#home automation system project

[kroire4]

How Home Automation Systems Transform Daily Living

Introduction

The rise of smart technology has revolutionized the approach to life, Home Automation systems has become one of the trending technologies. Technology that once seems like a futuristic dream or fantasy is now a practically reality. Allowing homeowners to enjoy unparalled comfort, improved safety, and major cost savings.

This technology will be further discussed and its direct role in altering the everyday activities of individuals and the potentially important `role it  will play in a variety of modern homes will be elaborated further.

What is a Home Automation Systems?

Home automation system involves the coordination of several smart home devices that would typically need to be managed separately to automate various time-consuming home chores. It interweaves a wide array of devices that include light, thermostats, and security into a single automated network ecosystem that allows for simple and barrier-free control of multiple devices. In particular, the spirit of a Home Automation System is in its idea of optimizing the mode of performance, thus facilitating life and reducing stress.

Smart home automation projects operate with the objective of designing and building these systems in such a way that they match with the specific requirements of a user. These purpose-oriented projects allow the end users to view and control all appliances in the house through a single platform thereby enhancing the quality of life and demonstrating the effectiveness that smart home technologies offer.

How Does Home Automation Systems Work?

Home Automation Systems work through an integration of hardware, connectivity and automation processes:

Hardware: This category incorporates sensors, controllers and actuators. Devices of this type help in building up the structure of the system. Sensors notice environmental changes, controllers interpret these changes while actuators respond to these signals by performing actions.

Connectivity: Communication between devices is established by means of wired or wireless channels. For new buildings, a Wired system is appropriate since it provides speed and reliability, while for old houses, the wireless systems offer low installation costs and ease of use.

Key processes:

Monitoring: Users can monitor devices through the use of mobile applications in a partially real time manner and receive relevant updates on energy use, systems and security among others.

Control: The ability to adjust a device such as a thermostat, switch off lights and locks is crucial in giving reassurance and allows people the management of their home irrespective of their location.

Automation: Various devices can be programmed to interact with one another, for example when a person walks into a room automatic lights can be turned on or an appropriate temperature set when people occupy an area.

Daily Applications of Home Automation Systems

Home Automation systems has an array of applications that are practical and make everyday activities easier.

Lighting Control: This permits users to automate their lighting controls at desired time for aesthetic, safety or energy conservation reasons. One practical scenario in such circumstances is reducing light levels during movie sessions.

Temperature Control: Depending on the availability of people or weather conditions, Automated HVAC systems maintain comfort levels while conserving energy.

Surveillance Enhancement: Security can be increased with the assistance of intelligent locks, motion detectors and surveillance cameras. Alerts and notifications received from these tools will inform you of potential incidents.

Entertainment : Multinational companies have audio-visual systems to restore order commercial and industrial settings making the experience more fun. Seamless streaming and playlists make the new entertainment experience simple and easy.

Management of electrical devices: Users will only buy household appliances like washing machines and refrigerators if they are offered a limited time offer during off-peak hours and if they are able to control energy usage.

Curtain Control: Users may therefore opt to program curtains and blinds to automatically open or close at a specified time, when it is bright enough outside, or when a certain number of people are in the room.

Numerous Automation Applications can be combined in one Project for the Home Automation System, making it more comfortable and satisfactory for the user.

Benefits of Home Automation

Each Home Automation System comes with different features that make life a lot easier: 

Convenience: Enhancing the ease of work setting appliances to auto ultimately cuts down the time which would otherwise be used in cleaning or even doing the chores. 

Energy Efficiency: There is a distinction between the great power reduction which results from effective device control and the current energy use accounting approach. 

Safety and Security: The system raises alerts, does remote surveillance, and acts when necessary in case of a break-in or in case of a fire or other possible threats. 

Cost Saving: There is a decrease in power consumption as the performance of devices and other inefficiencies within the system are improved along with a reduction in maintenance costs. 

Customization: There is a promise to specifically design the system to that person’s needs while providing them bedside modifying their lifestyle.

To tackle all these features for smart homes, AI technology includes the feature of predictive automation which learns users preferences and hence provides them with tailored solutions to make the automation come into place.

Do You Need a Home Automation System?

To determine whether a Home Automation System is suitable for you, please consider the following issues:

Is accomplishing daily chores moreconveniently and quickly without any fuss something you would prefer?

Are you interested in securing your home, or your family with better protection facilities against attacks?

How important is it to you to cut down costs associated with energy consumption and help in fighting climate change?

Smart Home Automation Project could be an answer in such areas, which are very diverse. Whether the improvement for quality of living comes from performing all your most boring everyday chores, helping you save time doing them, or just making you feel safer, these systems cover it all.

Steps to Transform Your Home into a Smart Home

Converting your boring homes into AI operates smart homes doesn't have to be so daunting. Consider the ideas given below to make turning your house into a smart home easy.

Assess Your Needs and Budget:  Identify your objective, find why you want smart homes like for improving security, saving energy, or elevating convenience etc. Afterwards, evaluate your total budget.

Choose Between Wired and Wireless Systems: Consider your homes layout and select the best one option between wired or wireless system in accordance to your needs.

Collaborate with Professionals: Select the best home automation system provide from where you reside. If you reside in gurugram you can just go to google and research about best home automation system provider in gurugram. As Expert have years of experience in designing and installing home automation system that meets your requirements.

Gradually Integrate Devices: If you are integrating smart home automation for the first time. You can just integrate basic or essential device and upgrade it over time to adapt to the new technology comfortably.

The Future of Home Automation

Multi-purpose smart home automation systems are top of the line as advanced artificial intelligence integration is proving to be a game-changer in this category. Some of the future trends could be:

Ai Based Predictive Systems: These systems more or less predict user habits after studying their likes and dislikes over a period and hence are able to provide necessary automation that has been customized to the user.

Voice Controlled Interfaces: Smart devices can be controlled more easily with voice assistants such as Alexa and google assistants.

Internet of things (IoT): Smart cities are interconnected thus the devices in them are interconnected automated systems.

These developments will certainly enhance the general appeal and utility value of Home Automation Systems and they are bound to be a necessity in the homes of the future.

Conclusion

In this world of technology and the internet, everything is done through a click of a button. Home Automation Systems are taking daily living to a whole new level by incorporating convenience, security, and efficiency. From controlling light and temperature, providing entertainment boost, or security as some practical use gains, systems ease out the effort of living greatly. Are you ready to take the plunge into the world of smart living? If yes, then let us begin the process with a Smart Home Automation Project and explore the possibilities.

[ideaazautomation]

Modern Commercial Lighting for Technology MNC | Ideeaz Automation

Discover how Ideeaz Automation transformed the workspace of a leading Technology MNC with cutting-edge commercial lighting solutions. Explore this smart lighting project designed for productivity, sustainability, and modern aesthetics.

[sascosmarthome]

SASCO Smart Home: Leading System Integrator Company in India

As technology continues to revolutionize our living and working spaces, system integrators have become essential for seamlessly merging advanced technologies into unified, functional systems. SASCO Smart Home proudly stands among the top system integrator companies in India, delivering innovative and efficient solutions tailored to meet the evolving demands of modern homes and businesses.

What Does a System Integrator Do?

A system integrator combines various technologies and devices, such as lighting, HVAC, security, audio-visual equipment, and more, into a cohesive system. The goal is to ensure that these technologies communicate effectively, operate efficiently, and deliver a seamless user experience.

Whether for residential or commercial spaces, system integrators play a crucial role in designing, implementing, and maintaining smart, automated environments.

Why SASCO Smart Home is a Leading System Integrator in India

1. Expertise Across Technologies

SASCO Smart Home specializes in integrating diverse technologies into unified systems. From smart lighting and security to climate control and audio-visual solutions, we ensure all components work harmoniously.

2. Customized Solutions

Every space is unique, and so are its automation needs. At SASCO, we design tailored systems that align with your lifestyle, preferences, and operational requirements.

3. Partnerships with Industry Leaders

As authorized channel partners with global brands like KNX and ABB, we have access to cutting-edge products and technologies, ensuring our solutions are reliable and future-proof.

4. Seamless Implementation

With a focus on precision and efficiency, our team ensures smooth installation and integration, minimizing disruptions to your home or business operations.

5. Comprehensive Support

From initial consultation to after-sales service, SASCO provides Architectural Exterior Lighting, end-to-end support to ensure your system runs flawlessly.

Key Services Offered by SASCO Smart Home

1. Home Automation Integration

SASCO specializes in creating smart homes where lighting, security, climate control, and entertainment systems are seamlessly integrated for optimal comfort and convenience.

2. Commercial Automation

We design and implement automation solutions for offices, retail spaces, and industries, focusing on energy efficiency and operational excellence.

3. Audio-Visual Integration

SASCO provides advanced audio-visual solutions for home theaters, conference rooms, and multi-room setups, ensuring a superior entertainment experience.

4. Security and Surveillance

Our smart security systems integrate cameras, alarms, and access control into a single platform, offering robust protection for homes and businesses.

5. Energy Management

SASCO’s energy automation solutions monitor and optimize power consumption with architectural dimming systems , helping you reduce costs and promote sustainability.

Benefits of Choosing SASCO as Your System Integrator

Simplified Operations: A single control interface for managing multiple systems enhances convenience and reduces complexity.

Improved Efficiency: Integrated systems work together to optimize performance and energy usage.

Future-Proof Solutions: Our systems are designed to adapt to new technologies, ensuring long-term reliability.

Enhanced Security: Unified security solutions provide better control and real-time monitoring.

Customized Automation: Tailored to your specific needs, offering maximum flexibility and functionality.

Applications of SASCO’s Integration Solutions

1. Residential Spaces

Transform your home into a smart haven with integrated systems that enhance comfort, security, and energy efficiency.

2. Commercial Spaces

Streamline operations and improve productivity in offices, retail stores, and industrial facilities with intelligent automation solutions.

3. Hospitality Industry

SASCO helps hotels and resorts deliver personalized guest experiences with smart room controls and energy-efficient systems.

4. Educational Institutions

Enable smart classrooms and secure campus environments with advanced audio-visual and surveillance integrations.

Why System Integration is Essential for Modern Spaces

Seamless Connectivity: Integration ensures that different devices and systems work together without manual intervention.

Enhanced User Experience: Centralized control simplifies operations and enhances usability.

Energy Savings: Intelligent systems optimize resource consumption, reducing energy costs.

Increased Property Value: Automated and integrated spaces are highly desirable in today’s real estate market.

SASCO’s Vision as a System Integrator

At SASCO Smart Home, we believe that technology should simplify life, not complicate it. As one of the top Home Automation Project provider, our mission is to create intelligent, efficient, and connected spaces that redefine modern living and working.

Conclusion

With expertise, innovation, and a commitment to excellence, SASCO Smart Home leads the way in delivering integrated solutions for homes and businesses across India. Whether you’re looking to automate your residence or enhance the functionality of your commercial space, SASCO has the knowledge and resources to turn your vision into reality.

Get in touch with SASCO Smart Home today to explore how we can transform your space into an intelligent and connected environment!

[techtease]

ESP32 Power Logger with 26V Power Range and Expandable I/O for Power Monitoring

[smardensolutions]

How Smart Door Locks Are Changing Home Security Forever

Find out why thousands are ditching their old locks for these Smart Door Locks that are transforming homes across the globe. Warning: After reading this, you'll never look at your regular door lock the same way again!

read the full blog by clicking on the link below

[electricalinsightsdaily]

HC-05 Bluetooth Module: A Comprehensive Guide

The HC-05 Bluetooth module is a widely used and versatile wireless communication module that enables Bluetooth connectivity in electronic projects. Manufactured by various suppliers, this module is popular among hobbyists, engineers, and developers for its ease of use, cost-effectiveness, and compatibility with microcontrollers like Arduino.

Below are some key features and details about the HC-05 Bluetooth module:

Key Features HC-05 Bluetooth Module:

Bluetooth Standard:

The HC-05 Bluetooth module operates on Bluetooth version 2.0 + EDR (Enhanced Data Rate), supporting reliable and efficient wireless communication.

Operating Modes:

The module can operate in both Master and Slave modes. In Slave mode, it can pair with other Bluetooth devices, while in Master mode, it can initiate connections.

Communication Range:

The HC-05 is classified as a Class 2 Bluetooth device, providing a communication range of approximately 10 meters (33 feet). This makes it suitable for short to medium-range applications.

Serial Communication:

It communicates with other devices using a serial communication interface, making it compatible with microcontrollers like Arduino. The module typically supports standard baud rates like 9600 bps.

AT Command Configuration:

The HC-05 Bluetooth module can be configured using AT commands, allowing users to customize various parameters such as the device name, pairing code, and operating mode.

Voltage Compatibility:

The module operates within a voltage range of 3.6V to 6V, making it compatible with a variety of power sources.

Security Features:

The HC-05 supports basic security features, including the ability to set a PIN code for pairing and configuring security modes.

LED Indicator:

Many HC-05 modules have an onboard LED indicator that provides visual feedback on the pairing status and communication activity.

HC-05 Bluetooth Module Pinout Configuration

HC-05 Bluetooth module stands out as a compact marvel, bridging the gap between traditional wired connections and the boundless realm of wireless communication. If you’re venturing into the exciting domain of IoT projects, robotics, or any application where wireless connectivity is paramount, understanding the HC-05 Bluetooth module pinout configuration is essential.

Read More: HC-05 Bluetooth Module

[windayservices1]

CCTV Surveillance Cameras in Hyderabad

Step into the future of home security with Winday Services' advanced CCTV Surveillance Cameras in Hyderabad. Unveil the potential of 24/7 vigilance, tailor-made solutions, and cutting-edge technology that puts you in control. Secure your home and loved ones with Winday Services today.

Name: Winday Services Adress:Flat No.411A, Aparna Green Apartments, Nanakaramguda, Telangana 500032 windayservices91@gmail.com Phone: 8143434999

[marigold-hills]

Sirius Black who doesn’t know what to do with his inheritance, so he gets deep into smart home technology.

Everything in his flat gets automated. His coffee maks itself, his fridge orders groceries, his washing machine always chooses the right cycle. He doesn’t need to do anything - weather and news displayed on the bathroom mirror before he can ask, the shower always perfect temperature when he steps under the spray.

It’s boring. He didn’t realise how much time he’d left over once all his life admin is done for him.

He’d get rid of the whole system if not for the Computer’s voice. He goes pathetic for it.

It’s soothing, when it speaks back to him, strangely human. Good at cheering him up when he’s a bit down and reminding him to eat or call his friends or take a walk when he gets too deep into a project.

Sirius falls half in love with a machine.

What he doesn’t know:

Remus Lupin has medical debt. Lots of medical debt. The company he works for has covered the expenses so he’s got a ten year iron-clad i breakable contract with them. Can’t quit his job until it’s paid off. Not unless he wants to be sued for everything he’s worth and he’s worth nothing.

He watches this man every second. Sleeps only when he sleeps. Has alarms set that respond to changes in his breathing, in his heart rate, so he’s sure to wake up before Sirius does. Can’t miss him asking for lights or for coffee or for his shower to be turned on.

Can’t make a mistake. If the company loses a client, it gets added onto Remus’ debt.

The cameras are everywhere, and the man doesn’t know. Remus is as good as his slave, and the man doesn’t know. Thinks it’s a computer he’s telling about his life and his problems and his joys, annoyances, days.

Remus falls half in love with him, then quite completely.

It’s risky, when he starts dropping hints. Tiny ones. Absolutely not to be noticed by anyone else, but he knows Sirius. Sirius will.

And Sirius does.

[donjuaninhell]

How I ditched streaming services and learned to love Linux: A step-by-step guide to building your very own personal media streaming server (V2.0: REVISED AND EXPANDED EDITION)

This is a revised, corrected and expanded version of my tutorial on setting up a personal media server that previously appeared on my old blog (donjuan-auxenfers). I expect that that post is still making the rounds (hopefully with my addendum on modifying group share permissions in Ubuntu to circumvent 0x8007003B "Unexpected Network Error" messages in Windows 10/11 when transferring files) but I have no way of checking. Anyway this new revised version of the tutorial corrects one or two small errors I discovered when rereading what I wrote, adds links to all products mentioned and is just more polished generally. I also expanded it a bit, pointing more adventurous users toward programs such as Sonarr/Radarr/Lidarr and Overseerr which can be used for automating user requests and media collection.

So then, what is this tutorial? This is a tutorial on how to build and set up your own personal media server using Ubuntu as an operating system and Plex (or Jellyfin) to not only manage your media, but to also stream that media to your devices both at home and abroad anywhere in the world where you have an internet connection. Its intent is to show you how building a personal media server and stuffing it full of films, TV, and music that you acquired through indiscriminate and voracious media piracy various legal methods will free you to completely ditch paid streaming services. No more will you have to pay for Disney+, Netflix, HBOMAX, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Peacock, CBS All Access, Paramount+, Crave or any other streaming service that is not named Criterion Channel. Instead whenever you want to watch your favourite films and television shows, you’ll have your own personal service that only features things that you want to see, with files that you have control over. And for music fans out there, both Jellyfin and Plex support music streaming, meaning you can even ditch music streaming services. Goodbye Spotify, Youtube Music, Tidal and Apple Music, welcome back unreasonably large MP3 (or FLAC) collections.

On the hardware front, I’m going to offer a few options catered towards different budgets and media library sizes. The cost of getting a media server up and running using this guide will cost you anywhere from $450 CAD/$325 USD at the low end to $1500 CAD/$1100 USD at the high end (it could go higher). My server was priced closer to the higher figure, but I went and got a lot more storage than most people need. If that seems like a little much, consider for a moment, do you have a roommate, a close friend, or a family member who would be willing to chip in a few bucks towards your little project provided they get access? Well that's how I funded my server. It might also be worth thinking about the cost over time, i.e. how much you spend yearly on subscriptions vs. a one time cost of setting up a server. Additionally there's just the joy of being able to scream "fuck you" at all those show cancelling, library deleting, hedge fund vampire CEOs who run the studios through denying them your money. Drive a stake through David Zaslav's heart.

On the software side I will walk you step-by-step through installing Ubuntu as your server's operating system, configuring your storage as a RAIDz array with ZFS, sharing your zpool to Windows with Samba, running a remote connection between your server and your Windows PC, and then a little about started with Plex/Jellyfin. Every terminal command you will need to input will be provided, and I even share a custom #bash script that will make used vs. available drive space on your server display correctly in Windows.

If you have a different preferred flavour of Linux (Arch, Manjaro, Redhat, Fedora, Mint, OpenSUSE, CentOS, Slackware etc. et. al.) and are aching to tell me off for being basic and using Ubuntu, this tutorial is not for you. The sort of person with a preferred Linux distro is the sort of person who can do this sort of thing in their sleep. Also I don't care. This tutorial is intended for the average home computer user. This is also why we’re not using a more exotic home server solution like running everything through Docker Containers and managing it through a dashboard like Homarr or Heimdall. While such solutions are fantastic and can be very easy to maintain once you have it all set up, wrapping your brain around Docker is a whole thing in and of itself. If you do follow this tutorial and had fun putting everything together, then I would encourage you to return in a year’s time, do your research and set up everything with Docker Containers.

Lastly, this is a tutorial aimed at Windows users. Although I was a daily user of OS X for many years (roughly 2008-2023) and I've dabbled quite a bit with various Linux distributions (mostly Ubuntu and Manjaro), my primary OS these days is Windows 11. Many things in this tutorial will still be applicable to Mac users, but others (e.g. setting up shares) you will have to look up for yourself. I doubt it would be difficult to do so.

Nothing in this tutorial will require feats of computing expertise. All you will need is a basic computer literacy (i.e. an understanding of what a filesystem and directory are, and a degree of comfort in the settings menu) and a willingness to learn a thing or two. While this guide may look overwhelming at first glance, it is only because I want to be as thorough as possible. I want you to understand exactly what it is you're doing, I don't want you to just blindly follow steps. If you half-way know what you’re doing, you will be much better prepared if you ever need to troubleshoot.

Honestly, once you have all the hardware ready it shouldn't take more than an afternoon or two to get everything up and running.

(This tutorial is just shy of seven thousand words long so the rest is under the cut.)

Step One: Choosing Your Hardware

Linux is a light weight operating system, depending on the distribution there's close to no bloat. There are recent distributions available at this very moment that will run perfectly fine on a fourteen year old i3 with 4GB of RAM. Moreover, running Plex or Jellyfin isn’t resource intensive in 90% of use cases. All this is to say, we don’t require an expensive or powerful computer. This means that there are several options available: 1) use an old computer you already have sitting around but aren't using 2) buy a used workstation from eBay, or what I believe to be the best option, 3) order an N100 Mini-PC from AliExpress or Amazon.

Note: If you already have an old PC sitting around that you’ve decided to use, fantastic, move on to the next step.

When weighing your options, keep a few things in mind: the number of people you expect to be streaming simultaneously at any one time, the resolution and bitrate of your media library (4k video takes a lot more processing power than 1080p) and most importantly, how many of those clients are going to be transcoding at any one time. Transcoding is what happens when the playback device does not natively support direct playback of the source file. This can happen for a number of reasons, such as the playback device's native resolution being lower than the file's internal resolution, or because the source file was encoded in a video codec unsupported by the playback device.

Ideally we want any transcoding to be performed by hardware. This means we should be looking for a computer with an Intel processor with Quick Sync. Quick Sync is a dedicated core on the CPU die designed specifically for video encoding and decoding. This specialized hardware makes for highly efficient transcoding both in terms of processing overhead and power draw. Without these Quick Sync cores, transcoding must be brute forced through software. This takes up much more of a CPU’s processing power and requires much more energy. But not all Quick Sync cores are created equal and you need to keep this in mind if you've decided either to use an old computer or to shop for a used workstation on eBay

Any Intel processor from second generation Core (Sandy Bridge circa 2011) onward has Quick Sync cores. It's not until 6th gen (Skylake), however, that the cores support the H.265 HEVC codec. Intel’s 10th gen (Comet Lake) processors introduce support for 10bit HEVC and HDR tone mapping. And the recent 12th gen (Alder Lake) processors brought with them hardware AV1 decoding. As an example, while an 8th gen (Kaby Lake) i5-8500 will be able to hardware transcode a H.265 encoded file, it will fall back to software transcoding if given a 10bit H.265 file. If you’ve decided to use that old PC or to look on eBay for an old Dell Optiplex keep this in mind.

Note 1: The price of old workstations varies wildly and fluctuates frequently. If you get lucky and go shopping shortly after a workplace has liquidated a large number of their workstations you can find deals for as low as $100 on a barebones system, but generally an i5-8500 workstation with 16gb RAM will cost you somewhere in the area of $260 CAD/$200 USD.

Note 2: The AMD equivalent to Quick Sync is called Video Core Next, and while it's fine, it's not as efficient and not as mature a technology. It was only introduced with the first generation Ryzen CPUs and it only got decent with their newest CPUs, we want something cheap.

Alternatively you could forgo having to keep track of what generation of CPU is equipped with Quick Sync cores that feature support for which codecs, and just buy an N100 mini-PC. For around the same price or less of a used workstation you can pick up a mini-PC with an Intel N100 processor. The N100 is a four-core processor based on the 12th gen Alder Lake architecture and comes equipped with the latest revision of the Quick Sync cores. These little processors offer astounding hardware transcoding capabilities for their size and power draw. Otherwise they perform equivalent to an i5-6500, which isn't a terrible CPU. A friend of mine uses an N100 machine as a dedicated retro emulation gaming system and it does everything up to 6th generation consoles just fine. The N100 is also a remarkably efficient chip, it sips power. In fact, the difference between running one of these and an old workstation could work out to hundreds of dollars a year in energy bills depending on where you live.

You can find these Mini-PCs all over Amazon or for a little cheaper on AliExpress. They range in price from $170 CAD/$125 USD for a no name N100 with 8GB RAM to $280 CAD/$200 USD for a Beelink S12 Pro with 16GB RAM. The brand doesn't really matter, they're all coming from the same three factories in Shenzen, go for whichever one fits your budget or has features you want. 8GB RAM should be enough, Linux is lightweight and Plex only calls for 2GB RAM. 16GB RAM might result in a slightly snappier experience, especially with ZFS. A 256GB SSD is more than enough for what we need as a boot drive, but going for a bigger drive might allow you to get away with things like creating preview thumbnails for Plex, but it’s up to you and your budget.

The Mini-PC I wound up buying was a Firebat AK2 Plus with 8GB RAM and a 256GB SSD. It looks like this:

Note: Be forewarned that if you decide to order a Mini-PC from AliExpress, note the type of power adapter it ships with. The mini-PC I bought came with an EU power adapter and I had to supply my own North American power supply. Thankfully this is a minor issue as barrel plug 30W/12V/2.5A power adapters are easy to find and can be had for $10.

Step Two: Choosing Your Storage

Storage is the most important part of our build. It is also the most expensive. Thankfully it’s also the most easily upgrade-able down the line.

For people with a smaller media collection (4TB to 8TB), a more limited budget, or who will only ever have two simultaneous streams running, I would say that the most economical course of action would be to buy a USB 3.0 8TB external HDD. Something like this one from Western Digital or this one from Seagate. One of these external drives will cost you in the area of $200 CAD/$140 USD. Down the line you could add a second external drive or replace it with a multi-drive RAIDz set up such as detailed below.

If a single external drive the path for you, move on to step three.

For people with larger media libraries (12TB+), who prefer media in 4k, or care who about data redundancy, the answer is a RAID array featuring multiple HDDs in an enclosure.

Note: If you are using an old PC or used workstatiom as your server and have the room for at least three 3.5" drives, and as many open SATA ports on your mother board you won't need an enclosure, just install the drives into the case. If your old computer is a laptop or doesn’t have room for more internal drives, then I would suggest an enclosure.

The minimum number of drives needed to run a RAIDz array is three, and seeing as RAIDz is what we will be using, you should be looking for an enclosure with three to five bays. I think that four disks makes for a good compromise for a home server. Regardless of whether you go for a three, four, or five bay enclosure, do be aware that in a RAIDz array the space equivalent of one of the drives will be dedicated to parity at a ratio expressed by the equation 1 − 1/n i.e. in a four bay enclosure equipped with four 12TB drives, if we configured our drives in a RAIDz1 array we would be left with a total of 36TB of usable space (48TB raw size). The reason for why we might sacrifice storage space in such a manner will be explained in the next section.

A four bay enclosure will cost somewhere in the area of $200 CDN/$140 USD. You don't need anything fancy, we don't need anything with hardware RAID controls (RAIDz is done entirely in software) or even USB-C. An enclosure with USB 3.0 will perform perfectly fine. Don’t worry too much about USB speed bottlenecks. A mechanical HDD will be limited by the speed of its mechanism long before before it will be limited by the speed of a USB connection. I've seen decent looking enclosures from TerraMaster, Yottamaster, Mediasonic and Sabrent.

When it comes to selecting the drives, as of this writing, the best value (dollar per gigabyte) are those in the range of 12TB to 20TB. I settled on 12TB drives myself. If 12TB to 20TB drives are out of your budget, go with what you can afford, or look into refurbished drives. I'm not sold on the idea of refurbished drives but many people swear by them.

When shopping for harddrives, search for drives designed specifically for NAS use. Drives designed for NAS use typically have better vibration dampening and are designed to be active 24/7. They will also often make use of CMR (conventional magnetic recording) as opposed to SMR (shingled magnetic recording). This nets them a sizable read/write performance bump over typical desktop drives. Seagate Ironwolf and Toshiba NAS are both well regarded brands when it comes to NAS drives. I would avoid Western Digital Red drives at this time. WD Reds were a go to recommendation up until earlier this year when it was revealed that they feature firmware that will throw up false SMART warnings telling you to replace the drive at the three year mark quite often when there is nothing at all wrong with that drive. It will likely even be good for another six, seven, or more years.

Step Three: Installing Linux

For this step you will need a USB thumbdrive of at least 6GB in capacity, an .ISO of Ubuntu, and a way to make that thumbdrive bootable media.

First download a copy of Ubuntu desktop (for best performance we could download the Server release, but for new Linux users I would recommend against the server release. The server release is strictly command line interface only, and having a GUI is very helpful for most people. Not many people are wholly comfortable doing everything through the command line, I'm certainly not one of them, and I grew up with DOS 6.0. 22.04.3 Jammy Jellyfish is the current Long Term Service release, this is the one to get.

Download the .ISO and then download and install balenaEtcher on your Windows PC. BalenaEtcher is an easy to use program for creating bootable media, you simply insert your thumbdrive, select the .ISO you just downloaded, and it will create a bootable installation media for you.

Once you've made a bootable media and you've got your Mini-PC (or you old PC/used workstation) in front of you, hook it directly into your router with an ethernet cable, and then plug in the HDD enclosure, a monitor, a mouse and a keyboard. Now turn that sucker on and hit whatever key gets you into the BIOS (typically ESC, DEL or F2). If you’re using a Mini-PC check to make sure that the P1 and P2 power limits are set correctly, my N100's P1 limit was set at 10W, a full 20W under the chip's power limit. Also make sure that the RAM is running at the advertised speed. My Mini-PC’s RAM was set at 2333Mhz out of the box when it should have been 3200Mhz. Once you’ve done that, key over to the boot order and place the USB drive first in the boot order. Then save the BIOS settings and restart.

After you restart you’ll be greeted by Ubuntu's installation screen. Installing Ubuntu is really straight forward, select the "minimal" installation option, as we won't need anything on this computer except for a browser (Ubuntu comes preinstalled with Firefox) and Plex Media Server/Jellyfin Media Server. Also remember to delete and reformat that Windows partition! We don't need it.

Step Four: Installing ZFS and Setting Up the RAIDz Array

Note: If you opted for just a single external HDD skip this step and move onto setting up a Samba share.

Once Ubuntu is installed it's time to configure our storage by installing ZFS to build our RAIDz array. ZFS is a "next-gen" file system that is both massively flexible and massively complex. It's capable of snapshot backup, self healing error correction, ZFS pools can be configured with drives operating in a supplemental manner alongside the storage vdev (e.g. fast cache, dedicated secondary intent log, hot swap spares etc.). It's also a file system very amenable to fine tuning. Block and sector size are adjustable to use case and you're afforded the option of different methods of inline compression. If you'd like a very detailed overview and explanation of its various features and tips on tuning a ZFS array check out these articles from Ars Technica. For now we're going to ignore all these features and keep it simple, we're going to pull our drives together into a single vdev running in RAIDz which will be the entirety of our zpool, no fancy cache drive or SLOG.

Open up the terminal and type the following commands:

sudo apt update

then

sudo apt install zfsutils-linux

This will install the ZFS utility. Verify that it's installed with the following command:

zfs --version

Now, it's time to check that the HDDs we have in the enclosure are healthy, running, and recognized. We also want to find out their device IDs and take note of them:

sudo fdisk -1

Note: You might be wondering why some of these commands require "sudo" in front of them while others don't. "Sudo" is short for "super user do”. When and where "sudo" is used has to do with the way permissions are set up in Linux. Only the "root" user has the access level to perform certain tasks in Linux. As a matter of security and safety regular user accounts are kept separate from the "root" user. It's not advised (or even possible) to boot into Linux as "root" with most modern distributions. Instead by using "sudo" our regular user account is temporarily given the power to do otherwise forbidden things. Don't worry about it too much at this stage, but if you want to know more check out this introduction.

If everything is working you should get a list of the various drives detected along with their device IDs which will look like this: /dev/sdc. You can also check the device IDs of the drives by opening the disk utility app. Jot these IDs down as we'll need them for our next step, creating our RAIDz array.

RAIDz is similar to RAID-5 in that instead of striping your data over multiple disks, exchanging redundancy for speed and available space (RAID-0), or mirroring your data writing by two copies of every piece (RAID-1), it instead writes parity blocks across the disks in addition to striping, this provides a balance of speed, redundancy and available space. If a single drive fails, the parity blocks on the working drives can be used to reconstruct the entire array as soon as a replacement drive is added.

Additionally, RAIDz improves over some of the common RAID-5 flaws. It's more resilient and capable of self healing, as it is capable of automatically checking for errors against a checksum. It's more forgiving in this way, and it's likely that you'll be able to detect when a drive is dying well before it fails. A RAIDz array can survive the loss of any one drive.

Note: While RAIDz is indeed resilient, if a second drive fails during the rebuild, you're fucked. Always keep backups of things you can't afford to lose. This tutorial, however, is not about proper data safety.

To create the pool, use the following command:

sudo zpool create "zpoolnamehere" raidz "device IDs of drives we're putting in the pool"

For example, let's creatively name our zpool "mypool". This poil will consist of four drives which have the device IDs: sdb, sdc, sdd, and sde. The resulting command will look like this:

sudo zpool create mypool raidz /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /dev/sdd /dev/sde

If as an example you bought five HDDs and decided you wanted more redundancy dedicating two drive to this purpose, we would modify the command to "raidz2" and the command would look something like the following:

sudo zpool create mypool raidz2 /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /dev/sdd /dev/sde /dev/sdf

An array configured like this is known as RAIDz2 and is able to survive two disk failures.

Once the zpool has been created, we can check its status with the command:

zpool status

Or more concisely with:

zpool list

The nice thing about ZFS as a file system is that a pool is ready to go immediately after creation. If we were to set up a traditional RAID-5 array using mbam, we'd have to sit through a potentially hours long process of reformatting and partitioning the drives. Instead we're ready to go right out the gates.

The zpool should be automatically mounted to the filesystem after creation, check on that with the following:

df -hT | grep zfs

Note: If your computer ever loses power suddenly, say in event of a power outage, you may have to re-import your pool. In most cases, ZFS will automatically import and mount your pool, but if it doesn’t and you can't see your array, simply open the terminal and type sudo zpool import -a.

By default a zpool is mounted at /"zpoolname". The pool should be under our ownership but let's make sure with the following command:

sudo chown -R "yourlinuxusername" /"zpoolname"

Note: Changing file and folder ownership with "chown" and file and folder permissions with "chmod" are essential commands for much of the admin work in Linux, but we won't be dealing with them extensively in this guide. If you'd like a deeper tutorial and explanation you can check out these two guides: chown and chmod.

You can access the zpool file system through the GUI by opening the file manager (the Ubuntu default file manager is called Nautilus) and clicking on "Other Locations" on the sidebar, then entering the Ubuntu file system and looking for a folder with your pool's name. Bookmark the folder on the sidebar for easy access.

Your storage pool is now ready to go. Assuming that we already have some files on our Windows PC we want to copy to over, we're going to need to install and configure Samba to make the pool accessible in Windows.

Step Five: Setting Up Samba/Sharing

Samba is what's going to let us share the zpool with Windows and allow us to write to it from our Windows machine. First let's install Samba with the following commands:

sudo apt-get update

then

sudo apt-get install samba

Next create a password for Samba.

sudo smbpswd -a "yourlinuxusername"

It will then prompt you to create a password. Just reuse your Ubuntu user password for simplicity's sake.

Note: if you're using just a single external drive replace the zpool location in the following commands with wherever it is your external drive is mounted, for more information see this guide on mounting an external drive in Ubuntu.

After you've created a password we're going to create a shareable folder in our pool with this command

mkdir /"zpoolname"/"foldername"

Now we're going to open the smb.conf file and make that folder shareable. Enter the following command.

sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

This will open the .conf file in nano, the terminal text editor program. Now at the end of smb.conf add the following entry:

["foldername"]

path = /"zpoolname"/"foldername"

available = yes

valid users = "yourlinuxusername"

read only = no

writable = yes

browseable = yes

guest ok = no

Ensure that there are no line breaks between the lines and that there's a space on both sides of the equals sign. Our next step is to allow Samba traffic through the firewall:

sudo ufw allow samba

Finally restart the Samba service:

sudo systemctl restart smbd

At this point we'll be able to access to the pool, browse its contents, and read and write to it from Windows. But there's one more thing left to do, Windows doesn't natively support the ZFS file systems and will read the used/available/total space in the pool incorrectly. Windows will read available space as total drive space, and all used space as null. This leads to Windows only displaying a dwindling amount of "available" space as the drives are filled. We can fix this! Functionally this doesn't actually matter, we can still write and read to and from the disk, it just makes it difficult to tell at a glance the proportion of used/available space, so this is an optional step but one I recommend (this step is also unnecessary if you're just using a single external drive). What we're going to do is write a little shell script in #bash. Open nano with the terminal with the command:

nano

Now insert the following code:

#!/bin/bash CUR_PATH=`pwd` ZFS_CHECK_OUTPUT=$(zfs get type $CUR_PATH 2>&1 > /dev/null) > /dev/null if [[ $ZFS_CHECK_OUTPUT == *not\ a\ ZFS* ]] then IS_ZFS=false else IS_ZFS=true fi if [[ $IS_ZFS = false ]] then df $CUR_PATH | tail -1 | awk '{print $2" "$4}' else USED=$((`zfs get -o value -Hp used $CUR_PATH` / 1024)) > /dev/null AVAIL=$((`zfs get -o value -Hp available $CUR_PATH` / 1024)) > /dev/null TOTAL=$(($USED+$AVAIL)) > /dev/null echo $TOTAL $AVAIL fi

Save the script as "dfree.sh" to /home/"yourlinuxusername" then change the ownership of the file to make it executable with this command:

sudo chmod 774 dfree.sh

Now open smb.conf with sudo again:

sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

Now add this entry to the top of the configuration file to direct Samba to use the results of our script when Windows asks for a reading on the pool's used/available/total drive space:

[global]

dfree command = /home/"yourlinuxusername"/dfree.sh

Save the changes to smb.conf and then restart Samba again with the terminal:

sudo systemctl restart smbd

Now there’s one more thing we need to do to fully set up the Samba share, and that’s to modify a hidden group permission. In the terminal window type the following command:

usermod -a -G sambashare “yourlinuxusername”

Then restart samba again:

sudo systemctl restart smbd

If we don’t do this last step, everything will appear to work fine, and you will even be able to see and map the drive from Windows and even begin transferring files, but you'd soon run into a lot of frustration. As every ten minutes or so a file would fail to transfer and you would get a window announcing “0x8007003B Unexpected Network Error”. This window would require your manual input to continue the transfer with the file next in the queue. And at the end it would reattempt to transfer whichever files failed the first time around. 99% of the time they’ll go through that second try, but this is still all a major pain in the ass. Especially if you’ve got a lot of data to transfer or you want to step away from the computer for a while.

It turns out samba can act a little weirdly with the higher read/write speeds of RAIDz arrays and transfers from Windows, and will intermittently crash and restart itself if this group option isn’t changed. Inputting the above command will prevent you from ever seeing that window.

The last thing we're going to do before switching over to our Windows PC is grab the IP address of our Linux machine. Enter the following command:

hostname -I

This will spit out this computer's IP address on the local network (it will look something like 192.168.0.x), write it down. It might be a good idea once you're done here to go into your router settings and reserving that IP for your Linux system in the DHCP settings. Check the manual for your specific model router on how to access its settings, typically it can be accessed by opening a browser and typing http:\\192.168.0.1 in the address bar, but your router may be different.

Okay we’re done with our Linux computer for now. Get on over to your Windows PC, open File Explorer, right click on Network and click "Map network drive". Select Z: as the drive letter (you don't want to map the network drive to a letter you could conceivably be using for other purposes) and enter the IP of your Linux machine and location of the share like so: \\"LINUXCOMPUTERLOCALIPADDRESSGOESHERE"\"zpoolnamegoeshere"\. Windows will then ask you for your username and password, enter the ones you set earlier in Samba and you're good. If you've done everything right it should look something like this:

You can now start moving media over from Windows to the share folder. It's a good idea to have a hard line running to all machines. Moving files over Wi-Fi is going to be tortuously slow, the only thing that’s going to make the transfer time tolerable (hours instead of days) is a solid wired connection between both machines and your router.

Step Six: Setting Up Remote Desktop Access to Your Server

After the server is up and going, you’ll want to be able to access it remotely from Windows. Barring serious maintenance/updates, this is how you'll access it most of the time. On your Linux system open the terminal and enter:

sudo apt install xrdp

Then:

sudo systemctl enable xrdp

Once it's finished installing, open “Settings” on the sidebar and turn off "automatic login" in the User category. Then log out of your account. Attempting to remotely connect to your Linux computer while you’re logged in will result in a black screen!

Now get back on your Windows PC, open search and look for "RDP". A program called "Remote Desktop Connection" should pop up, open this program as an administrator by right-clicking and selecting “run as an administrator”. You’ll be greeted with a window. In the field marked “Computer” type in the IP address of your Linux computer. Press connect and you'll be greeted with a new window and prompt asking for your username and password. Enter your Ubuntu username and password here.

If everything went right, you’ll be logged into your Linux computer. If the performance is sluggish, adjust the display options. Lowering the resolution and colour depth do a lot to make the interface feel snappier.

Remote access is how we're going to be using our Linux system from now, barring edge cases like needing to get into the BIOS or upgrading to a new version of Ubuntu. Everything else from performing maintenance like a monthly zpool scrub to checking zpool status and updating software can all be done remotely.

This is how my server lives its life now, happily humming and chirping away on the floor next to the couch in a corner of the living room.

Step Seven: Plex Media Server/Jellyfin

Okay we’ve got all the ground work finished and our server is almost up and running. We’ve got Ubuntu up and running, our storage array is primed, we’ve set up remote connections and sharing, and maybe we’ve moved over some of favourite movies and TV shows.

Now we need to decide on the media server software to use which will stream our media to us and organize our library. For most people I’d recommend Plex. It just works 99% of the time. That said, Jellyfin has a lot to recommend it by too, even if it is rougher around the edges. Some people run both simultaneously, it’s not that big of an extra strain. I do recommend doing a little bit of your own research into the features each platform offers, but as a quick run down, consider some of the following points:

Plex is closed source and is funded through PlexPass purchases while Jellyfin is open source and entirely user driven. This means a number of things: for one, Plex requires you to purchase a “PlexPass” (purchased as a one time lifetime fee $159.99 CDN/$120 USD or paid for on a monthly or yearly subscription basis) in order to access to certain features, like hardware transcoding (and we want hardware transcoding) or automated intro/credits detection and skipping, Jellyfin offers some of these features for free through plugins. Plex supports a lot more devices than Jellyfin and updates more frequently. That said, Jellyfin's Android and iOS apps are completely free, while the Plex Android and iOS apps must be activated for a one time cost of $6 CDN/$5 USD. But that $6 fee gets you a mobile app that is much more functional and features a unified UI across platforms, the Plex mobile apps are simply a more polished experience. The Jellyfin apps are a bit of a mess and the iOS and Android versions are very different from each other.

Jellyfin’s actual media player is more fully featured than Plex's, but on the other hand Jellyfin's UI, library customization and automatic media tagging really pale in comparison to Plex. Streaming your music library is free through both Jellyfin and Plex, but Plex offers the PlexAmp app for dedicated music streaming which boasts a number of fantastic features, unfortunately some of those fantastic features require a PlexPass. If your internet is down, Jellyfin can still do local streaming, while Plex can fail to play files unless you've got it set up a certain way. Jellyfin has a slew of neat niche features like support for Comic Book libraries with the .cbz/.cbt file types, but then Plex offers some free ad-supported TV and films, they even have a free channel that plays nothing but Classic Doctor Who.

Ultimately it's up to you, I settled on Plex because although some features are pay-walled, it just works. It's more reliable and easier to use, and a one-time fee is much easier to swallow than a subscription. I had a pretty easy time getting my boomer parents and tech illiterate brother introduced to and using Plex and I don't know if I would've had as easy a time doing that with Jellyfin. I do also need to mention that Jellyfin does take a little extra bit of tinkering to get going in Ubuntu, you’ll have to set up process permissions, so if you're more tolerant to tinkering, Jellyfin might be up your alley and I’ll trust that you can follow their installation and configuration guide. For everyone else, I recommend Plex.

So pick your poison: Plex or Jellyfin.

Note: The easiest way to download and install either of these packages in Ubuntu is through Snap Store.

After you've installed one (or both), opening either app will launch a browser window into the browser version of the app allowing you to set all the options server side.

The process of adding creating media libraries is essentially the same in both Plex and Jellyfin. You create a separate libraries for Television, Movies, and Music and add the folders which contain the respective types of media to their respective libraries. The only difficult or time consuming aspect is ensuring that your files and folders follow the appropriate naming conventions:

Plex naming guide for Movies

Plex naming guide for Television

Jellyfin follows the same naming rules but I find their media scanner to be a lot less accurate and forgiving than Plex. Once you've selected the folders to be scanned the service will scan your files, tagging everything and adding metadata. Although I find do find Plex more accurate, it can still erroneously tag some things and you might have to manually clean up some tags in a large library. (When I initially created my library it tagged the 1963-1989 Doctor Who as some Korean soap opera and I needed to manually select the correct match after which everything was tagged normally.) It can also be a bit testy with anime (especially OVAs) be sure to check TVDB to ensure that you have your files and folders structured and named correctly. If something is not showing up at all, double check the name.

Once that's done, organizing and customizing your library is easy. You can set up collections, grouping items together to fit a theme or collect together all the entries in a franchise. You can make playlists, and add custom artwork to entries. It's fun setting up collections with posters to match, there are even several websites dedicated to help you do this like PosterDB. As an example, below are two collections in my library, one collecting all the entries in a franchise, the other follows a theme.

My Star Trek collection, featuring all eleven television series, and thirteen films.

My Best of the Worst collection, featuring sixty-nine films previously showcased on RedLetterMedia’s Best of the Worst. They’re all absolutely terrible and I love them.

As for settings, ensure you've got Remote Access going, it should work automatically and be sure to set your upload speed after running a speed test. In the library settings set the database cache to 2000MB to ensure a snappier and more responsive browsing experience, and then check that playback quality is set to original/maximum. If you’re severely bandwidth limited on your upload and have remote users, you might want to limit the remote stream bitrate to something more reasonable, just as a note of comparison Netflix’s 1080p bitrate is approximately 5Mbps, although almost anyone watching through a chromium based browser is streaming at 720p and 3mbps. Other than that you should be good to go. For actually playing your files, there's a Plex app for just about every platform imaginable. I mostly watch television and films on my laptop using the Windows Plex app, but I also use the Android app which can broadcast to the chromecast connected to the TV in the office and the Android TV app for our smart TV. Both are fully functional and easy to navigate, and I can also attest to the OS X version being equally functional.

Part Eight: Finding Media

Now, this is not really a piracy tutorial, there are plenty of those out there. But if you’re unaware, BitTorrent is free and pretty easy to use, just pick a client (qBittorrent is the best) and go find some public trackers to peruse. Just know now that all the best trackers are private and invite only, and that they can be exceptionally difficult to get into. I’m already on a few, and even then, some of the best ones are wholly out of my reach.

If you decide to take the left hand path and turn to Usenet you’ll have to pay. First you’ll need to sign up with a provider like Newshosting or EasyNews for access to Usenet itself, and then to actually find anything you’re going to need to sign up with an indexer like NZBGeek or NZBFinder. There are dozens of indexers, and many people cross post between them, but for more obscure media it’s worth checking multiple. You’ll also need a binary downloader like SABnzbd. That caveat aside, Usenet is faster, bigger, older, less traceable than BitTorrent, and altogether slicker. I honestly prefer it, and I'm kicking myself for taking this long to start using it because I was scared off by the price. I’ve found so many things on Usenet that I had sought in vain elsewhere for years, like a 2010 Italian film about a massacre perpetrated by the SS that played the festival circuit but never received a home media release; some absolute hero uploaded a rip of a festival screener DVD to Usenet. Anyway, figure out the rest of this shit on your own and remember to use protection, get yourself behind a VPN, use a SOCKS5 proxy with your BitTorrent client, etc.

On the legal side of things, if you’re around my age, you (or your family) probably have a big pile of DVDs and Blu-Rays sitting around unwatched and half forgotten. Why not do a bit of amateur media preservation, rip them and upload them to your server for easier access? (Your tools for this are going to be Handbrake to do the ripping and AnyDVD to break any encryption.) I went to the trouble of ripping all my SCTV DVDs (five box sets worth) because none of it is on streaming nor could it be found on any pirate source I tried. I’m glad I did, forty years on it’s still one of the funniest shows to ever be on TV.

Part Nine/Epilogue: Sonarr/Radarr/Lidarr and Overseerr

There are a lot of ways to automate your server for better functionality or to add features you and other users might find useful. Sonarr, Radarr, and Lidarr are a part of a suite of “Servarr” services (there’s also Readarr for books and Whisparr for adult content) that allow you to automate the collection of new episodes of TV shows (Sonarr), new movie releases (Radarr) and music releases (Lidarr). They hook in to your BitTorrent client or Usenet binary newsgroup downloader and crawl your preferred Torrent trackers and Usenet indexers, alerting you to new releases and automatically grabbing them. You can also use these services to manually search for new media, and even replace/upgrade your existing media with better quality uploads. They’re really a little tricky to set up on a bare metal Ubuntu install (ideally you should be running them in Docker Containers), and I won’t be providing a step by step on installing and running them, I’m simply making you aware of their existence.

The other bit of kit I want to make you aware of is Overseerr which is a program that scans your Plex media library and will serve recommendations based on what you like. It also allows you and your users to request specific media. It can even be integrated with Sonarr/Radarr/Lidarr so that fulfilling those requests is fully automated.

And you're done. It really wasn't all that hard. Enjoy your media. Enjoy the control you have over that media. And be safe in the knowledge that no hedgefund CEO motherfucker who hates the movies but who is somehow in control of a major studio will be able to disappear anything in your library as a tax write-off.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The reverse-centaur apocalypse is upon us

I'm coming to DEFCON! On Aug 9, I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On Aug 10, I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

In thinking about the relationship between tech and labor, one of the most useful conceptual frameworks is "centaurs" vs "reverse-centaurs":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/17/revenge-of-the-chickenized-reverse-centaurs/

A centaur is someone whose work is supercharged by automation: you are a human head atop the tireless body of a machine that lets you get more done than you could ever do on your own.

A reverse-centaur is someone who is harnessed to the machine, reduced to a mere peripheral for a cruelly tireless robotic overlord that directs you to do the work that it can't, at a robotic pace, until your body and mind are smashed.

Bosses love being centaurs. While workplace monitoring is as old as Taylorism – the "scientific management" of the previous century that saw labcoated frauds dictating the fine movements of working people in a kabuki of "efficiency" – the lockdowns saw an explosion of bossware, the digital tools that let bosses monitor employees to a degree and at a scale that far outstrips the capacity of any unassisted human being.

Armed with bossware, your boss becomes a centaur, able to monitor you down to your keystrokes, the movements of your eyes, even the ambient sound around you. It was this technology that transformed "work from home" into "live at work." But bossware doesn't just let your boss spy on you – it lets your boss control you. \

It turns you into a reverse-centaur.

"Data At Work" is a research project from Cracked Labs that dives deep into the use of surveillance and control technology in a variety of workplaces – including workers' own cars and homes:

https://crackedlabs.org/en/data-work

It consists of a series of papers that take deep dives into different vendors' bossware products, exploring how they are advertised, how they are used, and (crucially) how they make workers feel. There are also sections on how these interact with EU labor laws (the project is underwritten by the Austrian Arbeiterkammer), with the occasional aside about how weak US labor laws are.

The latest report in the series comes from Wolfie Christl, digging into Microsoft's "Dynamics 365," a suite of mobile apps designed to exert control over "field workers" – repair technicians, security guards, cleaners, and home help for ill, elderly and disabled people:

https://crackedlabs.org/dl/CrackedLabs_Christl_MobileWork.pdf

It's…not good. Microsoft advises its customers to use its products to track workers' location every "60 to 300 seconds." Workers are given tasks broken down into subtasks, each with its own expected time to completion. Workers are expected to use the app every time they arrive at a site, begin or complete a task or subtask, or start or end a break.

For bosses, all of this turns into a dashboard that shows how each worker is performing from instant to instant, whether they are meeting time targets, and whether they are spending more time on a task than the client's billing rate will pay for. Each work order has a clock showing elapsed seconds since it was issued.

For workers, the system generates new schedules with new work orders all day long, refreshing your work schedule as frequently as twice per hour. Bosses can flag workers as available for jobs that fall outside their territories and/or working hours, and the system will assign workers to jobs that require them to work in their off hours and travel long distances to do so.

Each task and subtask has a target time based on "AI" predictions. These are classic examples of Goodhart's Law: "any metric eventually becomes a target." The average time that workers take becomes the maximum time that a worker is allowed to take. Some jobs are easy, and can be completed in less time than assigned. When this happens, the average time to do a job shrinks, and the time allotted for normal (or difficult) jobs contracts.

Bosses get stack-ranks of workers showing which workers closed the most tickets, worked the fastest, spent the least time idle between jobs, and, of course, whether the client gave them five stars. Workers know it, creating an impossible bind: to do the job well, in a friendly fashion, the worker has to take time to talk with the client, understand their needs, and do the job. Anything less will generate unfavorable reports from clients. But doing this will blow through time quotas, which produces bad reports from the bossware. Heads you lose, tails the boss wins.

Predictably, Microsoft has shoveled "AI" into every corner of this product. Bosses don't just get charts showing them which workers are "underperforming" – they also get summaries of all the narrative aspects of the workers' reports (e.g. "My client was in severe pain so I took extra time to make her comfortable before leaving"), filled with the usual hallucinations and other botshit.

No boss could exert this kind of fine-grained, soul-destroying control over any workforce, much less a workforce that is out in the field all day, without Microsoft's automation tools. Armed with Dynamics 365, a boss becomes a true centaur, capable of superhuman feats of labor abuse.

And when workers are subjected to Dynamics 365, they become true reverse-centaurs, driven by "digital whips" to work at a pace that outstrips the long-term capacity of their minds and bodies to bear it. The enthnographic parts of the report veer between chilling and heartbreaking.

Microsoft strenuously objects to this characterization, insisting that their tool (which they advise bosses to use to check on workers' location every 60-300 seconds) is not a "surveillance" tool, it's a "coordination" tool. They say that all the AI in the tool is "Responsible AI," which is doubtless a great comfort to workers.

In Microsoft's (mild) defense, they are not unique. Other reports in the series show how retail workers and hotel housekeepers are subjected to "despot on demand" services provided by Oracle:

https://crackedlabs.org/en/data-work/publications/retail-hospitality

Call centers, are even worse. After all, most of this stuff started with call centers:

https://crackedlabs.org/en/data-work/publications/callcenter

I've written about Arise, a predatory "work from home" company that targets Black women to pay the company to work for it (they also have to pay if they quit!). Of course, they can be fired at will:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/29/impunity-corrodes/#arise-ye-prisoners

There's also a report about Celonis, a giant German company no one has ever heard of, which gathers a truly nightmarish quantity of information about white-collar workers' activities, subjecting them to AI phrenology to judge their "emotional quality" as well as other metrics:

https://crackedlabs.org/en/data-work/publications/processmining-algomanage

As Celonis shows, this stuff is coming for all of us. I've dubbed this process "the shitty technology adoption curve": the terrible things we do to prisoners, asylum seekers and people in mental institutions today gets repackaged tomorrow for students, parolees, Uber drivers and blue-collar workers. Then it works its way up the privilege gradient, until we're all being turned into reverse-centaurs under the "digital whip" of a centaur boss:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/25/the-peoples-amazon/#clippys-revenge

In mediating between asshole bosses and the workers they destroy, these bossware technologies do more than automate: they also insulate. Thanks to bossware, your boss doesn't have to look you in the eye (or come within range of your fists) to check in on you every 60 seconds and tell you that you've taken 11 seconds too long on a task. I recently learned a useful term for this: an "accountability sink," as described by Dan Davies in his new book, The Unaccountability Machine, which is high on my (very long) list of books to read:

https://profilebooks.com/work/the-unaccountability-machine/

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/02/despotism-on-demand/#virtual-whips

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[seniorpollinationtechnician]

Meet the Townies: ᴇᴛʜᴀɴ ᴀɴᴅ ɪꜱᴀᴀᴄ

Ethan Harper grew up an only child and spent his formative years immersed in the world of engineering. His fascination with machines and technology was inspired by his father who was a skilled mechanic. While attending high school, Ethan secretly began working on a personal project where he attempted to design and build a robot. He poured countless hours into this endeavor, often sacrificing teenage milestones to tend to this robot he later named ISAAC (Intelligent System and Advanced Assistant Companion). Upon graduating High School, Ethan enrolled at Foxbury Institute where he pursued a degree in Mechanical Engineering. During his time there, Ethan excelled in his studies, consistently earning top marks and impressing his professors with his innovative ideas and dedication to the craft. In his free time, he continued to work on ISAAC since the university's state-of-the-art facilities and access to cutting-edge resourced allowed him to make significant improvements. He refined ISAAC's design, enhanced its capabilities and incorporated the latest advancements in artificial intelligence and robotics. After graduating with honors from Foxbury, Ethan quickly began carving out a professional life for himself. His reputation as a brilliant young engineer opened many doors and he received numerous job offers from leading tech companies. Ethan's expertise eventually caught the attention of the military who offered him a position to develop a project for them. Though he initially hesitated, the opportunity was too enticing to pass up. Despite his professional success and the accolades he received for his work, Ethan felt an intense void in his life that he couldn't seem to fill. His relentless pursuit of perfection in his projects, particularly with ISAAC, often left him feeling isolated. The extensive time he spent in the lab, both during his time at Foxbury and throughout his career, meant that his personal life took a backseat. Ethan's social interactions were limited and he found it difficult to connect with others on a deeper level. His closest colleagues, at one point, noticed and gently encouraged him to step out of his comfort zone and try dating. Ethan reluctantly agreed and while the dates he went on did not lead to a lasting relationship, it helped Ethan open up and see the value in balancing his personal and professional life. As he continued to make strides in his professional career, Ethan was approached by his alma mater, Foxbury institute, with an invitation to teach part-time. The university recognized his achievements and believed that his expertise could inspire and educate the next generation of engineers. Teaching at Foxbury became a profoundly rewarding experience for him. Standing before eager students, he shared his knowledge and passion. He found joy in helping them navigate their own paths and would often encourage them to think creatively and push the boundaries of what was possible. Meanwhile, ISAAC continued to improve every day, becoming an indispensable part of Ethan's life. By this point, ISAAC's capabilities extended far beyond what Ethan originally intended. ISAAC excelled in research assistance, laboratory management, and technical maintenance. The robot could analyze complex data, run simulations and suggest innovative solutions to engineering problems which significantly sped up Ethan's workflow. ISAAC also managed clerical tasks such as organizing files, scheduling meetings, and maintaining equipment, allowing Ethan to focus on more critical aspects of his projects. ISAAC'S home automation features made Ethan's personal life a breeze, as well. The robot could control various smart devices, perform household chores, such as cleaning and grocery shopping, and even cook meals based on Ethan's dietary preferences. Recently, Ethan and ISAAC relocated to the town of Oasis Springs due to a job offer at a cutting-edge research lab.

[kroire4]

Home Automation: Save Time, Energy, and Effort

Nowadays, optimizing basic things in daily life has become a must. Let us solve this problem together. With the ever-increasing accessibility of smart technology, automating different aspects of your home makes it convenient, safe, and eco-friendly. In this blog post, we’ll explain how Home Automation can enhance your life, the amazing tools it provides, and the steps towards automation in your house.

What is Home Automation?

Any smart device installed in a house that allows control of devices from a single interface through a smartphone or voice is known as Home Automation. Anything from smart controlled lighting, thermostats, security cameras, or voice assistants is included in the Home Automation System. You can also seamlessly streamline regular activities. Which enhances energy efficiency and making your residence safe through automation.

Examples of common Home Automation Systems include:

Smart thermostats that automatically adjust the temperature to preferred requirements. 

Smart switches and LED lights that allow control of a home’s lights from a distance. 

Home security systems that secure homes monitor them live and provide notifications.

Benefits of Home Automation

1. Time Savings

One of the biggest home benefits of home automation is saving time. With automation using IOT, we can control devices from anywhere and it saves time doing repetitive things. For instance, you can set the timer for your LED lights to switch on, at a particular time or you can warm the thermostat before arriving home so that it is proactively done. This way, you avoid being surprised.

People setting up schedules for remembering tasks such as watering their plants or turning on security systems have now all but eliminated the need to remember these things enabling them to be more productive in every aspect of their lives.

2. Reduction in Energy Usage

Home automation highly reduces energy wastage and being energy efficient is also an advantage of home automation. Programs embedded in smart thermostats can recognize preferred weather conditions and self-adjust, helping save energy when you are away. Smart switches and lights can be set up to automatically shut off when not needed, which aids in slashing electricity costs. One of how control over energy use is offered is through contributing to sustainability, which decreases your carbon footprint.

Moreover, through the use of automation of energy consumption, energy consumption tracking is enabled. This feature empowers homeowners to track their energy usage and adjust their consumption patterns to maximize efficiency.

3. Effort Reduction

Home automation takes away the hassle of performing many chores, such as switching on and off the lights, handling security, or using the entertainment systems. Just say it out loud or set up a time for it to be done and know that the tasks will be done with the help of machines.

While using security cameras, one can remotely monitor their property and even receive alerts to better protect their house.

Popular Home Automation Devices

When one wants to incorporate a home automation system in the house, the following devices are used widely:

LED Lighting – Smartly control brightness and colour, enhancing ambiance and energy efficiency.

Smart Chandeliers - Adjust brightness and schedules with a tap or voice command for a luxurious and enhanced lighting experience.

Advanced Fans – Control and operate, set schedules, and adjust speeds of fans with just one click enhancing comfort and energy savings.

Smart ACs - Easily maintain best temperatures with automated controls and remote access, reducing energy consumption.

Automatic Thermostats – Control the temperature of a room whether heating and cooling by knowing your preferences, improving efficiency and comfort.

Smart Curtains - Open or close with a voice command or app, provides comfort and convenience.

Smart Geysers - Get warm or cold water at any time with just a single command.

How to Get Started with Home Automation

We are on the verge of a generation that accepts technology with open arms. If you wish to welcome this technology to your home, here is how you can transform your home to be a smart home:

Assess Your Needs and Goals: It is crucial to establish what you wish to do with the electronics in your home. Are you looking to reduce energy consumption, improve security, or make life more convenient?

Choose Compatible Devices: Always consider compatibility before purchasing electronics. Many devices are made in such a way that they can be integrated making the setup quite maintenance-free.

Setup A Hub: A hub centralizes all of your devices and makes it easier to control everything via voice or an app. A hub should be an investment for anyone looking to have a functional Home Automation System.

Challenges of Home Automation

There is an obvious list of positive aspects that come as an advantage of having automation in a residential property. But there are some disadvantages and challenges too that come with having automation introduced in your home:

Initial Setup Costs: Installing an entirely automated home can cost a lot of money at the start but the savings over a long time justify the investment made at the start as there are savings in the energy bills.

A Learning Curve: If technology isn’t your strong point, then getting new devices integrated can be a hassle.

Security Risks: Security automation can be helpful, however, it can create weaknesses, and security management is crucial for the safe operation of computerized systems. Your computers and network equipment must be properly protected to limit any possible abuse.

Conclusion

Home Automation is important since it can help you better manage your time, energy, and effort. From lighting, temperature control, security, and more, there’s a substantial number of things to gain. Every Home Automation Project that you are contemplating will surely provide a great deal of comfort, savings, and added peace of mind all worth investing in.

While researching the Applications of Home Automation, always engage the Best Home Automation Company in India so that you can have an outstanding, dependable, safe, and efficient home system as per your requirements.

By using Home Automation, you can improve your lifestyle quality, cut down your carbon footprints, and enjoy life in a smarter and more integrated home environment.

What are you waiting for? Take that first step now and turn your house into a smart and automated oasis!

[ideaazautomation]

Discover a cutting-edge office interior project by Ideeaz Automation for a leading global consulting company in Bengaluru. Designed for innovation, functionality, and aesthetic appeal, this workspace reflects modern architecture and smart automation integration. Explore the full project now.

[nurseanya404]

Good evening, Anya.

I am so happy our date went so good, even if there at the end we lost track of time. I'd rather with you than not! I hope you loved the meal as much as I love you.

Decided to do a mini-project, using an automated system for this. I'm gonna make you a small vacation home for when the Tulpar's grounded! A place to come see the other side for a while. I just wish to know what you'd like. I'm working on post-apocalypse, so it's not gonna be the prettiest, but I'll try to get as much supplies for your vision as I can! Return the call, thanks!

@atombombskilledtheradiostar

A vacation home? That's so... that's too much, kaleb. you really don't need to

[makereadgrow]

The garden is coming together. I've had the raised bed planted out for a bit, but every time I had a chance to get my soil for the containers it rains (we've had an extraordinarily wet spring in KY).

The deck has been a wasteland of empty containers. Although we did have a little visitor who got to sniff outside the screened in section of the porch for the first time this week (she was interested but wanted to go back in almost immediately). Last year we had half plastic barrel pots and half fabric grow bags. While both did fine for the plants the grow bags slumped off their trays and caused some rot on the wood deck. So one of my big purchases this year was 6 more of the barrel pots when they were on sale for $13.

Each barrel pot holds 1.5 cu feet of soil. In past years we have gotten together with friends and purchased a 50/50 mix of topsoil and finished compost. That is much more cost effective than this year's solution but we simply could not get access to a truck this year. So I ended up going with a bagged organic mix. I'm not thrilled about returning to peat, but my options were slim and getting slimmer as the season went on.

I ended up going with this promix which is compressed so each bag holds 2 cu feet. This is the biggest expense for the whole gardening year by a long shot. The bags were $16 each. Ow. I did have a gift card from my birthday and we are enrolled in a local conservation district program that will pay us back 50% (up to $200) for expensive related to approved projects including vegetable gardens.

After drilling extra holes in the bottom of each new pot we mixed the promix with a generous amount of additional perlite and an all purpose organic veg fertilizer. Its not a strictly organic garden, but I do tend to go with organic plant food when I can. Then the mix was shoveled into my 12 barrels + a couple smaller pots which will likely hold ornamentals.

Once the barrels were filled we put in the spigots for the automated watering system - the system doesn't seem to be leaking so we just needed to plug it all in and test. I highly recommend an automated watering system. Ours has wifi so it doesn't run when it rains, but even a timer is a good solution. The drip irrigation runs through the raised bed and all the pots and is a much more efficient watering solution as it is a) less subject to evaporation than watering with the hose b) more targeted to the roots of the plants and c) less susceptible to human frailty. The schedule allows plant watering to happen in the early morning which is the optimal time for watering, while I am frantically running around trying to get to work. The watering continues if I am sick or away from home. More than that, it is something I don't need to keep on my mind.

Next task: planting all those big pots. Next purchase: more straw mulch

[smardensolutions]

Custom IoT Solutions Transform Wastewater Management

From burning machines to brilliant automation, see how one custom IoT solution transformed a wastewater treatment plant with a single dashboard with real-time monitoring and smart energy management. A real-world success story where smart technology saves machines, money and manpower.