4 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

why not run docker on proxmox? Make a vm to run docker on, then you can make other vms later if you need them.

 

What hardware are you running? what drives? doing root on zfs on promox is super easy.

 

 

But what are you expecting the VM benefit provides? To me it appears this can only Hinder plex's performance by only allowing it to access X cores at a time while more may be available overall.

I have been a fan of Docker for a while now and run my current home server using Docker compose. At the moment I run Plex, qBittorent, an IRC client, Calibre-Web, and a few miscellaneous services. I have a new "server" arriving soon and being I have already build a home server with Docker (I make videos as well), I thought I might explore other options for home servers. That is when I landed on Proxmox, a free and open alternative to ESXI

The new server will likely run with RAID1-Z but other than that there are no major requirements, I mention this because it may add extra challenges to Proxmox.

Proxmox would allow me to create VMs which might be a handy feature but I want to determine if that is actually useful. I had considered moving Plex to a dedicated VM but the more I think about it, im not sure this offers any benefit, and in fact may be more of a hindrance. 

Being you can limit resources on Docker I am thinking of allowing plex to access more resources when required would be best. https://docs.docker.com/config/containers/resource_constraints/

So to be honest, I had mostly considered changing my setup simply to learn another system and create another video,  but the more I learn the more I think Docker was the best choice from the start. Can anyone here make an argument for switching to Proxmox? 

Pros of Docker:
 - Simple to update applications

 - Ability to migrate script

 - Compose scripts are easily manageable / edited

 - Resource sharing

Pros of Proxmox:
 - Web-based portal

 - KVM emulation (if this is actually a pro)

 - ???

On 3/6/2019 at 11:54 PM, SydneySideSteveSomewheres said:

@TechSquidTV most televisions have a function where you can set a countdown timer to shut off, navigate to that, mine is quite long at 120 minutes. Would that be long enough?

Not quite though I do that now. I was really hoping to leave the sound on while turning off the visuals or lowering the backlight a lot. That way I can listen to the TV without being woken up by the lights. I know its an odd and difficult ask. 

For the last year I have been without a TV in my room in my new apartment. Partially because there is honestly nowhere to put it. The other issue, the flashing of dark to bright scenes keeps me awake. I always lower the TV brightness and backlight as low as it can go in the bedroom. For some TVs that works enough. Not so much for others. For a while I used my PC (no longer in my room) which worked great as when I wanted to sleep I turned off the monitor, allowing the sound to continue. Though of course I did have to get up to turn off the monitor.

So, is anyone aware of a TV that maybe allows the display to be turned off or has the ability to get very dark? Being able to easily switch between dark and bright would also be great.

Owner of a pixel 3 here, it really is an INCREDIBLE camera. It would help to know what brands are more accessible to you. I assume iPhone is likely available and may be your easiest shot at a good camera. It's also likely you can buy a Samsung phone. If you can get a recent edition the camera will be solid.

Direct Link To Video

BenQ ScreenBar Plus

Product Link: https://www.benq.com/en-us/lighting/screenbar-lamp/screenbar-plus.html

Price: ~$130-$150

Disclaimer: This product was sent to me by BenQ in exchange for my honest opinion in the form of the review above.

Key Features:

• Screen mounted LED bar lamp
• Brightness dimmable | 2700K : 300lm ; 6500K : 320lm
• Color temperature adjustable | 2700~6500K ‎
• High-quality control dial with an ambient light sensor.

Pros:

• Increased desk real estate by removing lamp base
• Convenient location and tilt direction.
• Impressive mounting hardware
• While the control dial could be seen as a con, but, with the ambient sensor providing an important job and the alternative being a software controller, I think a high-quality control dial is preferred.

Cons:

• Not cheap
• Incompatible with screen mounted webcam
• Unable to chain multiple lights to one control dial
• If your desktop is a considerable distance from your monitor this could be an issue (4+ feet)

Hey everyone!

My name is Kyle, and this is technically my first official tech review.

This is the BenQ ScreenBar Plus e-Reading Task Lamp. What a mouthful. The screen bar is an aluminum (alloy) tube with a high-quality bi-color LED strip inside that can be controlled with the included control dial. The control dial enables adjustment of the brightness and color temperature of the lamp as well as automatically set brightness via the integrated ambient light sensor.

The bar lamp attaches to your screen with an interesting weighted and spring loaded screen mount that clamps to the screen tightly. As opposed to a generic webcam which generally just uses some hinged plastic. I suspect this was done to support the more hefty lamp but it really is fairly light and with this grip it surely isn't going anywhere. An added benefit is this should accommodate most screens due to the "clamping" pressure. It even affixes to my mounted monitors, even though the arm mount is in the way.

The light is focused out of the tube into an area on your desk but it's careful to ensure not to splash any light onto your screen inducing glare which is the real hidden key feature. The light can also be adjusted to light further away or closer to the screen to some degree.

This is a bit of a niche product, not something you'd think to really search for on Amazon because it's a fairly unique product. I feel as though the concept of "book lights" or lights that lit your laptop keyboard were a concept some years ago that died off and as far as desk lighting has gone it has always required some kind of overhead lamp. This truly feels like the best solution to this problem.

It would have been interesting to have the option to control the lamp via software to produce an f.lux like effect, color shifting over the day.

The only major drawback for me is the price. At $130 it is actually fairly competitive in the market but it can seem like quite a chunk of change to many people understandably. I think what just justify the $100+ range is it's IEEE compliance ensuring there is No flicker, which could have easily killed this product for me if it wasn't perfectly flicker-free. As well as the high quality and accuracy color temperature settings. If this isn't quite in your budget but you are looking for a lighting solution I would keep an eye on this product or even recommend its older non-plus variant which lacks the control dial. With no direct comparison to really position this against it's hard to say for sure how it's priced but compared to what does exist out there I believe $130 is a fair price.

Thanks everyone, please let me know what you thought of the review. I'd love to get into producing more content like this in the future and would love your feedback.

 

Bought an Uplift desk and very happy with it

I am moving into a new apartment next week and I want a motorized standing desk help me decide between ALL of these insane choices. Here's the requirements.

Max budget: $1500

Looking for maximum work area, either the longest table possible or a large L-shaped desk (and I have a feeling L shaped desks will be more sturdy at height)

Stability. Spending this much money, I do not want to hate it and have it wobble at height.

Weight capacity. It's going to be a large desk with a full sided tower and two monitors on it, mic arm.. equipment. Should hold as much weight as possible.

Speed is probably not at all an issue. I can't imagine it being so slow it's actually a problem.

What I have considered:

Right now I'm thinking the VertDesk 3 L shaped desk is the best bang for buck and would likely hit all the marks. It has cross braces and the L shape itself should keep it sturdy and it holds 375Lbs. One thing though is the top it comes with has a sharp corner meaning you can't really use that corner area for much since you wouldn't really want to sit there. Makes me feel like there's a lot of wasted space. I'd love to see an L desk setup like this from someone else.
https://www.btod.com/btod-vertdesk-v3-l

Vivistand Quattro.This is a $1500 table.... It's a decent size and it has four motorized legs that I assume are super stable. This is an option as well but if the Vertdesk is good, it might be a better deal. If this is a much higher quality desk, I may get this and put a regular desk to the side of it.
https://vivistand.com/product/vivistand-quattro

What would you run NextCloud on? I am considering using unRaid's RAID solution and running the NextCloud Docker container. Or potentially setting up ZFS system with Docker as well.

I am planning on getting an expansion card for the Lenovo box (not a raid card). I could throw in I think up to 32 GB of RAM if I had to. Then I could run FreeNAS or something. Though that kind seems redundant as I plan to run NextCloud. I'm not familiar with the different ZFS options. Im sure manual raid setups are possible but I'd rather avoid it for now. I'm considering UnRAID just for the RAID function though.

I already have these two boxes so I am looking to use them. The Lenovo only has an i3, so I figured that's fine for a dedicated NAS. 

The smaller box has an i7 though, capable of running pretty much all of my apps. But it doesn't have the size for all the drives.

That said, I would love to switch to a Rack server but they are too big and loud for my apartment. These two PCs ill be able to hide inside of the TV entertainment center. There IS a closet I could get a rack into maybe but unfortunately no power

Hello everyone! I could use your help. I have some hardware and some dreams. Help me figure out the best way to do this.

I have two older units, one I bought off New Egg some time ago, one I bought of ebay, again some time ago. 

Here is what I need:

STORAGE SERVER

Lenovo ThinkServer TS140 Tower Server System Intel Core i3-4130 3.4 GHz 4GB 70A4000HUX

Link: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16859106529

This is the unit I plan to add hard drive caddies to and a whole bunch of 10TB drives. What is in question is how exactly I will RAID these drives and by what means they will be accessed by the application server which runs Plex and NextCloud. The plan is ideal to have 40TB of storage (four 10TB drives) with 2 drives of redundancy. That totals 6 drives and 60TB total. I do not want to use ZFS because I can not even fit that much RAM in the server let alone afford it. I considered UnRAID simply for their Raid solution. The ability to potentially easily expand in the future is appealing (though this server probably can't handle or fit it).

APPLICATION SERVER

HP COMPAQ ELITE SFF 8200 CORE i7-2600 @3.40GHz, 8GB, 500GB HDD, DMS-59 T6-F1

This slimline HP I bought off Ebay I thought would be perfect for the application server. This is most likely going to run straight Ubuntu with Docker containers for NextCloud, Plex, and Home Assistant.

The Questions:

1. What is the best RAID system for the STORAGE server given the requirements.

2. How am I going to attach this storage to the application server in the fastest possible way? Over gigabit LAN via a SAMBA share?

That is a hell of a deal. The bezels look decent as well. I would be willing to pay a little more for less bezel.

Right now I have 2 Samsung - UE590 Series 28" LED 4K UHD Monitors. They were on sale for Black Friday, and will maybe be repurposed into TVs. They don't have a standard vesa mount and their large size while much appreciated, cannot easily be mounted together as I haven't been able to find many dual 28in stands. But even if I could these monitors, have 75mm vesa mounts at the very top of the monitors.. weird. And I am used to it now, but I remember how disappointed I felt when I left my 1080p IPS monitor for these, how the TN panel just didn't look right, but I am pretty used to it now, but I don't know how much it could be affected my editing work.

What I do:

Edit 4K video content

non-competitively.

What I want:

Minimal bezels for dual mount

Large size

I don't know if I can go back to 1080p, probably have to stay with 4K or at minimum 2K

Budget:

I'd rather not spend more than $600 each but let me see what you show me.

Im reading that the 9th gen "ice-lake" series could come out later this year or early next year with a hardware fix on a 10nm architecture. 

23 minutes ago, TechyBen said:

Is lighting one of the more important things? Or will there be no cameras/live streams?

Lighting will be incredibly important. I have a hoard of Philips hue bulbs which allow me to change color temp for daylight. Those will be going in the ceiling throughout the apartment. For video specifically, I have some large softboxes but I have one new LED panel I have yet to try out and I hope I could maybe eliminate the large softboxes.

I have to (get to) make an apartment tour video, studio build video, ect. So the goal is to "Wow". I'd love to aim for minimalism and miss. I say, miss, because I simply require too much equipment. a Bluetooth 60% keyboard isn't functional for me. 

25 minutes ago, RedAV8R said:

Have we actually seen anything of people affected by Meltdown/Spectre? Just asking, I haven't really looked either. Even if 9th Gen is bugged to, I still don't see Intel really losing out on much. What IS going to happen though I could see low sales, especially in the server market because why upgrade if the bug still present. From a sales point, 9th gen needs to fixed, but not because their reputation is tarnished.

I work in web stuff. There have been significant drops to performance for many CPU intensive tasks, often related to database procedures. This seems to be one area it's much more noticeable.

How much has this affected your decision to upgrade? I really feel like we are on the cusp of another generation of CPUs and GPUs but I mayyyy be forced to upgrade in the next six months. What's everyone's plans? 

I went to do that myself. ... and I clearly got the measurements wrong -.- Stuff doesnt add up. Pretty upset about it. I took the train an hour and a half each way to get to my apartment for the day (before moving in) to get measurements and pictures specifically. And I ended up cutting my hand and I think that distracted me because my measurements dont add up and I have far less pictures than I meant to take -.-

But im mostly looking for the best way to turn this room into a studio and battle station.

The one wall for the battle station probably isn't too difficult to figure out. Sure does leave a lot of extra room in there though.

Not the world's most perfect panorama but here it is: https://photos.app.goo.gl/sv0npFedsqgrBCvr1

Let's put a fake budget of $3,000 on it. I don't think we'll need anywhere near that much to make this studio awesome. I also need to build a new rig.. at some point... Won't be much of a battle station with my ugly PC as it is right now. We'll touch on that later. 

The main wall to the right of the image will have the motorized standing desk and acoustic foam on the wall. Other than that it's open to design.

Sorry, elaborate? 

So in this future setup my main PC will be plugged into both monitors via Display port. That leaves the two monitors with 1 HDMI port each left. I need a KVM for a MacBookPro with all USB-C to two HDMI's. The monitors support 4K if pushing that resolution is possible or compatible. 

13 minutes ago, manikyath said:

so.. do you want a KVM, or a dongle with 2 HDMI ports for your macbook?

Well, I would need to use my mains PC's keyboard and mouse. and ideally easily switch the display. So I believe a KVM type solution is the best I'm aware of.

I have two 4K monitors with Display port and HDMI connections, and a Macbook Pro with USB-C.

I have to use the Mac for work while my main rig is on Windows. I don't want to have any input lag on my main machine, and I'd like to keep my mail machine using the Display Port inputs.

I would like a way to KVM the mac into the two HDMI ports. Any ideas?

Lenovo ThinkServer TS140 Tower Server System4
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16859106529

I bought this back some time ago and have been using it as my home media PC and I love it. One of the reasons I bought it was for RAID 0/1/1+0/5 support, without ever really noticing there is only two drive bays. I believe I am going to be using a ZFS file system anyway, so I am no longer so concerned about this, but actually, lets talk about the best system here. I have another separate system with an i7 in it that I intend to run several Docker containers, the most important of which being Plex Media Server.

Requirements (Usable Storage):

• Host OS: 500GB (likely it's own drive).
• Plex Media Content: 8TB (minimum, may need to expand)
• Video Archive (editing work): 4TB
• Working Video Files: 500GB SSD - No Backup Needed
• Personal Backup: 1TB

Total usable storage minimum requirement: ~14TB

If I am correct I will need double this to ensure full data protection, meaning I need a total of 24TB. Does that sound right?

I currently already have

• 1x Western Digital 3TB
• 1x Western Digital 8TB

That 3TB is a weird one, no idea why I bought it. That might be used in the i7 machine and ignored for this build.
If I use ZFS I believe that means I will be forced to install that 32GB of RAM which is the MAX this system can take, leaving me with a maximum of 16TB total. Which really should be enough.

I will likely need to add some kind of SATA expansion card and a larger power supply. Ideally, I'd like to move this into some kind of home rack.

How difficult would it be to move this standard (ATX?) motherboard into some kind of rack mountable case? What recommendations do you have?

New to utilizing smart home tech and Google Assistant but I can code and make web apps. So what I want to know, is if I make my own wifi enabled lights, can I somehow tie them in with my Hue lighting system. I know I can not directly add them to the hue app but maybe via a 3rd party app?