A couple of times I have been playing something and was so deep in the game I didn't realize the battery was going down faster than I realized and the deck decided to turn off.

I have been thinking it would be nice for me to have the battery level visible even when running a game in full screen mode. I have an app on my phone with permission to display on top of other apps that draws a line around the camera cut out showing the battery charge level no matter what I am doing on the phone. In some older phone with no cutout I used to have a horizontal line in the top of the screen.

I would love to have this on the deck. Does anyone know if it exists? I've been searching with no result. If it doesn't exist, I wonder how difficult it would be to implement it... I have no clue how to have it display on top of everything though.

The image shows one of the old apps I used to have to do this on my phone.

So far I have been looking at things from the sidelines, trying to learn about self hosting by osmosis just by being part of the community and reading what people are doing. Most of the time though posts are too far for my knowledge or needs and the rest of times they are too simple a solution or directed at people just starting. I guess I'm in a middle uncomfortable ground :)

Pair that with ADHD and the huge amount of options available and I have ended up with a decision paralysis that I'm just trying to finally shake off.

So with that introduction out of the way, I'll start laying down the details of what I'm looking for, what I have so far and what I wish to get from this post. Hopefully I can make it short enough without lacking in information.

WHAT I HAVE SO FAR

I have a couple of old laptops I've been using to play around with self hosting. One is running Endeavour OS (arch based) and I have put a few *arrs there, not even docker based. Also Jellyfin, Calibre, ... It was literally the first thing I set up and of course now I'd do things differently but I'll slowly change that with time.

I got my hands on a second laptop and decided to try some different approach and some new things. Threw some stable Debian at it and installed casaOS. Started installing a few services there, wireguard to try and provide secure remote access to myself (and hoping to get some future access alternative to some others without it, but let's not get distracted by a different topic), tried putting calibre-web to give myself access to calibre on the other machine (and so far failed at it but barely tried anything to get it to work), some other *arrs are also in casaos, and all the other services in the other laptop are configured in casaOS to provide one access point to all. I have in my mind to set up also immich and some file syncing/editor and self hosted note application. But haven't done that because I lack a trust worthy storage set up.

Aside of that I got from home assistant one of their green devices to support it and that one is entirely dedicated to home assistant.

Well, hopefully that gives a bit of background on what I have so far and how I am just messing with things and trying different services for better or worse 🙃

WHAT I AM LACKING

Obviously, by the post title and what I have said so far, I'm looking to improve the storage system I have, which is... A simple and starting to be oldish external hard drive with 8TB size. I'm kinda scared of it breaking... Even thinking of going to get a second ext drive to create a copy for now. But well, that's my fault and my problem. I have been postponing getting a NAS because the options are just so wildly open. I don't want anything super complex, but I don't want to end up using some synology and depend on their software or whatever. I want to get some hardware I'm the owner of and set it up with some open source solution. But there are so many options! Plus setting a whole NAS from scratch seems to be quite expensive and about to get more expensive with the storage market situation.

WHAT I HOPE TO GET IN THIS POST

I don't expect anyone to tell me what to do or what is the perfect solution, but I hope I can get some feedback, some help on choosing what could be a good path to start, and solve my decision paralysis so I can give the first steps which will likely tie me up to what I get first for the foreseeable future.

What I think I need is a 4 bay (at least) device where I can install some trueNAS or alternative that is simpler hopefully, something that is not too expensive. I'm willing to compromise on hard drive speed and format to get a better price. Of course I'd rather get M.2 SSD drives if someone has a cheap alternative :D

I've been looking at the different RAID levels to understand which I would need (WIP) but basically I'd hope to have some back up system and more space than now with the option to expand in the future. I have no experience administering such system but I don't have an issue with learning it on the spot when I need to up the sizes etc. For context, my 8 TB are nearly full (at 7 used), it has taken a looooong time for it to be full, but the size requirements would only increase with immich and files and notes for the whole family. Maybe I would want to have different hard drives for personal data and media storage... Eggs in baskets and so on.

Well, thank you all for coming to my ted talk, I hope I have set up enough of the details that might help you help me help myself without boring you to death or making you give up on reading this :)

Hi all, in the slow process of degoogling one of the key points for me would be to remove the pucks I have been using for a few years for the WiFi mesh network at home. I know of a few alternatives but not a single one that respects my privacy (not gonna get rid of google just to switch to amazon), that allows me control of the network locally without accessing some backend of some company or anything. I don't quite need access from outside the network if that makes it easier to find some option.

Any ideas? I'm also slowly building the blocks needed at home for self hosting a bunch of stuff, and those would need to have access to the outside network of course. Maybe that needs to be considered too?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/38114964

Me and my wife are considering adopting some parrots in the not so far future. My wife has never had birds as pets, but we visited a breeder/rescuer of exotic birds (the photo I'm sharing is with one of their birds that was all too happy to be on my shoulder) and she fell in love with their macaws. I've had some parakeets in the past (a long time ago) and always loved the idea of having a parrot, specifically an African grey, but never had the chance to give them a good place until now. So we are in the planning phase and how would we balance having both breeds.

If I'm understanding correctly greys and macaws can have some issues as the dust the greys create with their skin can affect somewhat the macaws so at the very least they'd need different cages. What are people's experiences about this kind of cohabitation between different breeds?

I'd also want to ask if there's any content creator that shares videos or info about their parrots and life with them that any of you enjoy, or maybe some of you. Unfortunately this Lemmy channel seems a bit lacking in interaction and content, so I'm creating this post with the hope it gives people a reason to post more and create some conversation. I do not have accounts in other social media so it is hard for me to go around searching for content, so if those content creators are somewhere that needs no accounts all the better.