Home Assistant: The Complete Echo Show Jailbreak Guide
This blog post will walk you through jailbreaking your Echo Show 5 Gen 1, or Echo Show 8 Gen 1, wiping Amazon's Fire OS, and loading Lineage Android. You can then install the Home Assistant companion app, View Assist, Fully Kiosk or whatever you want to display your Home Assistant dashboard. In this post I cover:Jail Breaking your Echo Show 5 or 8 (Gen 1)Wipe Fire OS and load Android Lineage 18.1Rooting LineageInstall F-Droid with privileged extension (auto app updates)Installing...
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Aqara FP300: The Ultimate Presence Sensor (Home Assistant Edition)
The Aqara FP300 is the new kid on the block when it comes to smart home presence sensors. But the FP300 does not just do presence sensing, but also supports temperature, humidity and light sensors. What really makes this device exciting is that it's battery powered! I've been eagerly waiting on the FP300 release for months. Spoiler alert: It does NOT disappoint. Introduction The Aqara FP300 is a very compact smart sensor that packs five different monitoring capabilities into one...
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Proxmox Backup Server (PBS) 4.0 Blog Series
Hot off the press is Proxmox Backup Server 4.0. PBS is a great tool to use with your Proxmox VE servers to do fast and easy backups of your VMs and LXCs. It's very easy to setup, and can be deployed in a variety of forms: bare metal, VM or LXC. Personally, I've deployed Proxmox Backup Server 4.0 as a VM on my primary Synology NAS. This PBS instance covers both of my Proxmox hosts, so I can back up all...
Read moreHow To: Proxmox Backup Server 4 as a Synology VM
Many home labs have both Proxmox VE hosts (for running VMs and LXCs) as well as a Synology NAS. If you want to run Proxmox Backup Server on your Synology NAS as a VM, this post is for you. I'll show you how to install PBS as VM on your NAS, as well as configure a local disk (EXT4) as a datastore for the backups.Not all Synology NAS devices can run VMs. In addition, I recommend using 4GB of RAM...
Read moreHow To: Backblaze B2 as a Proxmox Backup Server 4 S3 Datastore
New to Proxmox Backup Server (PBS) 4.0 is a 'tech preview' feature for using S3 buckets as a datastore. While many people associate S3 buckets with Amazon, it is more or less a standard that many cloud providers support. This opens up many possibilities for direct PBS to cloud backups, which is great news.However, I cannot emphasize enough this new feature IS 'tech preview' and I've seen issues with it. Namely, backup verification jobs sometimes failed on bad chunks of...
Read moreHow To: Synology iSCSI LUN for Proxmox Backup Server Datastore
If you have a Synology NAS and want to use it with Proxmox Backup Server (PBS), you have two primary options for your datastore: NFS or an iSCSI LUN. If you want to use NFS storage, check out my previous article: How To: Setup Synology NFS for Proxmox Backup Server Datastore . However, the NFS datastore can be finicky and does not always have the best performance. I have now migrated all of my PBS datastores to use iSCSI LUNs. This...
Read moreHow To: Synology NFS for Proxmox Backup Server Datastore (2025)
This refreshed 2025 post covers using a Synology NAS NFS share as a datastore for Proxmox backups. Configuring a NFS share for the proper Proxmox Backup Server permissions can be quite challenging. The permissions requirements for PBS are different from just a basic NFS mount to a Proxmox VE host that you use for VE backups, ISOs, etc. Please take note that this procedure is very nuanced, and as such, each step must be exactly followed. One minor misstep can cause...
Read moreHow To: Proxmox Backup Server 4 (VM) Installation
In this article I will walk you through how to install Proxmox Backup Server (PBS) 4.0 inside of a VM running on Proxmox 9.0. You might be wondering why you might want to install PBS as a VM instead of a LXC. Good question! If you want to use iSCSI LUNs as a PBS datastore, then going down the LXC path is very convoluted and complicated due to shared permissions between the host and PBS LXC. By using a Proxmox Backup...
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How MVNOs Like US Mobile Can Save You Money on Your Cell Phone Bill
Note: This post is NOT sponsored and there are NO public affiliate links. If you would like a private code to use for $50 off some plans, use my contact form and I'll email you a code.Choosing a cell phone plan in the United States can be overwhelming, with dozens of providers and an ever-growing array of options. Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) stand out by offering a wide variety of plans tailored to different needs and budgets, often at...
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Data Brokers Exposed: How to Opt Out and Secure Your Personal Data
Taking charge of your personally identifying information in modern times is very difficult. In the US there are very few laws to protect what kind of personal data that companies can share. Companies like Meta, Amazon, Google, your ISP, etc. literally make billions of dollars by snooping on what you do online and sell information about you. The scope of data that these data brokers has on each of us is astonishing. Data that companies know about you can include...
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