I’ve been running my video podcast Nerding out with Viktor for about a year and a half now, with just under 50 episodes published. When I started out, I tried to keep things simple and cheap. I used my Logitech Brio 4K webcam - a webcam that I picked up during COVID. Not long after, I upgraded the audio by adding a dedicated microphone, the …
I’ve previously written about my experiences with Home Assistant here and here. This article follows up on those posts and describes my current setup. Today, my stack includes Home Assistant (HA), Zigbee2MQTT (Z2M) and the Mosquitto MQTT server, all running in Docker with Docker Compose on a VM. Here are some things I’ve learned, which would might save …
I’m excited to share that I’ve just given Sonar—a FastAPI-based BLE device counter I built years ago—a full overhaul and relaunched it as an open-source project on GitHub: https://github.com/viktopia/sonar Why Sonar? When I first created Sonar, the goal was simple: track Bluetooth Low Energy devices nearby to estimate foot traffic in a space …
I’ve been using split keyboards for about 20 years now, a journey sparked by the all-too-common wrist pain that plagues many a nerd hunched over a standard keyboard. This quest for ergonomic nirvana led me down a rabbit hole of different keyboards, culminating in my current mechanical setup, and even prompted me to switch my mouse to my left hand (more …
When I wrote A Decade of Remote Work back in 2019, I had no idea a global pandemic would soon thrust remote work into the spotlight, turning it from niche to necessity overnight. Now, as I mark 15 years of building and running remote teams, I find myself revisiting and refining many of the lessons from the past and adding new insights gathered from recent …
I recently helped a team migrate their Git repositories from Phabricator to GitHub. While Phabricator was a great tool that combined code reviews, task management, and repository hosting, its official deprecation in 2021 has left many teams looking for alternatives. While moving directly from Phabricator to Phorge is often the simplest path (here’s a …
I recently got a few affordable G3 Pro cameras to replace some less-than-stellar G4 Dome units I had in my setup. Once I hooked these cameras up to the network, they appeared in my UniFi Console (Dream Machine Pro) without issue. However, after clicking the “Adopt” button, they became stuck in “Restoring” mode for quite some time. …
TLDR: I wanted to generate an up-to-date disk image for a Rock Pi 4 using Yocto that included CUPS and Docker to both get a better understanding of Yocto and test the new SBOM generation feature. As with many single-board computers (SBCs) from China, the issue often isn’t the board itself but rather the software. RockPi from Radxa is no exception. If …
I’ve been using Home Assistant for about seven years now, starting back when I was living in a small apartment. At the time, my setup was modest: I used the IKEA Smart Hub (when it first launched) to tie together all my apartment’s lights. As I got more comfortable with automations, I also began building custom hardware like temperature and …
Over the last decade, I’ve spun up quite a few landing pages to gauge interest for upcoming products and features. Back in the day, there were platforms like Launchrock that made it simple to collect email addresses and maintain a waitlist. While Launchrock (and later Typeform, etc.) provided decent user experiences at the time, the end goal was always …