126: Smart But Not Cloudy

[still topaz]

https://selfhosted.show/126

[surreal lagoon]

Kind of related to the Ep's title, My partner and I use the term "foggy" to refer to a "local cloud" as in my servers. Its "foggy" because its the cloud, but close down to you.

[karmic juniper]

Why are you guys running 2.4 Ghz and 5 Ghz on the same WiFi ? I had so many issues before with devices dropping out of the network because the router thinks it supports 5 Ghz but it only supports 2.4 Ghz.

[surreal lagoon]

I have been running both on the same for many years now without issue, so its just simpler to let the AP's handle it. I have been using various UniFi AP's. I have not had the issue mentioned in the show with any devices yet. But I do notice that many devices will not connect to a hidden network for its first connection, so I have had to unhide -> connect device -> re-hide and then it stays connected.

[twin garden]

What about the privacy of the use of BlueBubbles? I was working on setting this up myself and was hesitant about the full implementation of it due to the E2E Encryption situation -- still being discussed here: https://github.com/BlueBubblesApp/bluebubbles-server/issues/421

Thoughts from others?
I really would like iMessage on the Linux Desktop since other refuse to adopt alternative messaging clients

[azure hollow]

Brent mentioned using Gadget Bridge and Garmin connect at the same time.

How can I connect my Garmin Watch to GadgetBridge while being connected to Garmin Connect?

What steps has he followed?

[west widget]

ahahaha this episode hits me hard

I'll do a write-up when I'm not on mobile
but I have bluebubbles notes and minisforum minipc notes too

I've been using bluebubbles for like 6mo now
previously was using beeper too

also oooh Spotify this is new

they definitely ran whisper on podcasts now

[west widget]

so bluebubbles:

if you run a VM, you must use a host with AVX support on the later versions of macOS. no avx => error

don't try running a macOS VM in WSL, the date/time will desync all the time and the networking stack will bug out every ~24 hours or so. After moving the macOS VM to a linux host it was much more stable. haven't had any issues with it for months. The sysctl commands given to a VM don't really feel violating (but I can totally see how it is on a native macOS host running other stuff)

if you have facetime, bluebubbles will /try/ to answer the call and create a join link so you can join the facetime call with your android phone. I have not tested this.

Google FCM is for push notifications. There is no E2EE right now so google /could/ read your push notifs. It's as selfhosted as a non-selfhosted/proprietary app can get tbh

for reverse proxies, I just use my own reverse proxy. No need to cloudflare. I think they have it there for the non-technical people.

if your bluebubbles host is down, you will get a push notification on your phone saying it's down. there's a built in status checker

[west widget]

I've kept my wifi SSIDs separate for years and it's worked well, especially if devices think the 2.4ghz band has a stronger signal but the 5ghz band has a faster PHY rate
with 6ghz I've also kept it separate. I'll see once MLO is out whether I want to combine the SSIDs or not.

for minipcs: beelink forces you to take their ram/ssd but minipc OEMs always give you a bottom tier drive, sometimes no-name, sometimes QLC, they often die within 6-12mo
so I always recommend barebone, buy own SSD/RAM

the minisforum devices used to have ram overheating issues but ever since they added a (2nd) fan to cool the ram/ssd it's not been a problem.

I recommend the china exclusive UM780 (7840HS) over the UM790 - basically same cpu but $50-100 cheaper, thanks price discrimination. The UM780 XTX for oculink egpu is good too.

The Minisforum minipcs come with liquid metal, which I actually hate. They should be using PTM7950 instead, but since they use LM they also adhesive stick foam to the CPU so LM doesn't spill onto the mobo. When you have to repaste in 2 years it's a pain in the ass to remove the foam that's stuck onto the mobo and you have to hairdryer it to get it off or something. I'm not looking forward to this. I've emailed them about this and they basically expect you never to repaste the unit which is lame.

The early UM780/790 units had issues with freezing up due to missing capacitors or something with motherboard design but they fixed that with the motherboard revision. Then they had issues with poor wifi/bluetooth signals from the metal case, so they updated that to be a plastic case. I don't know which stock is new and which stock is old, but there have been complaints about this. I think they all have the new mobo revision (so no more lockups), but they don't all have the new case for proper wifi/bt signals.

TDP wise the UM780/790 will do 60W+ sustained which is great! The UM690S also has the updated fan system, so don't buy the UM690 non-S.

I've also been looking at the GMKTec minipcs but minisforum does a better job with BIOS updates. For example, the GMKTec K6 (7840HS) does not have a 16GB VRAM BIOS option, but the UM780/790/XTX does. This matters if you're trying to run say, a 13B LLM model on ROCm (which does work).

Overall I just really like the form factor and value. The 8700G desktop part sells for $280 and I still have to buy a case, PSU, and mobo when I got the UM780 for $350. I just don't see a way to beat the value. Yeah upgradability but just the value of the minipc tbh

same part, just market segmentation.

UM780/790/XTX can do 96GB DDR5 5600 MHz (2 x 48GB DIMMs), not sure about UM690S but prob same
if you have a UM690 non-S or a UM773 Lite (rip thermal throttling) there's a discord with custom fan case mods to properly cool your RAM so the igpu doesn't thermal throttle to death

[twin garden]

Thank you for the info / review of sorts…. I may get this running on the old Mac mini I have that was donated to me as it was “EOL”…. Not in my eyes…..

I like the Reolink POE 2K doorbell. I have yet to confirm/test notifications and 2 way talk with the integration options per Reolink forum and new firmware…. Still nice to save local (sd or ftp), no cloud account, no subscription wi th default setup

[dawn lynx]

4k doorbell? thought it was 2k, unless there's a new model i haven't seen?

[twin garden]

Edited… 2K….

[west widget]

there's ways to get new(est || er) versions of macOS running on old macs to get full imessage/bluebubbles features