Yep, Reolink cams can be fully local only and still work fine.

Yep, but the method is separate from HA. Could do it two ways, I use Pi-hole so that it’s still able to contact the NTP server (could also set the time server to something local through the desktop app, I believe) but block all other external traffic, or you can block external access through your router firewall. I noticed the time would occasionally be inaccurate if I had blocked all internet access.

Either way you can use a VPN or other tunnel service to access while you’re away from home. I use WG-tunnel on my phone to auto connect to VPN when I disconnect from my home network, it’s quite handy.

I have the Reolink doorbell, among a couple other Reolink cams. It integrates very nicely with HA. I have it set up for essentially what you’re looking for, audio/video feed, notifications with an image attached when the bell is rung (also motion detection notification from another cam, but could do the doorbell too), and the ability to have it play quick reply messages, including custom ones.

I believe you can have the two way audio in HA as well, but I haven’t explored it. The Reolink app has this functionality if I really need it, but haven’t come across an instance where I needed to use it.

You should be able to do all this with just the Reolink integration.

A mall that’s only random clothes, shoes, and jewellery stores surrounded by an ocean of parking lot is very unattractive.

As you say, a mall with actually useful stores, like grocery, pharmacy, perhaps a restaurant or two (not chain fast food), etc, with residential units on top or very close to constitutes more of a community than a mall and is very likely to be sustainable versus the former.

“Ground, it’s Fred. Off to work. Request taxi to the road.”

“Fred, Ground, roger. Taxi bravo three, left on Juliet, cross runway 34 right, right on foxtrot to the gate. I’ll let security know you’re on the way. Have a good day.”

It starts early in the design process. But at that stage, it would be best to pause installation, have a mechanical engineer do the mechanical design (including equipment selection) based on an energy model and install the recommended equipment.

I work in building science. It’s obscene how little actual design and quality control goes into residential homes.

The typical design is just one step above being illegal, and people are often scared off of doing anything more than that by the threat of increased cost. However, they don’t realize that they pay for it either way; either on their mortgage, or on utilities. Only one of those you can actually own in the end.

Sorry, four of the power to ethernet plugs. You put one near your router to essentially supply internet to your house’s electrical circuits, then distribute the others where you need them, such as office, living room if you want to connect a TV or console, etc.

I had a set of four for getting ethernet around the few places I rented. There was maybe the odd quality decrease when there was a lot of electrical load, but they worked great otherwise.

“Our Computer”

Oh man, I remember a Philips mp3 player I had for the longest time as a kid. You could hear the little clicks of the hard drive. Lost it on a hike, unfortunately.

It might not be original quality, but this should be fairly straightforward with a tunnel or VPN connection to your parent’s house. You’d also lose quality in having a WiFi camera instead of wired.

I remember there being tube polo as an intramural sport at my university. I never played but it’s another option to avoid mostly just drowning the whole time.

I recently went this route after dabbling with other options. I had a wireguard VPN through my Unifi router, with rules to limit access to only the resources I wanted to share, but it can be a struggle for non savvy users, and even more so if they want to use Jellyfin on their TV. Tried Twingate too and would recommend if it fits your usecase, but Cloudflare Tunnels were more applicable to me.

About $11M USD.

This is mostly my reasoning too. I’ve got a bit more juice than a NUC, but I prefer the way resources are managed with an LXC for the certain apps that I run. I still have VMs for other things, like HAOS and a BlueIris NVR. It’s only a local homelab with no external users so avoiding additional complexity is often in my best interest.

Why would one prefer a VM over an LXC for Docker?

I might have found the issue, see updates above. I have a separate Docker LXC that was behaving normally too, so was good to cross-check with that.

Docker is installed on a Debian container with Proxmox as the hypervisor. I believe as far as Docker knows, it’s just running on normal Debian. The Debian LXC has its own local ip.

I’ll take a look at those resources though, thanks.

Many local libraries provide access to this incredible resource too. Check yours to see.