Cavelab

New keypad for my RPi DIY security alarm

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 13:18:48 +0100

The keypad, or alarm panel, is an important part of a security alarm system. When I first got started building mine — I settled for a cheap and simple Zigbee keypad.

I’ve since replaced it with a better, and more advanced device. Let’s have a look…

A short update on my Raspberry Pi security alarm project

Tue, 16 Dec 2025 23:39:11 +0100

Quick recap: I’m building a DIY security alarm using a Raspberry Pi, hardwired PIR sensors, and MQTT integration with Home Assistant.

Hello again — it seems to be close to a year since I last managed to get some words published on this blog. And almost three years since I last wrote about my Raspberry Pi security alarm project 😮

But the project is still alive and well. We use it every night and whenever we are away, and it just works 😃 Development usually happens in bulk, with very little happening in between.

Zeta is back!

Wed, 29 Jan 2025 22:41:20 +0100

In the fall of 2022 I turned off Zeta, my file server, due to the extreme price of electricity. I migrated all the data to a 3x18 TB raidz1 pool on Alpha instead.

But last year I brought it back — and used the opportunity to add some more memory, and rebuild the main storage pool 🤓

Netdata warnings — tracking down dropped packets

Mon, 27 Jan 2025 21:27:05 +0100

When I was trying out Netdata last year — I noticed I had lots of inbound_packets_dropped_ratio warnings, on multiple nodes.

Time to investigate 👇

Moving videos to Bunny Stream

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 22:44:11 +0100

I’ve looked into different video solution for this blog before — and, at the time, settled on using Coconut.co for encoding, AWS S3 for hosting, and Video.js for playing.

Bunny Stream was on the table back then, but I wanted a more hands on solution. Well — this time around I wanted a hands off solution, where the videos just work without me having to worry about it 🙂

And for that — Bunny Stream is pretty awesome, so that’s what I’m using now 👍

Finally getting fiber between the house and garage

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 21:34:36 +0100

Getting network to the garage is a story with many chapters. I started out with Wi-Fi mesh, then CAT6 — and now, finally, fiber!

Using the Shelly Plus Plug S to measure homelab power

Wed, 08 Jan 2025 20:44:24 +0100

I’m using a Shelly Plus Plug S smart plug to measure the power usage of my homelab. I added it as a device in Home Assistant — and the power readings began! Kind of…

Within a few days; I noticed something strange with the graph history — there were long periods of time where the graph was completely flat. Logging into the Shelly web interface, I could see the watt reading changing — without this being reflected in Home Assistant.

Implementing series navigation buttons — in Hugo

Tue, 07 Jan 2025 21:38:45 +0100

As I have written before; I like the concept of blog post series. Break a large topic, or ongoing project, into multiple posts — while maintaining the chronological order.

But one key factor for a successful series implementation is the ease at which the read can navigate through the posts. And orient themselves within the series — meaning; understand where in the series they are currently reading.

My latest improvement on my series implementation is navigation buttons, for the previous and next post 👍

Making a pub table — with an old oak tabletop

Sat, 04 Jan 2025 08:41:52 +0100

Sometimes, when I’m not too busy with my homelab or some other electronics project — I pretend to be a woodworker or carpenter.

This time I made a pub table, using an old kitchen tabletop of oak. I got it for free from a good friend, he had stored it in his barn for a number of years, and before that it was a desk.

It wasn’t in great condition, with lots of scratches and dents — even some black spray paint. But it was oak, and it was free 🙂

Optimizing WireGuard on MikroTik CHR

Fri, 03 Jan 2025 17:09:24 +0100

I’ve been having a strange problem with outgoing WireGuard traffic, the problem has probably always been there — I just haven’t noticed, until now. Outgoing WireGuard traffic is very slow, while incoming is what I’d except with my 750/750 fiber internet connection.

This lead me down a rabbit hole of testing performance internally, which I documented in a previous blog post. That turned out to be a queue issue on the SFP+ port on my MikroTik CHR router. Could this also be queue related?

Underground conduits to garage and shed

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 19:37:03 +0100

Two years ago we dug and laid three conduits from the house to the garage, and from the garage to the shed. Primarily to get more power to the garage — and any power to the shed.

I used the opportunity to put in an additional conduit for fiber, and lots of conduits from the main switch board down into the basement.

My homelab rack — a 20 year history

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 20:24:29 +0100

I built a rack out of wood in 2004 — it was at home, and a lab, of sorts, so I guess that makes it a homelab 🙂

Let’s take a trip down memory lane and look at 20 years’ worth of homelabbing ❤️

Chasing MikroTik CHR bottleneck

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 20:25:45 +0100

While doing some WireGuard testing between local peers; I noticed weird performance issues on my virtual MikroTik router. This lead me down a rabbit hole of testing the layer 3 throughput on my virtual CHR.

The bit rate started at close to 10 Gbit/s, but then dropped to 3-4 — only in one direction 🤷 Time to investigate…

Upcoming homelab projects

Mon, 16 Dec 2024 21:26:29 +0100

My homelab rack has been running as is for a while now — it’s time for a few new projects.

I’m rearranging stuff to better utilize the space, looking into 25 Gbit networking, and putting a HP Z440 server to good use 🙂

Measuring outdoor temperature with a Raspberry Pi and DS18B20 probe

Fri, 29 Nov 2024 16:23:02 +0100

We have a Dakboard digital calendar in our kitchen — showing lots of house and temperature data. So naturally; it must show the actual outdoor temperature as well.

To do this I used a Raspberry Pi 2, and a DS18B20 HAT I made some years back.

(Re)set the time on our Komfovent ventilation system

Tue, 26 Nov 2024 17:10:52 +0100

Our Komfovent balanced ventilation system is pretty bad at accurate timekeeping — the time drifts several minutes over the course of a few months. This is a bit annoying as the operator panel is prominently located on the second floor, and we use it to tell time.

Luckily; the time can be set using the Modbus interface.

Upgrading the Proxmox VE server hosting my router

Fri, 22 Nov 2024 11:39:34 +0100

I recently upgraded all my Proxmox VE servers from version 7 to 8 — which was a straight forward and easy process. But one server presented a challenge; the hypervisor running my router. How to apt dist-upgrade with the router down?

It turned out to be very easy, here is how 👇

Enabling touchpad tapping in X11 on my Linux laptop

Tue, 19 Nov 2024 23:50:15 +0100

I’ve been using my HP ZBook 15 G5 laptop a lot lately, but it annoyed me that I couldn’t tap the touchpad in i3. It does have physical buttons — but I’m used to tapping on the pad… My laptop is running Arch Linux BTW 😉

Luckily it was really easy to fix 🙂

Improving dark mode and syntax highlighting

Sat, 10 Feb 2024 09:18:21 +0100

In May last year; I did some changes to the dark mode theme and syntax highlighting on this blog. Resulting in higher contrast, improved syntax highlighting in light mode, and a few others things.

It took me a while to get around to document this, but here we go 👇

New tools over the Christmas holidays

Mon, 05 Feb 2024 08:51:26 +0100

Over the Christmas holidays, organizing some tools, I realized my screwdriver collection was in pretty poor shape. I can’t even remember the last time I purchased a new screwdriver…

I actually think most of them were in a tool-box that my wife had — when we first met. I’ve bought plenty of tools over the years, but new screwdrivers, apparently.

So; I ordered some Wera screwdriver sets, and a few other things 👇

Arch Linux laptop power — suspend, battery, and charging

Mon, 29 Jan 2024 08:30:02 +0100

I recently got a new laptop, (well — not new, but new to me), a HP ZBook 15 G5. After installing Arch Linux and the i3 wm I spend some time setting up power management, suspend on idle, and figuring out the state of the battery.

Making my own NVR — with a streaming proxy and FFmpeg

Thu, 25 Jan 2024 22:55:08 +0100

I’ve been thinking about getting some CCTV cameras for a while, and last summer I purchased two Reolink PoE cameras. The footage is stored on a SD card, and uploaded to a local FTP server.

But I also wanted to record continuously, without getting a dedicated Reolink NVR. I’ve seen some YouTube videos by Tall Paul Tech where he uses FFmpeg to record CCTV footage — so let’s do that! 🙂

Microblogging in Hugo — using Todoist tasks

Tue, 23 Jan 2024 22:28:17 +0100

I’ve had a recurring thought, following by some intense Googling — using this Hugo powered site to microblog. The idea has been fueled by two desires; owning my own “microblogging” data — and making it quicker, and easier, to post something on my own domain.

Being able to quickly snap a photo with my phone and publish it is not so easy with a static website. So I got the idea of using the Todoist app, and their API to post, build, and publish.

This is the story of how I did it, and why it wasn’t a good idea.

Running CAT6 to the 2nd floor den — another interior wall

Sat, 25 Mar 2023 09:49:41 +0100

I first got started on the network run from the attic switch to the 2nd floor den — back in October of 2021. I finished it a year later, so it’s about time to get this blog post published 😛

Build and deploy Hugo with Make

Sun, 26 Feb 2023 12:18:58 +0100

I’ve written before about how I deploy this blog using Drone.io. It works well, and does exactly what you’d expect.

Lately I’ve started looking into reducing complexity in homelab systems that I use — and using “a Continuous Integration platform for busy development teams” felt a bit overkill for this tiny blog.

So I switched to something simple; GNU Make.