• 23 Posts
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Joined 4 months ago
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Cake day: May 14th, 2026

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  • As a follow up, I’m curious to hear from lurkers here or those who are thinking about self-hosting (but haven’t started yet); which approach appeals (using the “media at home” example in OP) and why? We’re all pretty much damned souls here but it might be interesting to hear from someone just starting out.


  • I can dig it…but surely the simple option is to have the PC wake up on power restoration, right?

    Set the BIOS to “restore last state after AC loss” and let the UPS do its basic job. If power returns before the battery dies, the PC never shuts down. If the battery does die, the PC loses AC while running, then powers back up when AC returns.

    Does that not achieve the same outcome?

    I get the idea of Pi + NUT + WoL setup (especially if you want a clean shutdown). It just seems…a lot for a single machine.

    (He said, conspicuously hiding the shopping cart of solar panels and marine batteries)


  • I’m not sure if there’s a fundamental misunderstanding but I felt a need to clarify that NUT works with a UPS. It isn’t either or. Whether you’ve got a homelab or a single desktop PC, you need some piece of software which can see when the UPS goes “Oh shit, power is gone” and instruct the machine(s) to shut down cleanly. NUT is that software.

    Could be. In context, the respondent was discussing the use of a raspberry pi - between their UPS and their single Lenovo minipc - as a stand-alone home device. Why? Don’t know.

    To my understanding, the sequence is (or should be)

    Mains fails -> UPS supplies battery power -> UPS reports its battery state over USB -> software on the PC shuts the OS down.

    Using a Pi as a dedicated NUT server makes sense when several machines need the same UPS…for one PC, it seems like an extra machine in the chain (for the sake of an extra machine in the chain).

    That’s sort of what I meant: things get overbuilt. Maybe for fun.







  • My main bedroom pc is a stick pc (Intel compute stick; the M5 version). I can run Fallout 3 on it (though it currently runs Linux mint and isn’t set up for gaming)… I’m pretty sure it can handle JF.

    I also had a gen 1 or 2 I donated recently - that struggled with basic, lightweight Debian 11 / YouTube playback; hard to say how it would handle JF.

    The thing is tho, the compute sticks are x86…and outside of them or rolling your own (via a Pi zero 2W and HDMI case) most of the ready made compute sticks are 1) android 2) of dubious provenance (rebranded Xiaomi etc).

    Compute sticks sit in an awkward middle ground - too much grunt for pure media streamer, not quite enough for serious computing. Though I suspect the m5 could actually act as a JF server (assuming no transcode)

    But it depends. Which one were you thinking of getting? And are we talking client or server?

    PS: my raspberry pi 4, 4B was my main JF server for several years. No transcoding… but quite capable of serving up to 6 or more simultaneous streams (720/1080. 4K it could barely do 1). Something older (like an old Wyse thinclient?) should be able to do same. Last I looked they went for around $40 USD





  • I work in the medical field. All my it IT skills are self taught, starting way back with coding in BASIC in C64 and taking apart RC cars.

    With enough interest and persistence, you can learn what you need to. IT skills are pretty democratic.

    Self hosting stuff is a great gateway drug because it introduces…complications. The path between A and B always seems to take detours, which is where the learning happens.

    It’s interesting reading people talking about problem X, with everyone confidently advocating solution Y. I often find myself thinking “well, that’s not been my experience. I would just do A”.

    It’s good to see how other people solve similar problems. Eventually you’ll arrive at that old homily “the way you do one thing is the way you do everything”, which is useful too.

    Ultimately, just… start anywhere. Soon enough something will piss you off enough that you roll up your sleeves and work the problem - don’t look, but you’ll be learning those IT skills IRL without having to crack a textbook.