I have a lot of project ideas that I haven’t prioritized enough to spend money on. So, here are some thing I’d like to experiment with. Also, if you have any leads on where I can find some of these products, it would help too.

Computer Hardware⌗

I do love computers! Here are some things I’m particularly interested in!

  • Mikrotik pretty much anything, maybe a CRS500 series switch to go with the 25G cards I’m slowly accumulating
  • Any 10G or 25G Ethernet cards (Linux-supported) to go with a high bandwidth Ceph setup
  • Any other unique high bandwidth communications (Linux-supported), such as Infiniband, for fun
  • Rack-mount small servers (especially 2-post rack style, I like small efficient things)
  • Asrock Rack PAUL IPMI Card - these are basically impossible to find!
  • Obscure but still usable storage hardware (PCIe cache cards, etc.)
  • Mid 90s UNIX workstations (they are always beautiful)
  • If you have any other unique hardware you think might fit with the channel, feel free to email or message on Discord!

Power⌗

Power is important for a functoinal home lab!

  • Rack mount PDU, trying to find a smart one that I can connect to Home Assistant, preferably with power monitoring so I can do testing of power consumption of my clusters
  • UPS backup with Ethernet
  • Solar power to save money on running servers
  • Batteries to build a DC-powered server / networking rack

Communications⌗

  • Any somewhat modern fiber communications equipment to play with
  • Software Defined Radio Projects - 4G/5G using srsRAN?
  • WiFi hardware - I’d like to play with Infrastructure as Code with WiFi hardware, so either OpenWRT or Mikrotik hardware would be good for that

Home Automation⌗

I’m open to playing with basically anything in the HA space as long as it isn’t cloud-based. Wifi local, Zigbee, Z-wave, Bluetooth, … are all good!

  • IP-based thermostat
  • Z-wave dimmer switches (the more the merrier)
  • Energy Monitoring

Camera Gear⌗

I’m hoping to upgrade my camera gear over time, but a few things that would be helpful to me:

  • Teleprompter
    • I am building one now, as a 3D printing + Raspberry Pi project
  • Very small monitor for better framing
  • I’m thinking of buying a new camera(s)
    • The Zcam E2C seems like something that I can afford and a good enough feature set. An Ethernet-based camera would be nice for me if I eventually setup a more permanent studio, but for now recording to SD cards is good enough.