only got three devices

28:47

in here, three of them. Okay.

28:49

So I'm like, it doesn't matter,

28:51

it'll be fine. So anyway, I

28:53

plugged them in and there are

28:55

so many flipping PCA power ports

28:57

on this motherboard. It's got the

28:59

two eight pin CPU ports, but

29:01

it's also got an extra eight

29:04

pin port on the motherboard for

29:06

the CPU because it draws so

29:08

much. So there are three eight

29:10

pins for the CPU plus two

29:12

six pins for the PCA ports,

29:14

plus whatever ports. are on the

29:16

graphics cards themselves. My brand new

29:18

1,200 watt power supply was out

29:20

of cables. So I went to

29:22

my old Bitcoin mining rig, box

29:24

of cables, to pull out some

29:26

old PCIE splitter power cables I

29:29

used to have for that. And

29:31

got it powered up, and lo

29:33

and behold, a couple of the

29:35

PCIE errors went away. So, lesson

29:37

learned. Don't assume that power ports

29:39

are optional, Alex. Just plug into

29:41

them. And you have a good

29:43

time. No matter what I did,

29:45

I could not get rid of

29:47

the bad DLLP or the bad

29:49

DLLP and bad TLLP errors. I

29:51

reached out to friend of the

29:54

show Wendell to see if he

29:56

could help me because he's done

29:58

pretty much the only deep dive

30:00

on this board on YouTube. So

30:02

I knew he had one. And

30:04

he went through the Bios settings

30:06

with me and we found a

30:08

couple of extra things in there.

30:10

Interestingly, AMD Chip's ship with IOM

30:12

MU enabled, which is like the

30:14

virtualization grouping of PCA devices enabled

30:17

out of the box. And the

30:19

Bios setting says auto. So I'd

30:21

take that to mean as... Well

30:23

the AMD chip shipped with it

30:25

on, Bios says auto, that means

30:27

it's on, right? Nope, turns out

30:29

you can actually turn it more

30:31

on than just on. So if

30:33

you set it explicitly to on

30:35

in the Bios, then it will

30:37

boot without the PCIA non-comf setting,

30:39

I think. I see, so auto

30:42

didn't mean auto on, it meant

30:44

auto off. Just made auto kind

30:46

of halfway house? Yeah, like if

30:48

the OS triggers in the right

30:50

way, I guess. Yeah, okay. So,

30:52

I don't know, I kind of

30:54

got to thinking and I took

30:56

the weekend whilst we were at

30:58

scale and I had a lot

31:00

of time on the plane to

31:02

think about what I was going

31:04

to do. And I just couldn't

31:07

live with the fact that I

31:09

was going to drop two grand

31:11

on a three-year-old part that was

31:13

incompatible without some major messing about

31:15

with... Proxox, the DOS that I'm

31:17

going to run on this thing.

31:19

So I reached out to MicroCenter

31:21

and asked them if I could

31:23

extend my return window by just

31:25

a couple of days so I

31:27

could take it back after scale.

31:29

And they said, sure, we'll give

31:32

you up to 30 days. So

31:34

I'm probably going to go back

31:36

to Charlotte this weekend as we

31:38

record to take it back. And

31:40

that led me down the path

31:42

of thinking, well, OK, I don't

31:44

have a thread with a pro

31:46

pro in my life anymore. What

31:48

am I do? And my media

31:50

server is a separate box. Like

31:52

there's an I-5, 13, 600K in

31:55

the basement that's got a ton

31:57

of hard drives in it, and

31:59

it's separate. And I'm very glad

32:01

I made that decision to separate

32:03

those two things. between my home

32:05

lab and pseudo-prod, you know, because

32:07

it's meant that for the last

32:09

month, well three weeks or so,

32:11

that my media situation hasn't been

32:13

impacted at all by any of

32:15

this messing about. So, you know,

32:17

my budget for the upgrade was

32:20

about two grand and I was

32:22

looking at my options and AMD

32:24

just went and dropped to 9950X3D

32:26

this week, didn't they? So the

32:28

9950X is the non-3D part, so

32:30

what that means, that difference, X3D

32:32

part, means that it's got a

32:34

bunch of extra V cash, which

32:36

is useful for highly sensitive workloads

32:38

like gaming, where even the tiniest

32:40

latency spike will result in a

32:42

latency drop in frame buffering and

32:45

that kind of stuff. On a

32:47

server, I don't really care about

32:49

that. You know, most of my

32:51

workloads can be pinned to specific

32:53

CCDs because the 9950X has two

32:55

chiplets inside and there's huge latency

32:57

if you try and access a

32:59

workload from one CCD on the

33:01

other one as it copies stuff

33:03

across between those two contexts. And

33:05

so I sort of looked at

33:07

the price difference and a 9950X3D

33:10

is about 750 if you can

33:12

find one in stock, versus the

33:14

9950X, which is about 500. And

33:16

I'm thinking, well, that's half my

33:18

motherboard paid for. So I've gone

33:20

for a 9950X and I've paired

33:22

it with an Aesus ProArt X870E

33:24

motherboard, which seems like an odd

33:26

choice, but there's a couple of

33:28

really good reasons why I went

33:30

for the kind of like high-end

33:33

gaming motherboard on this system. And

33:35

it's because the X870E, you can

33:37

think of the E almost like

33:39

extra, and it gives you an

33:41

extra chipset. The 9950X itself only

33:43

provides 28 PCIE lanes out of

33:45

the box. And 28, as you

33:47

can probably do the maths, is

33:49

a lot less than 128 that

33:51

ThreadRipper Pro was offering me before.

33:53

Yeah, okay. But the XA70E adds

33:55

12 more lanes to that, so

33:58

I've actually got 40 to play

34:00

with. Remind me kind of roughly

34:02

what you figure how many you

34:04

needed? Yeah, well, I should probably,

34:06

you know, remind folks what a

34:08

PCIA lane is even for. So

34:10

your graphics card will typically ask

34:12

for 16 lanes. back to the

34:14

CPU to copy data into and

34:16

out of memory and you know

34:18

process data and that kind of

34:20

thing. An MVME SSD might typically

34:23

ask for four some high-end ones

34:25

want more lanes than that but

34:27

for the most part it's four

34:29

lanes per SSD. So by the

34:31

time you add that up over

34:33

a server let's say you've got

34:35

half a dozen SSDs all wanting

34:37

four lanes each and a graphics

34:39

card or maybe two depending on

34:41

what you're doing you can see

34:43

how 40 lanes you can run

34:45

up against the limit 40 Pretty

34:48

quickly. I can definitely see, especially

34:50

for your use case, when you're

34:52

going to have storage, you're going

34:54

to have a GPU in there,

34:56

you're going to be doing stuff,

34:58

that's definitely going to fill up

35:00

that. So this has led me

35:02

to the conclusion that rather than

35:04

building the one box to rule

35:06

them all, one giant box of

35:08

pain when it dies, why don't

35:11

I build two? Now I'm not

35:13

going to build a second 9950X

35:15

system because I don't need that

35:17

much power because the 9950X is

35:19

a screaming fast chip. So I

35:21

used to use up until a

35:23

few months ago as my main

35:25

gaming desktop the I-7-8700K. That chip

35:27

clocks in at roughly 400% slower

35:29

than the 9950X. Just to give

35:31

you an idea of how fast

35:33

the Zen5 parts are. And so

35:36

I'm just going to I think

35:38

turn that I say. or I

35:40

might use my old I-5-8500 that

35:42

I've still got from my old

35:44

media server. I might use that

35:46

as just a bog standard kind

35:48

of storage box. So I might

35:50

end up with more servers on

35:52

the land, but they're each going

35:54

to have dedicated tasks. And if

35:56

one goes out, then it's not

35:58

like a domino effect that takes

36:01

like everything with it. One's an

36:03

app server, one's a storage server,

36:05

one's a kind of home lab

36:07

muckingabout server. That's kind of where

36:09

I'm at. I could see you

36:11

probably being a little more hands-on

36:13

with the server that's going to

36:15

be used for AI workloads that's

36:17

going to have the GPU. That

36:19

could be touched a little more

36:21

often. The storage box could last

36:23

a long time. Exactly, yeah. It's

36:26

almost like there's a pattern for

36:28

this. It's almost like people have

36:30

figured this out before, but it's

36:32

taken me years to get to

36:34

the same conclusion. Well, it always

36:36

kind of depends what, like if

36:38

you look at it from the

36:40

how can I reduce the amount

36:42

of hardware and power usage and,

36:44

you know, sprawl, then you get

36:46

to the one box solution. But

36:49

then when you think about it

36:51

from a redundancy or reliability or

36:53

simplicity, sometimes it does make sense

36:55

to go multiple boxes. Idol was

36:57

about 220 watts. And as soon

36:59

as I fired up a Windows

37:01

VM, a lot of the cores

37:03

came out of sleep state and

37:05

it went straight up to 400

37:07

watts. So yeah, pretty much just

37:09

sat there doing nothing but having

37:11

VMs, you know, just waiting to

37:14

do stuff. Yeah, sort of 380,

37:16

400 watts, pretty easy. Not to

37:18

say that Zen5 is particularly fantastic,

37:20

it's probably the only criticism I

37:22

can levy against Ten5, to be

37:24

honest, that Idol, the 9950X, draws

37:26

about 30 to 40 watts, which

37:28

it's still reasonable, but it's a

37:30

lot more than an Intel chip

37:32

would draw. However, the Intel chips,

37:34

when you push them, the sky

37:36

is the limit for those things.

37:39

They can pull three, four hundred

37:41

watts, no problem, whereas the Zen5...

37:43

part, the 9950X is kind of

37:45

limited about 180 watts. So, you

37:47

know, it's much more efficient under

37:49

loads, not quite as efficient at

37:51

idle, eh. keep.io/self-hosted, k-e-e-e-b.io/self-hosted, head on

37:53

I-o slash self-hosted. Head on over

37:55

there, sign up for the newsletter

37:57

and get 5% off your next

37:59

order. It's the primary interface to

38:01

my computer. And there's a lot

38:04

of options out there, but I'm

38:06

kind of somebody who likes a

38:08

fancy keyboard now. I wasn't always

38:10

this way. But I've seen the

38:12

light. Kibio, they range from regular

38:14

keyboards and they really specialize in

38:16

those cool split keyboards. And the

38:18

keyboards, they'll come fully build. Ready

38:20

to use if that's how you

38:22

like it, out of the box.

38:24

Or you can get it as

38:27

a kit and assemble it. Do

38:29

so hot swapping. There's a hot

38:31

swapping. Or, you know, if you

38:33

just want to get started, you

38:35

can get one that's fully built.

38:37

The other thing that I think

38:39

you should look at, and you

38:41

could kind of up your game

38:43

a little bit, is their macro

38:45

pads. With those 9 to 16

38:47

keys, you can use them for

38:49

all kinds of things. You can

38:52

put phrases on there and have

38:54

it connected to something like bit

38:56

focus. You could have it control

38:58

OBS. There's probably a way to

39:00

using the Stream. In fact... I've

39:02

got, look at this, I've got

39:04

one right here. I love these

39:06

little, little side thing, you know,

39:08

hook it up over USB, it's

39:10

pretty great. I think people normally

39:12

think of mechanical keyboards as loud

39:14

and clicky and those do exist,

39:17

but they also have the versions

39:19

with silent switches to keep things

39:21

quiet and low-key in the office

39:23

or at home, you know. I

39:25

lack my loud typing. I'll be

39:27

honest with you guys, but not

39:29

everybody does or sometimes the people

39:31

around you don't. They stock lots

39:33

of DIY parts and microcontrollers and

39:35

they're big supporters of open source.

39:37

the 3D print case parts and

39:39

they're also part of the core

39:42

QMK team for the firmware and

39:44

all their boards use the QMK

39:46

firmware. I love that. You deserve

39:48

a great keyboard. Check them out

39:50

and support the show. Go to

39:52

K-E-E-B-I-O-S slash self-hosted. So we mentioned

39:54

Plex Arcade and whether it... died

39:56

or death or not, I'm still

39:58

honestly not sure, but I think

40:00

you found a replacement anyway. Oh,

40:02

have I? I'm really in love.

40:05

And you know, it's funny. Despiration

40:07

truly is the mother of invention.

40:09

So this really all started because

40:11

I guess I'm an old stick

40:13

in the mud now and I

40:15

just love the Super Nintendo and

40:17

some of the Super Nintendo games.

40:19

And I wanted to see if

40:21

I could get a better experience

40:23

on my desktop than on the

40:25

switch emulator. Legs out real bad.

40:27

And I think I could do

40:30

better on my desktop. So I

40:32

got like Z-S-N-E-S or whatever was

40:34

up and going for a couple

40:36

of days. And it was doing

40:38

better. And so I started getting

40:40

my old games, you know, I

40:42

got my old folder filled with

40:44

ROMs. It's got like 300 ROMs

40:46

and this or more. And yeah,

40:48

it's just a collection I've had

40:50

forever. And I start going through

40:52

them, I'm playing them and I'm

40:55

enjoying them and I'm enjoying them

40:57

a lot. And I don't know

40:59

if I don't know if I

41:01

did. And I don't know if

41:03

I did. I did. I don't

41:05

know if I did. I did.

41:07

I did. I did. I'm enjoying

41:09

them and I'm enjoying them and

41:11

I'm enjoying them and I'm enjoying

41:13

them and I'm enjoying them and

41:15

I don't know. I don't know.

41:18

I'm enjoying them. I'm enjoying them.

41:20

I'm enjoying them. I'm enjoying them.

41:22

I'm enjoying them. I'm enjoying But

41:24

when I came back next time

41:26

to use ZSANUS or whatever it

41:28

was, I just got a blank

41:30

screen and I couldn't play the

41:32

games. Nothing would play. And, you

41:34

know, I played around trying to

41:36

get it working again, couldn't get

41:38

it working, and I thought, there's

41:40

got to be a better way.

41:43

There needs to be a way

41:45

that system independent. I don't want

41:47

to have to set this up

41:49

every time. That's where I came

41:51

across ROMs. I mean it scans

41:53

them, it pulls down the metadata,

41:55

it gives you a nice web

41:57

interface, it does collections and favorites.

42:00

And perhaps the best part, which solved

42:02

my problem, it allows you to play

42:04

many of those games directly in the

42:07

browser using emulator JS. Oh, really? Cool.

42:09

Yeah, it's pretty great. It supports Maim,

42:11

Nintendo games, Sony PlayStation games, anything that

42:13

emulator JS supports, which is a lot

42:15

of them. And it also supports some,

42:17

you know, classic PC games. You upload

42:19

the ROMs or you just have it

42:22

you pointed at a folder structure. I

42:24

will say it is very picky about

42:26

the folder structure and the naming of

42:28

the ROM files. You got to do

42:30

it exactly like they say. It's like

42:32

the old days when you know like

42:34

old TV media is really before Plex

42:37

and some of those like you really

42:39

had to be very careful about the

42:41

folder structure of your media files. It's

42:43

very much like that. So you do

42:45

want to read through their docs. I'll

42:47

link to the quick start guide. But

42:49

assuming you get the directory structure and

42:52

the naming right, then of course, it's

42:54

a doc or compose setup, so you

42:56

punch through where you have the files

42:58

at, and you do need to either

43:00

get a few credentials or APIs for

43:02

some of the services that they use

43:05

to scrape the metadata, and if you

43:07

don't, you don't get metadata. So you

43:09

do have to do that part. So

43:11

you're uploading, you know, like for me,

43:13

I had to go create an account

43:15

of like steam grid DB, and. Some

43:17

of the services... I was going to

43:20

ask, is that one of those need-to-know

43:22

question and answer situations? No, it's their

43:24

normal services, like another one's owned by

43:26

Twitch. That's all in their docs. Yeah.

43:28

So if you have a Twitch account,

43:30

you have access to like, I guess,

43:32

grape a library of video game images

43:35

and metadata? Of course. And you just

43:37

need an API key for that. So

43:39

it's not like fan art TV that's

43:41

just open? No. No, no, unfortunately not.

43:43

I was hoping. I have to have

43:45

to have to go do it have

43:47

to go do it. I tried first

43:50

not to put any credentials or API

43:52

keys in there and I got no

43:54

meditate at all. Can you cash that

43:56

stuff locally? Do you know? I assume.

43:58

It's putting it locally, although I don't

44:00

know about on the end client, but

44:03

yeah, on the server. It wants you,

44:05

once you grab it, but it's really

44:07

finicky on the naming, and the manual

44:09

search is slow, but there is a

44:11

manual search process, and then it'll pull

44:13

it all down and save it locally.

44:15

Yeah, that's nice. I have to say,

44:18

very impressed with how well it works.

44:20

Had a few audio issues and Firefox,

44:22

had zero problems in Chrome. And once

44:24

it's up and going, it's. It's delightful.

44:26

I am really really really pleased with

44:28

it. And I'm already collecting some of

44:30

my favorites into like, you know, like

44:33

I have a Mario collection across multiple

44:35

platforms. So it's you go into one

44:37

collection. It's Mario for I don't know

44:39

six or seven different consoles. So it's

44:41

like all the Mario games. It's really

44:43

great. Do the safe games end up

44:45

living on the service side? That is

44:48

client side. You can export a file

44:50

and then bring that with you and

44:52

then when you load the client. in

44:54

the web version you can you can

44:56

load in a save version but if

44:58

you're always playing from the same web

45:01

browser it'll save okay yeah it also

45:03

supports like game genie cheat codes if

45:05

you want to roll that way that

45:07

just wrecks the game for me but

45:09

I love that it has it and

45:11

Alex it's pretty slick because you know

45:13

when you're dealing with these old rhoms

45:16

small and so I have this thing

45:18

running on my own droid which as

45:20

you know is behind my star link

45:22

and I'm pulling up these S-N-E-S and

45:24

Game Boy Games in the web browser

45:26

here at the studio, streaming them over

45:28

the Starlink, and it's perfectly, perfectly fine.

45:31

No. Yeah. Yeah, because it pulls the

45:33

wrong down and then plays it, so,

45:35

you know, the wrongs are only like

45:37

a megabyte. Whatever. So it's like instant,

45:39

basically. Oh, right. Yeah. Can I assure

45:41

you not say for tail scale scale?

45:43

Yes, of course. And I, you know,

45:46

now I'm thinking I'm going to use

45:48

it, I'm going to use it, I'm

45:50

going to use it, I'm going to

45:52

use it, I'm going to use it,

45:54

I'm going to use it, I'm going

45:56

to use it, I'm going to use

45:59

it, I'm going to use it, I'm

46:01

going to use it, I'm going to

46:03

use it, I'm going to use it,

46:05

I'm going to use it, I'm going

46:07

to use it, I'm going to use

46:09

it, I'm going to use it, I'm

46:11

going It doesn't have a couple of

46:14

other emulators built into the web client,

46:16

but it will still organize them. It'll

46:18

still do... the metadata, you can still

46:20

add them to collections. And then when

46:22

you pull it up in the web

46:24

page, it gives you just a real

46:26

quick button for any of these, but

46:29

even the ones that doesn't have a

46:31

built an emulator, it gives you just

46:33

a quick button to download the ROM,

46:35

assuming you have a local player. So

46:37

it's still, even if it doesn't have

46:39

built-in playback support, for those types of

46:41

games. Also. They've been really clever in

46:44

how they support games that have multiple

46:46

files. So some of the PlayStation games,

46:48

some of the main games, they have

46:50

a whole directory of files, and it's

46:52

aware of that. And then lastly, what

46:54

I really like about it is you

46:57

can choose to manage the files on

46:59

your file system, like I brought 300

47:01

ROMs. But then going forward, you tell

47:03

the system, my S&ES games are here,

47:05

my Game Boy games are here, my

47:07

PlayStation games are in this folder. So

47:09

then going forward. You can upload a

47:12

ROM directly from the web interface and

47:14

it will properly categorize and file it

47:16

on the back end into the correct

47:18

directory on your file system. So you

47:20

could use either approach. And it will

47:22

rescan kind of like your plex or

47:24

jellyfin will from time to time on

47:27

a scheduled basis to make sure it's

47:29

got all the files and all the

47:31

metadata for those files. These last two

47:33

segments are why I love self-hosting so

47:35

much. You own the data and also

47:37

you own the outages too like... you

47:39

know if it goes out there's nobody

47:42

to blame but yourself but also like

47:44

this one you know the wrong manager

47:46

you are putting craft and care into

47:48

organizing this collection probably now for the

47:50

last time in your life this you'll

47:52

stick with you forever yeah it's great

47:55

too because I messaged the kids you

47:57

know I'm like hey it's set up

47:59

just go to this URL because they're

48:01

on the tail net they're all on

48:03

the tail net so I just sent

48:05

them a URL in their browser or

48:07

in their message app and they click

48:10

it and they're playing the games so

48:12

cool Kids have never been less productive,

48:14

huh? I know they're so dang lucky

48:16

Yeah, self hosting is just, it's the

48:18

gift that keeps on giving. And I

48:20

know that sounds like, when that's the

48:22

name of the door, it sounds like

48:25

a shill, but how can I shill

48:27

something that's free? And just, it's such

48:29

a great community and I was struck

48:31

by that at Scaled once again, like

48:33

every time I meet people in MeetSpace,

48:35

it's just a reminder of how awesome

48:37

the people on the other end of

48:40

this microphone are listening and projects like

48:42

ROM map. They're just... Fantastic. Clearly they

48:44

were created to scratch the itch of

48:46

a one or two people at the

48:48

beginning and they've blossomed. I mean this

48:50

is on version 3.8 now so it's

48:53

clearly been around for some time. What

48:55

a fantastic project. Yeah and I should

48:57

mention it is a GPL so it's

48:59

open source, it's free and they like

49:01

like Alex said they're pretty active. It's

49:03

mostly a Python app on the back

49:05

end. You know, all you have to

49:08

worry about is a little docor compose

49:10

and it's a pretty simple docor compose.

49:12

It does set up a couple of

49:14

database stuff, but nothing too major there.

49:16

The project looks like it's about to

49:18

celebrate its second birthday. It was the

49:20

V1 was uploaded to get hub on

49:23

March the 27th, 2023. And we have

49:25

a couple of booths to get to.

49:27

We just have a few this week

49:29

for time and Bronze and Wing is

49:31

our first booster with 13, 332. And

49:33

adversaries is technically our baller booster, but

49:35

we read his, we snuck his in

49:38

a little early. They ask, have you

49:40

seen Kabita? For PLEX, it's a Python

49:42

script that adds metadata to your library.

49:44

I'm using it to pull in from

49:46

common sense ratings.org to replace the awful

49:48

PG and PG13 rating scheme. Then I

49:51

restrict my kids' accounts to their appropriate

49:53

age. The PLEX accounts are clean content

49:55

only, it's super nice. Although not happy

49:57

about the killing the Watch Together feature.

49:59

Are you familiar with these? I mean,

50:01

I know there's lots of this kind

50:03

of stuff out there, but this one

50:06

in particular, this code meta that seems

50:08

like it pulls from common sense ratings.

50:10

That could be interesting as a... Yeah,

50:12

it's interesting actually. This is, this comment

50:14

is almost foreshadowing Plexa's announcement today. Yeah.

50:16

They actually, one thing we didn't talk

50:18

about in the news segment was, Plexa

50:21

adding a native integration with common sense

50:23

ratings or common sense media for child

50:25

friendly or parent approved ratings, not just,

50:27

you know, the film. Bureau or Board

50:29

of America approved ratings. But cometa used

50:31

to be called plex meta manager. You

50:33

might know it. Oh yes. You're the

50:36

artist formerly known as. Yep, okay. And

50:38

this thing is, it's really very, very

50:40

powerful. You can use it to spin

50:42

up collections for Halloween and Christmas and

50:44

stuff like that. But it's configured through

50:46

a very complicated series of yamel files.

50:49

And honestly, it's kind of a pig

50:51

to set up. Once you've got it

50:53

set, it's fine. but it's it's just

50:55

not I don't know how you'd make

50:57

it any better to be honest so

50:59

you know Alex STF you but it's

51:01

just one of those projects that I'm

51:04

really glad it exists and I've set

51:06

it up several times and then it

51:08

broke for some reason and I've never

51:10

bothered to fix it because I remember

51:12

how hard it was the first time.

51:14

That was me too. And Halloween rolls

51:16

around and I'm like oh well I

51:19

want my holiday collections and it's pretty

51:21

much an annual tradition at this point.

51:23

So, you know, I agree and my

51:25

really low-key solution is I just broke

51:27

out Halloween and Christmas into their own

51:29

libraries and then I disable those libraries

51:31

until it's time appropriate. But Brunswick's suggestion

51:34

here of restricting the kids' accounts to

51:36

their age rather, because I have a

51:38

separate library for Ella right now. That's

51:40

how I do it too. It's fine,

51:42

like it doesn't take up that much

51:44

disk space, but you know she asked

51:47

for a Wallace and Gromit movie the

51:49

other day and I have those in

51:51

the adult library because I like them.

51:53

Yes. And I was looking at the

51:55

kids library and I'm like, where are

51:57

they? I know I've got them. I

51:59

do that too, like with Back to

52:02

the Future. Yeah, other things. Yeah, and

52:04

now that my kids are getting older.

52:06

they're starting to watch some of the

52:08

same shows we are so the lines

52:10

blurring even further. Yeah. And now it's

52:12

like getting really out of date that

52:14

I have a kids library and a

52:17

parents library. I do have to figure

52:19

it out soon. It's almost like, I

52:21

wish there was a way as part

52:23

of the metadata schema to tag a

52:25

show or a movie to be a

52:27

member of multiple libraries. Yeah. I guess

52:29

you could maybe do it through collection

52:32

like a family collection, but that's not

52:34

really what you want. I like your

52:36

idea better. Like a metal library. Yeah,

52:38

like some kind of info file that

52:40

you could put in the directory with

52:42

the files or something that plex will

52:45

or jellifin will pick up and say,

52:47

you know, if you find a library

52:49

that matches this name, be a member

52:51

of this one and this one. Yeah,

52:53

I like that. There you go. I've

52:55

just solved it. Three great features we've

52:57

given them this week. They also added,

53:00

I just swapped from Blue Iris to

53:02

Frigate to Frigate. Wow, what an improvement.

53:04

The AI detections are amazing and you

53:06

can run it all on the IGU.

53:08

Maybe a frigate April challenge? Yeah, it's

53:10

about time. My blue Irish box has

53:12

been chugging away for about, well when

53:15

did I buy this house? 2019? It's

53:17

been chugging away, you know, quite happily

53:19

in the corner all that time. Maybe,

53:21

maybe it's time. I've got to find

53:23

new cameras. You know, because I've been

53:25

using these old modified wisest forever and

53:27

they're not great for this kind of

53:30

thing. But... I don't have either net

53:32

and I do have USB micro where

53:34

all these wisecams are. So I need

53:36

something that would work great with Frigate

53:38

that could do Wi-Fi and maybe I

53:40

could power over USB. And if I

53:43

could find something like that and I

53:45

could replace those wise, that'd be so

53:47

great. Right in and let us know.

53:49

I would love to know what you're

53:51

doing for sort of AI person detection.

53:53

There's Frigate, there's another one that's name

53:55

escapes me. but a lot of these

53:58

things are based around that coral TPU

54:00

right which at this point I recall

54:02

was out of stock during COVID so

54:04

surely it's There's like a coral two

54:06

or something available now, or maybe we

54:08

can run it through an LLLM or

54:10

something for better detection. Right. Where's the

54:13

LLL-powered one? Where's that? Yeah, let us

54:15

know what you'll do. And I want

54:17

to take my CCTV to the next

54:19

level. Yeah, there you go. W.H. 2250

54:21

is with you on Micro Center. It

54:23

says I lived five minutes from one

54:25

when I was in grad school and

54:28

broke. Now that I can do more

54:30

than walk around and dream, the closest

54:32

is 5.5 hours away! But it's worth

54:34

the overnight trip. Yeah, well, you heard

54:36

earlier in the show, I found an

54:38

excuse to go back. Yeah, that's a

54:41

good trick. That's a good way to

54:43

do it. Last but not least, I

54:45

pulled this one up, the hotel guy

54:47

with a thousand sets. He just wanted

54:49

to chime in on Alarmo. So did

54:51

listener, Jeff, he says, you can pick

54:53

up a Z-wave. and I used this

54:56

blueprint which he linked me to. So

54:58

I'm looking into that. That's two plus

55:00

ones I've gotten for the ring keypad

55:02

of all things. Who would have known?

55:04

I never would have looked at that.

55:06

So thank you everybody. I am thinking

55:08

I'm going to start slowly but surely

55:11

building this alarm system. I don't really

55:13

have like a master plan at the

55:15

moment. But with NFC tags and maybe

55:17

a keypad, I think I could have

55:19

everything I need to arm and disarm

55:21

it and I've. would be really great

55:23

would be to work in with a

55:26

camera system. That would be great. Well,

55:28

you sure have a perfect spot to

55:30

do it with the RV. Like, look,

55:32

it shouldn't cost you an arm the

55:34

leg to arm that space. Right. How

55:36

crazy do I want to go? Always,

55:39

super crazy. Now last episode we talked

55:41

a little bit about notifications and how

55:43

people breakthrough do not disturb and that

55:45

kind of thing and we mentioned pushover

55:47

thanks to some feedback that we got

55:49

from a listener but we also got

55:51

a bunch more feedback about the feedback

55:54

that we didn't Notify a self-hosted alternative

55:56

to pushover. So consider Notify mentioned duly

55:58

on the show. This is a self-hosted

56:00

way of hosting a notification library on

56:02

your own infrastructure and it will support

56:04

all of the major endpoints. I think

56:06

it's an apprise type situation where it

56:09

will interface with a bunch of other

56:11

APIs and endpoints to send notifications natively

56:13

as well as through other services. It's

56:15

something I do think about about once

56:17

a year and then I kind of

56:19

end up on this sort of conclusion

56:21

that I would probably still end up

56:24

needing the play API because some apps

56:26

wouldn't support this. So any in the

56:28

real-world experience with how that works or

56:30

maybe there's solutions for that I would

56:32

also love to know. And also how

56:34

truly self-hosted is it? Is there some

56:37

kind of forwarding server in the cloud

56:39

because there is a paid notified pro

56:41

tier where you can pay... I think

56:43

about five bucks a month if you

56:45

want to, to support the development, but

56:47

does that give you any kind of

56:49

a, is there any kind of a

56:52

hosted version? Like how truly self-hosted and

56:54

self-contained is this thing? Yeah. We'll do

56:56

some research for an upcoming episode as

56:58

well, of course, but if you're already

57:00

using it, write in and let us

57:02

know. Yeah, definitely. And thank you everybody

57:04

who boosted into the show. We'll have

57:07

links to Fountain and Strike, which are

57:09

easy ways to get Sats and Boost

57:11

and support the show directly, and support

57:13

the show directly, that was episode and

57:15

support the show directly. That was episode

57:17

and support the show directly. and all

57:19

of the booths that didn't make it

57:22

in the show and more will be

57:24

in the boost barn linked in the

57:26

show notes you mentioned it but just

57:28

a quick formal shout out to everybody

57:30

who came and said hi at the

57:32

scale meetup that was great oh yeah

57:35

we I think we upset the Mexican

57:37

restaurant that we went to a bit

57:39

yeah they were champs so we didn't

57:41

know in the room super grumpy when

57:43

we got there yes yes yes they

57:45

were well we here's the thing is

57:47

the thing is people we had about

57:50

35 and so we told them to

57:52

expect about forty forty five ish and

57:54

so they set aside one of their

57:56

like little ballrooms for us and then

57:58

over a hundred people shut up. So

58:00

they scrambled and quickly set up another

58:02

ballroom on the other side of the

58:05

bar so we had a bar between

58:07

us which was kind of nice but

58:09

it did mean people got separated out

58:11

and some of them spilled out into

58:13

the general dining area too. They

58:16

did eventually recover and said okay

58:18

next year let's plan for a bigger

58:20

one and they have a whole like

58:22

plan of attack and so they're they're

58:24

willing to work with us again so

58:26

we didn't piss them off too much

58:28

like this. Yeah, she did. That's always nice.

58:30

The wife is great at smoothing those things

58:32

over. And then if she can't do it,

58:35

you throw a Brent at them. Yes, that's,

58:37

yeah. Between the two of them, usually gets

58:39

smoothed over. But it was great. It's always

58:41

really nice. People come up and say

58:43

they're members too. I always like to

58:45

give them a good handshake. So thank you

58:48

to everybody. Even if we didn't get

58:50

to see you, if you support the show with a

58:52

if you support the show with a membership

58:54

with a, if you support the show with

58:56

a membership. Details and sign up at

58:58

self-hosted dot show slash S-R-E. And if you

59:00

do want to come to a future

59:03

meetup, you can go to

59:05

meetup.com/Jupiter Broadcasting. Our spring season

59:07

isn't quite as crazy as last

59:09

year, but Linux Fest Northwests around the

59:11

corner, right? Yeah, yeah, there's a few

59:13

things coming up, you know, and then

59:16

there'll be Texas Linux Fest later in

59:18

the year if we can make that

59:20

work, so definitely... And all things open,

59:22

I hope you come into that. Yeah,

59:24

well if I can, that'd be another

59:26

one I'd love to come to. So

59:28

at least a few that we try

59:30

to get some meetups around. So meetup.com/Jupiter

59:32

broadcasting could be worth watching.

59:34

I think there's a full road trip

59:36

in your item ready. Oh my gosh, I'd

59:39

love that. Because you've got Texas Linux

59:41

Fest, I think it's six and

59:43

seven of October, and then you've

59:45

got all things open about a week later

59:47

in Rome. Okay. Any time to get

59:49

from Austin to rally, I'm just saying?

59:51

As always you can go to self-hosted.show

59:54

slash contact to get in touch with

59:56

us or self-hosted at Jupiter broadcasting.com or

59:58

of course boosting us. well. And you can

1:00:00

can find me on the Web,

1:00:02

chrislas.com, ChrisLAS pretty much on all the different all

1:00:04

the different places. me You can

1:00:06

find me there. that The show is

1:00:09

show on show on Twitter. to call it X.

1:00:11

to call it X, I've and kind

1:00:13

I've kind of dropped it these

1:00:15

days. I'm on on if you want to If

1:00:17

you want to find me over

1:00:19

there, Tech .social. Thanks for

1:00:21

listening everybody. That was self was .show

1:00:23

slash dot show slash, slash, 145.