Homelab — karadorde.com

Guides

JUL 17 2026 The House Hardware Bill The full buying guide — climate, weather, nursery, the pit, the printer, and the backbone that ties it together. Phased, priced, sourced.

Built

JUL 17 2026 Announcer running Make any Sonos room speak: TTS → LAN → speaker, with snapshot/restore. CLI plus an HTTP API on the hub port map (:8770). Dry-run by default — the house sleeps a lot.

In the stacks — research, not yet in print

JUN 2026Smart-home backbone researchedHome Assistant + MQTT + Zigbee2MQTT as the spine; ESPHome for DIY nodes.
JUN 2026Sensor nodes & dashboards researchedESP32 beats Pi for sensing; e-ink wall dashboard build (~$120).
JUN 2026Local voice researchedWake word → local STT → Ollama → Piper; Echos demoted to dumb announcers.
JUN 2026Network & Wi-Fi audit researchedDouble-NAT + wireless backhaul suspected; fix list costs ~$0.
JUN 2026ADS-B flight tracking researchedSDR + antenna already owned; plane → Ollama → Sonos is an open niche.

ON THE WIRE — LAN SWEEP, JUL 17 2026, 1:30 AM

28 devices answering. Sonos ×3 units across 2 rooms · TP-Link Deco/Kasa fleet ×6+ · one mystery ESP32 (10.0.0.196, Espressif radio, identity TBD) · the recteq smoker is not on the network · the hub kara was unreachable at sweep time · ecobee not yet installed.