This micro-series explains how to turn the Lenovo ThinkCentre M90t Gen 6 into a smart workstation that consumes only 5 Watts when idle but reaches top Cinebench scores while staying almost imperceptibly silent. In the first post, I showed how to silence the machine by replacing and adding to Lenovo’s CPU cooler. In this second post, I’m listing the exact configuration that achieves the lofty goal of combining minimal idle power consumption with top Cinebench scores.

This micro-series explains how to turn the Lenovo ThinkCentre M90t Gen 6 into a smart workstation that consumes only 5 Watts when idle but reaches top Cinebench scores while staying almost imperceptibly silent. In this first post, I’m showing how to silence the machine by replacing and adding to Lenovo’s CPU cooler. In a second post, I’m listing the exact configuration that achieves the lofty goal of combining minimal idle power consumption with top Cinebench scores.

After having published in WordPress for almost 20 years, it was time for a change. This site is now rendered by Hugo, a static website generator built for Markdown content hosted in a Git repository. The migration from WordPress (HTML) to Hugo (Markdown) was far from trivial. Since I couldn’t find any tool for the job, I developed my own set of migration scripts that fully automate the migration process. You can find them on GitHub along with extensive documentation.

This article shows how to get detailed information about your Mitsubishi heat pump’s status and operations into Home Assistant. Prerequisites You’ll need a Mitsubishi Modbus interface, either the older A1M (serial Modbus/RTU via RS-485 only) or the newer A1M+ (Modbus/TCP via Ethernet in addition to Modbux/RTU). I’m using the Ethernet variant.

This article describes how to set up authenticated access to a (private or public) GitHub repository from Linux. Create & Set Up an SSH Key SSH Key Creation Create a new SSH key:

This article shows a simple solution to a weird networking problem that plagued me for hours: IPv6 packets were sometimes lost; IPv4 was not affected. Problem: IPv6 Ping Timeouts and Packet Losses Symptom: Teams Issues I noticed the problem first when there were intermittent connectivity issues in Teams during a meeting.

This article shows a simple solution to a problem that doesn’t seem to be adequately documented: VS Code UI lags, freezes, and delays caused by the GitHub Copilot extension. Problem: VS Code UI Becoming Slow Having worked on a Python project for a while, I noticed that VS Code’s UI was frequently freezing for seconds at a time. This was happening in various places of the UI: the editor itself but also in the GitHub Copilot Chat window. Copilot also seemed to be taking more and more time getting ready to answer, and the extension-host process would fully saturate one CPU core for long periods of time.

Bitmaps tend to have noise and imperfections, especially if they’ve been generated by AI. Vector graphics, on the other hand, trace the outline of elements with elegant curves. Converting from the real world of bitmaps to the ideal world of vectors requires ignoring the actual pixels and seeing an idealized structure instead. That is not something automated conversion tools can do today, at least not those I’ve tested. Instead of converting a PNG to SVG you should, therefore, recreate it in a vector graphics image editor. This article shows how to do that in the free Inkscape.

This article describes how to perform a factory reset on the Zehnder ComfoClime 24/36 Arduino board. I find it necessary to document the steps as the description in the installation manual is incorrect.

While most of this content is still relevant, I’d recommend using my Smart Cover Automation integration as a starting point instead of the template mentioned in the article. My integration is much more advanced in many ways. It comes with a document that explains how to use it as a template.

This article explains how to set up a Samba file server as an Active Directory domain member in a Docker container. This newer configuration differs from my earlier setup in one essential point: it uses POSIX instead of Windows ACLs, simplifying the administration and making it possible to modify files via other protocols than SMB. This post is part of my series on home automation, networking & self-hosting that shows how to install, configure, and run a home server with dockerized or virtualized services.

This article explains how to set up Filestash in a Docker container as a web interface for browser-based access to a Samba or SMB file server. This newer configuration improves on my earlier Filebrowser setup in one essential point: the SMB storage is accessed as the authenticating user, i.e., the user authentication is passed through to the backend storage. This means that each user sees exactly the directories and files they have access to. When a new file is created through Filestash, it’s stored with the proper permissions as if it had been created it via SMB.

Tabby stores its settings in configuration files that reside in the Windows user profile. This article explains how to move the configuration files to any directory of your choice. The Tabby Config File(s) Tabby stores its configuration in the file %APPDATA%\tabby\config.yaml. It also keeps a backup in the file config.yaml.backup in the same directory.

KNX is a core Home Assistant integration that only recently reached the silver quality rating. This means that it is well-maintained and stable. Just what you’re looking for when you’re thinking about extending your home’s functionality.

A long time ago, when I was working as an IT consultant, a younger colleague asked me if I knew of a book that described how to set up an Active Directory domain so that it’d be ready for production and the setup incorporate all the best practices. I didn’t have an answer for him then. Looking back at what I’ve done in the past 30+ months I realized that I’ve compiled what he asked for - just not on the topic of Active Directory but on building a self-hosted home server that provides all services locally without any reliance on cloud services.

LED lights that still glow faintly when switched off seem to be a fairly common problem. This article describes possible solutions including the unlikely fix I found for our Vibia Duo ceiling lights.

This is an attempt to bring some clarity into the various APIs, apps, interfaces, and Home Assistant integration options that are available for the Zehnder ComfoAir Q ventilation and ComfoClime cooling units.

This is a getting started guide with information I wish I’d had when I made my first forays into creating custom dashboards for Home Assistant. Preparation SMB Access to Home Assistant Configuration Set up SMB access to the Home Assistant file system by navigating to Add-on Store and installing the Samba share add-on (docs). Configure it as follows:

I recently replaced my MDT IP router SCN-IP100.03 with its Enertex counterpart KNX IP Secure Router. Why? Download speed over secure tunneling connections! Updating the firmware of one of my room controllers took 95 minutes with the MDT router. The same process is finished in 25 minutes with the Enertex router.

This article shows how to synchronize your Frigate NVR recordings to offsite cloud storage for backup and safekeeping in case your onsite NVR is stolen by a burglar. Toolkit: Backblaze + rclone + Systemd Service Script I’m using Backblaze as cloud storage because it’s fast and inexpensive. It also offers temporary immutability, preventing burglars who gained access to the source machine from deleting uploaded recordings for a configurable length of time. The backup job is left to rclone, a modern file copy and sync tool for a multitude a cloud storage providers. A custom systemd service controls the backup process via a little script. To ensure low upload latency, it monitors Frigate’s recordings directory for changes and invokes rclone immediately when a new file has been created.

This article explains how to install and configure the Frigate NVR software on a Raspberry Pi 5 with a Coral Edge TPU. Overview What is Frigate? Frigate is a free network video recorder (NVR) software. It collects your surveillance camera video streams (typically via RTSP), performs object detection and stores the resulting clips.

Elasticsearch comes with multiple query languages, only one of which makes sense to use for time-series data as ours: ES|QL. It’s obviously modeled after Splunk’s SPL, is easy to read, understand, and write - helped by fantastic autocomplete in the web UI. This article explains some important ES|QL concepts by showing you how to create a chart that visualizes your home’s energy consumption.

If you’re controlling a group of lights from multiple different types of switches, you’ll run into the problem that a switch needs to be pressed twice - the first tap doesn’t have any effect. This happens because state is not maintained properly; the switches don’t “know” whether the lights are currently turned on or off. This article shows how to fix that.

This article describes how to send Home Assistant metrics to Elasticsearch for long-term storage and visualization. It focuses on the integration between the two products and on how to configure Elasticsearch. This post is part of my series on home automation, networking & self-hosting that shows how to install, configure, and run a home server & network with dockerized or virtualized services.