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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • I did it with Debian 12 bookworm. I’m working on getting the web interface accessible externally, as it’s bound to local host only by default.

    Theres 2 steps where you need to watch for noob traps if you plan on using Debian, one in particular being where the link to Rustup is contained within the command block, you need to navigate there in your web browser to grab the rustup install script before you run the commands. If you hit a wall, feel free to message me and I may be able to help!


  • Just about to get the web interface running!

    The build from source is actually incredibly straightforward! There’s a few noob issues if you don’t fully read the command blocks included in the instructions (They have some links you need to navigate to to install dependencies) but beyond that, for how large everything is, I’m very surprised how easy they make it! If it was difficult last time you tried, I’d give it another shot!







  • Sorry, my notifications have been messed up because of the lemmy.world issues! Some other people have already answered but I’ll still reply :)

    A heat pump’s efficiency is measured differently than that of a gas furnace.

    The actual unit for heat pumps is the Coefficient of Performance (CoP). This measures the power input (electricity) VS the power output (heat). A “400% efficiency” as I put it, is a CoP of 4, meaning that for every watt of power used, 4 watts of heat energy are moved. As some other people pointed out, depending on the quality and technology of the heat pump and the interior/exterior temperature, the actual range of a heat pump is a CoP of anywhere from 2-5.5 (the theoretical, perfect maximum is 8.8). The efficiency of the heat pump does dip as the temperature of the region it’s pulling heat energy from lowers, there’s less energy available to move, so it has to work harder. This is why heat pumps in regions with especially cold winters have what’s usually called “emergency heat” which brings us to…

    Electrical heating. This works by pushing electricity through a wire to heat it up. Directly turning electricity into heat. Electrical heating always has a CoP of 1 (terms and conditions apply). For each watt of electrical power consumed, 1 Watt of heat energy is produced.

    Finally we have gas heating, which is still the only option for some areas for various reasons. Gas heating efficiency is not measured with CoP but instead with Annual Fuel Utilization Efficiency, simply a number that represents what % of the fuel burned is actually turned into useful heat energy. I’m finding AFUE ranges of 76-97% as a general range for modern furnaces. If a furnace has an AFUE of 90%, that means that when it burns an amount of fuel representing 100 units of heat potential (I’m not using a unit, BTUs confuse and terrify me) then 90 of those units will be turned into usable heat, and 10 of them will be waste, whether that is heat that leaves via the chimney or is simply unburnt fuel.

    TLDR: 400% means 4x more energy is moved than is used, I apologize for the wordiness, I find this stuff rather interesting


  • Sorry my point wasn’t that we shouldn’t explore other options to use instead of/in tandem with A/C. I was entirely pointing out that the use of an AC/heatpump is by itself, in absence of the context of what is used to power it, a non issue as its one of the most efficient electric heating/cooling technologies we have.

    Wind catchers could be, and likely are a great technology to adapt for wider use, though I can’t speak to that, I’m not an HVAC engineer.


  • I agree with you that we should be exploring alternatives, but aircon is extremely energy efficient for how much thermal energy it moves (reaching 400% efficiency in some cases) . The problem isn’t aircon itself, but what is being used to power it (coal/natural gas power plants)

    In fact the technology behind aircon can be expanded into a heat pump to both heat and cool, being more efficient than electro-resistive or gas heating. There’s even water heaters that will actually cool the area they’re in and use the heat they gather from the space to heat the water.

    Technology Connections has a great series of videos that go in depth on both heat pumps and aircon.







  • I often think that to myself as well to be honest. Originally, it was mostly because it’s the only “secure” system that I’m currently hosting and I wanted the ability to airgap it without taking the rest of my homelab offline.

    I mostly use my homelab for tinkering/applying what I’m learning without breaking a production system at work so needless to say I’ve learned a lot since I originally deployed bitwarden… Now it’s just because I’m too lazy to spin a new vm and migrate everything.


  • Prefacing by saying my lab is severely breaking some a lot of best practices due to hardware availability limitations

    Proxmox box (24GB DDR3, E3-1230)

    • Ubuntu LTS Dedicated Minecraft server
    • Windows 10 Dedicated V Rising server
    • Ubuntu LTS for Plex
    • TrueNAS
    • Coming Soon: Jelu Server - a self-hosted Goodreads replacement

    Raspberry Pi 2B+

    • PiHole

    OptiPlex 7020 sff (8GB DDR3, i5-4590)

    • Bitwarden