What do you mean specifically? If I’m already testing between two VMs, doesn’t that already isolate any issues to Proxmox? Is there another performance metric you think I should be looking at?

When I use OpenSpeedTest to to test to another VM, it doesn’t read or write from the HDD, and it doesn’t leave the Proxmox NIC. It’s all direct from one VM to another. The only limitations are CPU are perhaps RAM. Network cables wouldn’t have any effect on this.

I’m using VirtIO (paravirtualized) for the NICs on all my VMs. Are there other paravirtualization options I need to be looking into?

It was a good suggestion. That’s one of the first things I checked, and I was honestly hoping it would be as easy as changing the NIC type. I know that the Intel E1000 and Realtek RTL8139 options would limit me to 1Gb, but I haven’t tried the VMware vmxnet3 option. I don’t imagine that would be an improvement over the VirtIO NIC, though.

Every VM is using VirtIO as the network card; they’ll all on the same bridge to the physical 10Gb NIC. As far as I understand, any traffic between VMs should not be leaving the Proxmox server.

This is looking more and more like my best option. I guess I can just buy an AC and run it with thr on-board temperature control until I have time to build and integrate an ESP board.

I have heard the same thing about ACs, but I think it depends on the unit. The window units that I use have a switch on the front that literally just turns them off; there’s no delay time for the compressor. It’s the same as pulling the plug.

I’ve used single and dual-hose portable ACs in the past, and I only have dual-hose units now. This is purely anecdotal, but when I had single-hose units, they would maintain the temperature throughout the day as it warmed up, but they didn’t do a great job of cooling. A dual-hose AC with a similar capacity was actually able to lower the temperature.

I do use iSCSI between my Proxmox server any my TrueNAS server. What do you mean by “noise,” exactly? My understanding is that because iSCSI isn’t broadcasting, my switch is only going to transfer packets between the two servers, which would prevent any “noise” from making it out to other devices on other ports.

Thanks for the suggestion. I’ve watched a few of his videos in the past, but I don’t think I ever subscribed.

If you really want to win a war, you send Lorca (the mirror universe one).

I don’t label anything.

Pros: I don’t have to label anything.

Cons: Was it port 48 that’s on VLAN2? Maybe port 47? I don’t know, let’s start plugging in stuff until it works.

I’d like to have more fine-grained data than a few leak sensors at different levels. I am curious, though, where are you finding leak sensors (that work) for £4 each? I have a few leak sensors in my house for under sinks and my water heater, and they were something like $20 each.

I was hoping for something that just reads an analog level and outputs a stream of serial data, but using an ESP32 does seem to make a lot more sense than having an ADC, UART controller, and probably a UART->USB interface. Seems like ESPs fairly cost-effective, too.

Forgive me for sounding like an idiot, but how does ESPHome work exactly? I understand that I would flash ESPHome onto the dev board as an “operating system” of sorts. How does one program ESPHome to read the GPIO pins on the board? Do I modify the ESPHome code beforehand, then flash the entire package, or do I flash the ESPHome code, then interface with the ESP chip to configure it?

As far as microcontrollers go, I’ve always just written my own code, then flash it to the microcontroller with an ISP or JTAG programmer. What kind of hardware/software is needed to interface with an ESP32 device? It looks like the dev boards usually have a USB interface built in.

EDIT: So it looks like, if I understand this correctly, I would use esphome-flasher to transfer the ESPHome binaries to the ESP device, then do the rest of the configuration in HA with the ESPHome integration?

I’ve looked at ESPHome, but this still means I have to build a circuit board with the ESPHome core device, if I understand correctly? This would certainly work, but it seems wasteful to me when I don’t really need a microcontroller at all, just an ADC that HA can read. If this is the best option, though, I’m open to the idea.

I think I might have misstated what I already had. In the past, I have built tank-level sensors using the eTape, but never for integration with HA. For example, reading the level of an RV water tank and feeding the output to an LCD screen.

I currently have no system in place to monitor the levels of my water tanks, other than walking over to them and saying “yep, they’re empty again.” The system doesn’t have to be high-tech, in fact that’s what’s pushing me away from something like EPSHome; it feels like overkill. I just need to be able to read a resistance level that corresponds to a water level and somehow feed it into HA.

I had considered just using a leak sensor to detect if the tanks are empty, but I’d really like to have an indication of the current level so I know if I have enough left for the next watering cycle or if I need to supplement my tanks from municipal water.

This what I ended up doing. Did you have any issues adding them to HA? HA is able to detect them now, but it stops at Interviewing when I try to pair them. I tried 3 different types of Hue bulbs (color, white, a different color model), and they all have the same issue.

I don’t really want to buy Hue any more either, but I might. I started switching over to Zigbee devices several weeks ago, and I’ve had a hell of a time getting motion sensors that would work. I’ve used a few PIR sensors and mmWave sensors. By far, the best performing out of all of them are the Hue motion sensors. I’m not a big fan of their decision to force Hue Bridge users onto a “it’s all in the cloud, let us collect your personal information” plan, but as far as a hardware goes, they’re orders of magnitude ahead of the other white-label stuff I’ve tried.

That’s a bit different than what I read. I read something like 8 seconds on, 2 seconds off, repeat, repeat. I’ll give your method a try.

The problem with this is that the induction fan is the same fan that blows the smoke out from the exhaust vent; pellet stoves don’t exhaust out a chimney like a fireplace. They require forced induction. When you turn off the pellet stove with the potentiometer, the fan continues running until whatever pellets remain in the combustion chamber stop burning. Simply removing power means that the pellets continue burning, but the smoke and exhaust gases have nowhere to go. They will fill up the stove and start leaking out.

I’ve always had a fan theory that navigating the mycellial network requires that the navigator be a conscious entity for one reason or another. It explains why there was so much trouble with development in the first place. If that’s true, you could argue that no matter how advanced 32nd century computers are, they still won’t be able to calculate a spore jump. Starfleet seems opposed to the idea of a sentient AI in any era, so that leaves Zora as the only “computer” that could operate the spore drive without a flesh-and-blood navigator. That would explain some of why the Discovery is still in service.

Also, we’ve seen on screen that the navigator must have some kind of connection to nature and/or the fabric of the universe itself. Stamets had the tardegrade DNA, and Booker had his species’ unique abilities. I’m not sure anyone else fits this role, excepting the obvious like Q or the Travellers, who would have no use for it in the first place.

I see it as similar to what would happen if a viking longboat suddenly appeared in modern times with a crew that decided they’d like to become part of their country’s navy. Assume for sake of argument that this viking longboat is endowed with a magical stave that allows it to instantaneously transport itself to whatever point on the globe the captain chooses. This magical stave is imprinted on the hull of the boat itself and cannot be removed or transferred.

We would re-enforce the wooden hull of the boat with steel. No doubt a nuclear reactor would be far too massive and complex, so we would likely install gas turbine engines, or perhaps maybe even an electrical propulsion system, space permitting. Radar systems would be installed, but we couldn’t use a phased-array radar system; it’s dependent on the geometry of the ship’s superstructure. There wouldn’t be room for a vertically-launched missile system, but an older deck-mounted missile launch system would certainly be possible. A 20mm deck gun would work just fine, but sea-based artillery is out of the question. A 5-inch gun requires far too much supporting equipment below decks. Communications would be no problem; install a mast on the newly steel-reinforced deck and place a small-ish transceiver somewhere, and the boat now has the same high-bandwidth comms afforded to modern ships.

Computing power would be somewhat of a problem. Modern ships rely on large spaces full specialized military-grade purpose-built computing systems. We could likely fit a server rack with a few high-powered Xeon servers somewhere on the ship, but it wouldn’t have the same total-ship integration that something like an Aegis cruiser or destroyer has. Processing power might be the same (if not better), but the overall topology of the system would be vastly different, and likely more limited in what sort of inputs the ship’s “main computer” is able to receive and process.

I would suspect that a 23rd century starship in the 32nd century would be in a very similar scenario. As long as the ship is still considered spaceworthy, many modern advancements could be installed or easily modified to fit the 900-year-old ship. Because the unique capabilities of the USS Discovery are inextricably tied to the ship itself and it’s crew, however, there will always be limitations on what technology can be installed without altering the structure of the ship to the point that the spore drive no longer functions. That’s part of the reason why I think the spore drive in the Discovery and a magical stave on a viking longboat are a good comparison. Both have “magical” elements and may or may not rely on the ship itself being set up in such a way to allow these magical elements to function. Change the ship too much, and it’s no longer the same ship.

That does bring up an interesting argument regarding the Mk2 spore drive that was used on Booker’s ship. If there is a way to create a spore drive that can be operated on any modern starship, is there really any reason for the 900-year-old Discovery to still be in active service? Seems to me that a 32nd-century starship with Stamets onboard would serve the same function, only better.